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He pulls my chair out for me while I glare. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were flirting with me.”
“Impossible,” he says, straightening his suit jacket before taking his seat. “I’m not capable of flirting.”
I tip my head, unconvinced. “You’re literally doing it right now.”
He picks up his menu and scans it casually. “Am I?”
Frustrating man.
I attempt to read my menu, but the words are a jumbled mess; not only because half of it is written in French, but because my mind is preoccupied with the charismatic man sitting across from me.
“You’re nervous,” Rowan murmurs, still observing the menu.
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Read me without even looking.”
His gaze finally flicks to mine, and he arches a brow. “That knee of yours hasn’t stopped bouncing since we sat down. You’re nibbling your lower lip and shifting in your seat every five seconds like a child with an attention disorder.”
Wow. That was both offensive and annoyingly accurate.
I clamp one hand over my knee, forcing my leg to still, and give a shaky laugh. “Honestly, I’d love a drink.”
Anything to take the edge off.
He raises a hand to the waiter, who’s waiting patiently at the back of the room, and the young man all but sprints to us. Rowan gives him our drink order, and when he returns, he swiftly pours a small sip of wine into both of our glasses.
“Please give it a try, and let me know if it’s to your liking,” the waiter says.
I close one eye and peer inside the glass at the swirling red liquid. I sniff it once, and my nose wrinkles. “Wine?”
“This is Merlot,” Rowan says, as if that’s supposed to mean something to a non-wine drinker like me. “You sample it like this.”
He walks me through the steps of properly sniffing and sipping the wine, and the whole process makes me feel like a goof.
“What do you think?” he asks.
The first sip burns my tongue, but it’s not overtly unpleasant. After finishing the rest, I shrug. “Well, it’s no Boone’s Farm, but I guess it’ll do.”
I nearly sputter when he smiles wide, flashing a set of pretty teeth. My god, I had no idea he could do that, but it makes my knee start bouncing all over again.
The waiter finishes pouring the Merlot, so deeply purple it’s nearly black, then quickly inclines his head before leaving us.
Rowan studies me over the rim of his glass, and when he takes a drink, the motion of his throat as he swallows ignites a blush in my cheeks.
“Relax, Molly. We’re just two people appreciating a nice dinner.”
I rub my palms against my thighs and release a breath. Feeling every bit out of my element, I let him order for us, entranced by the French rolling off his tongue.
When the waiter takes off toward the kitchen, I wave a hand at the room. “Must have cost a pretty penny to reserve this place just for us.”
He casually takes another drink. “They were happy to oblige when I offered to cover the cost of their reservations for the evening. I doubled what each of them had paid as a bonus.”
The sip of wine I’d just taken dribbles back inside my glass, and that little spark of humor lightens the shadows under his eyes, in the creases of his cheeks, and along his jaw.
“Okay, out with it. Are you in the mafia?”
