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“What makes you think I was refusing? I just said I was going to be busy with you for a while.” He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, sizing up my reaction.
“I’m just saying, don’t let me stop you. You obviously make a good couple.” I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help taunting him to hide my dismay that he didn’t deny it outright. “Don’t you think she’s gorgeous?”
“We would have beautiful babies,” he jokes, calling my bluff. But the jealousy stings so deep, I can barely see straight.
“Piranha eat their young, Kingsley,” I sulk.
He takes a slow sip of his drink. “Think of the money that would save me in child support. Win-win.”
That actually makes me laugh. “Kingsley Baxter, you just made a joke. I need to write that down in my notebook.”
“Good. Then write in that notebook that I would rather skin myself with a rusty potato peeler than go out with Kimberly Mizera. She’s not my type.”
“Really? What’s your type? Who would hold your interest?”
Anticipation thrums in the spot on my back where he’s been touching me on and off all night.
His hand moves up, skirting along the bare skin of my shoulder, another rare touch between us. Maybe something in his drink is unfurling his restraint.
“She is… indescribable,” he rasps, breath hot against my cheek.
Despite the brief respite from his monosyllables, he barely talks to me for the next half hour. Though it would be hard to get a word in even if I wanted to. Kingsley is quite obviously the most sought-after person in the room, and no sooner than when one person steps away from him does another person appear, always with some urgent question that involves people and concepts that are foreign to me.
I wander away a few times, sometimes by choice, sometimes because Kingsley is physically pulled away to some dark corner, no doubt to be asked about business-related dark deeds.
Sometimes I think he’ll notice that I’m gone and come looking for me, but when I look for him, he’s always giving the person he’s talking to his full attention, and me, none at all.
I try to make conversation with a few women who look like they’re interested in talking to me. But they abruptly stop talkingas soon as I approach them and then pick up the conversation when I step away.
“At the worst dinner ever,” I text the girls from the hostel.
“Any rich doctors?”
“Please, the people here look like they eat doctors for breakfast in bed.”
“Kinky.”
That at least makes me laugh, and I fire back a few quips of my own until I hear a bell ringing, and suddenly Kingsley appears at my side, glancing at my phone with a scowl.
“Come,” he says, leading me over to a seat at the table.
Ah, back to monosyllabic man. Maybe I just bring it out it in him.
I sit down next to him, and a waiter immediately reaches over and pulls the napkin off my plate and drapes it over my lap. I probably should’ve gone home and changed. I feel like Jack Dawson at the first-class dinner if Kathy Bates hadn’t lent him a tuxedo. The thought makes me giggle, but I stifle it when Kingsley gives me a side-eye.
“Another funny text?”
“Nope, just me amusing myself this time. I’m a great conversationalist, remember?”
“So I’ve heard.”
The person to my other side accidentally bumps into me as he settles into his seat and offers me his hand with an apologetic look.
“Perry Tomlinson, sorry about that. I’m a little clumsy at times.”
I wave his apology away. “No problem. I’m surprised I haven’t caused a spill multiple times tonight already.”
He relaxes, and we fall into the first easy conversation I’ve had this night.
