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My stomach grumbles at the view in an undignified fashion.
MGM chuckles in response. “And it looks like I got here just in time.”
I was about to remove the plastic lid, but I stop to study him. “How did you know I’d still be in the office?”
He gives me a long, appraising stare that makes me feel like he can see within the depths of my soul. “Oh, you know, you have that overachiever vibe. I just assumed late nights are par for the course with you.”
“Well, you assumed wrong.” I finally pull off the lid and take up the disposable bamboo fork—nice environmentally friendly touch. “I try to keep a healthy work-life balance.”
A total lie. I’m the worst workaholic and skip meals most days, not to mention the substitute ones I consume from a straw from the juice bar downstairs. But MGM doesn’t need to know that or to learn more of my flaws. They’d all be just ammunition that he could deploy against me. To weaken my defenses. This bring-you-dinner-at-the-office gesture is already hard enough to resist.
I have to keep a cool head, because if I let my walls down and let him in, then what would he do?
The same thing Justin did?
I know Marissa is right, and not all men are dung beetles like my ex, but how do I pick apart the good ones from the bad without letting my guard down, without risking my heart?
I can’t. My past clearly shows what a poor judge of character I am. No matter that MGM is doing and saying all the right things. So did Justin at the beginning.
I take my first bite of delicious salad and it melts in my mouth.
“So you’re not usually here late at night?” Gabriel asks in a sarcastic tone.
“Nope,” I lie again.
“Then I guess I just got lucky.” MGM holds my gaze, and I almost choke on a turnip.
He’s lucky I’m not a violent person because he’s pushing all my buttons.
“Why do you keep insisting we spend time together?” I ask.
He replies in a cutely perplexed tone, “Why are you so opposed to the idea that we do?”
“The question game again?”
“Just humor me, please?”
I roll my eyes at him and pick up a chicken skewer. “You confuse me.”
“Confuse you how?”
I swallow a bite of the most delicious chicken I’ve ever eaten, and say, “Well, you act like you’re determined to make me like you, but the first time we met you were rude and condescending to me.”
His voice takes on a serious tone. “I was rude because you’d punched me where it hurts the most.”
I raise my brow, not impressed by his logic. “That’s a convenient excuse.”
“Not an excuse. You must have something that makes you see red, an Achilles’ heel of sorts. Being accused of getting everything I have handed to me is mine.” I’m about to reply when he silences me with a raised hand. “But we already had this conversation and I don’t care for a repeat. And if that was the only problem, you’d have answered my question by saying you don’t like me and that’s why you don’t want to go on a date with me, but you didn’t. You said I confuse you. Why?”
“Because the same man who strolled in here exuding arrogance and assuming I was a girl playing in her daddy’s office then has enough self-irony to dance through an entire ballet class—”
“And make a fool of himself,” he finishes for me. “And what’s wrong with that?”
“You seem like a person who’d have no trouble crushing an enemy in the boardroom, but who’d also stop at an intersection to help an old lady cross the street—that is if you ever walked anywhere instead of being chauffeured around.”
That cute frown again. “Is potentially helping the elderly cross the street such a bad thing?”
I don’t know how else to explain myself. “It makes you a riddle to crack, and I just don’t have the time. Plus, let’s not pretend that the fact that our businesses overlap wouldn’t be an issue. As a woman CEO, I can’t date just anybody.”
