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His smile faded at my tone, and a big hand reached out to steady me. I must have looked like I felt: about to topple over.
“My favorite restaurant is a smallbrasseriein Paris,” Brandon said slowly. “They’re open late. I thought you might like to go, considering your history there.”
I coughed, hard. “My…mywhat?”
The smile on Brandon’s face vanished. “Your history. Your resume said you spoke French, and you mentioned that you studied abroad in Paris.” He studied my face. “What’s wrong, Red?”
It wasn’t his fault. I had confirmed those things. And there was no way he could know that although I loved France, my year in Paris was stained with rejection from my mother and a lot of self-medication courtesy of Parisian nightclubs. But still.
“I…don’t have a passport with me,” I faltered.
“I may have snooped around a little while you were in the bathroom,” Brandon said with another cheeky grin, which once again flattened as he observed me. “It wasn’t hard to find. You keep your desk very organized. Skylar, what the hell is wrong? I thought you’d like this.”
I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Kieran’s words from Monday echoed through my head, her descriptions of sociopaths loud and clear.Sometimes a man who comes off as a prince is really just the devil in disguise.
This was a first date, for Christ’s sake. Who whisks someone off to Paris in a private plane for dinner? Not to mention steals my passport? Following me to New York. The ostentatious shoes. All of it felt at once grossly strange and also too familiar.
Suddenly all I could think of was Patrick, with his habit of rewarding me with some fancy dinner or theater tickets when I suspected him of cheating. There was a pawn shop in East New York that had made some serious money off the consolation jewelry I’d deposited there after that relationship finished.
Yes, once it was described to me, I realized I was very familiar with sociopaths. I’d already been with one. It wasn’t a situation I ever wanted to be in again, and dinner in Paris was exponentially bigger—and more inappropriate—than diamond earrings or tickets toAida.
My body started to shake, fury slowly mounting. First the guy essentially asked me to be his call girl, then stalked me through New York City, more than two hundred miles away. I thought we had come to an understanding about his boundary issues. Clearly not.
“Where is it?” I asked, my voice barely loud enough to be heard over the hum of the jet.
“Where’s what?”
“My passport.”
Brow furrowed in confusion, Brandon reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the thin blue booklet. It was well-worn and nearly full of stamps from the traveling I did while living in France. I plucked it neatly from his grasp and shoved it into my purse.
“Did you take anything else?” I demanded.
His thick eyebrows crinkled together. “What? No. Red, what’s going on?”
“I’m going to go,” I announced a little too loudly, glad that my tongue wasn’t choosing this moment to tie itself into knots.
Hands shaking, I turned and started to walk down the sidewalk toward the gated entrance to the airfield, beyond which I hoped there would be an easy walk to the main terminal. The shuttle to the T wouldn’t be far from there; I could possibly be home in an hour.
“What?” Brandon jogged after me. He grabbed my hand and forced me to turn around. “What the hell, Skylar? Where are you going?”
I spit out the strands of hair that flew into my face, now too mad to speak calmly. “A plane to Paris?Really?” I wrenched my hand out of his clutch. My accent was starting to come out now. “It’s ourfirst date. I’m a poor student. I would have been impressed with anything more than Dunkin' Donuts. I thought you understood I didn’t want to play these kinds of games! What are you trying to prove with all of this?”
Brandon's mouth hung open as he shook his head. “What…are you serious?”
I didn’t reply, just stared at him in the wind and inwardly begged myself not to cave. His eyes, so wide and so blue, almost made me believe that he was innocent, that he really did just want to show me the best time he could. But visions of Patrick’s sly smile danced through my memory, right along with Brandon’s coarse words in his office. No. I wasn’t doing this again.
“This is really not how I saw this going, you know,” Brandon said coldly. “Is this how you normally show your gratitude when people do nice things for you?”
“Don’t give me a guilt trip just because I’m not falling for your manipulative bullshit. None of this”—I waved a gloved hand erratically in the general direction of the plane—“is about me. Obviously.”
“Do you thinkIregularly skip to Paris whenever the mood strikes me? Of course it was for you. I told you I needed to make time for this. Do you have any idea how much it costs me to do something like this? Now come on, let’s go!”
He reached for my hand again, but I yanked it away.
“Idoknow how ridiculously much this costs, actually! Which is exactly why I know it has more to do with your ego than with me. And any sane person would know I couldn’t possibly accept this kind of gift from someone I hardly know!”
“But you’ll let him make you come instead?” Brandon retorted. His eyes flashed, and a large vein throbbed at the side of his neck. “I guess I know what kind of girl you really are, Red.”
