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No, that's stupid. I was almost afraid to look back at him, but I did it anyway.
He hadn't moved. He was still staring at me with that faint smile on his face.
I never had known when to keep my mouth shut.
“Looking's free,” I snapped, “but touching will cost you.”
Slowly, deliberately, he tilted his head. “Nothing is free,” he said.
If he had been any other person, the words would have been laughable, comical, a real human being trying to sound like a Bond villain, but the way he said it, his entire demeanor, screamed that he had given those words serious thought and he had said them because of a long struggle to find the truth.
I swallowed and tried to stay calm. Against my will, my heart was picking up speed. For a second I couldn't quite understand why, but then he broke out of his stillness.
Slowly, he rounded the desk and walked toward me. His gait was graceful and flowing. Like a predator. Like water.
I stood my ground as he approached and forced myself to remember just what I was here for. I was pretty sure it wasn't sex. What was it again?
Oh yeah. This guy wanted to buy me.
That thought cut through the strange spell he seemed to have placed on me, and for a brief second I was able to distance myself from the situation and break free of his gravitational pull.
“God, you're rude,” I said. “You want to marry me and you haven't even asked me to sit down. Usually guys try to get me drunk first.”
The only reaction he had to my words was a slight tightening around the eyes. When he got to the place where most people stop and respect personal space, he took two more steps.
He was tall. He loomed over me, and his scent filled my head. It was cool and calm, like ice, but underneath it there was the subtle, rich tang of his skin. The smell of a man.
My heart, already doing double time, picked up the pace. My blood rose. His body was only inches from mine. If my tits had been bigger I could have inhaled deeply and brushed them against his chest.
This is not going well, I thought, but it was a fuzzy thought. Slippery. Hard to hold on to. Other thoughts were coming to the fore, thoughts like, kiss him! and grab his crotch!
Not helpful.
The faint smile returned, and he lifted an arm. For a split second I thought he was going to crush me to him and my heart leaped.
But he only gestured toward the couches off to my left.
“Please,” he said. “Sit.”
Man, I thought. I really hate him.
I whirled in place, making sure to give him a good smack with my shoulder—not in a sexy way, but in a good old you're-in-my-way-asshole way—and stomped to the couch. The effect was somewhat marred by the gasp I had to stifle; the touch of his body on mine sent electric shocks through me.
I really, really hate him.
I made sure to flop down on his perfectly appointed couch without ceremony, and propped one of my flip-flop clad feet on the table. My chipped toenail polish was, I thought, a nice touch. Subtly, I squirmed, hoping to grind dried clay into the fabric.
Anton Waters didn't even move. He stood in the center of his office, regarding me coolly.
“Aren't you going to sit down?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said, but he didn't. He tilted his head, studying me. I sat on his couch, feeling awkward and horny. At last he seemed to be satisfied, and walked over.
However, instead of sitting on the opposite couch, he sat down next to me and crossed his legs, exposing the fine, well-made lines of his suit pants. He was close to me. Too close. I didn't want to shift away and show him he made me uncomfortable—in more ways than one—so I busied myself with fishing the contract from my purse.
“So what's this?” I said. I brandished the contract at him like a knife. It would have been far more effective if he'd been sitting across from me, like a normal person. Instead I sort of had to flap it under his nose.
That faint smile creased his face again, and he turned, propping one arm up on the back of the couch in an overly intimate manner, and tilted his head again.
