She forks the piece of lobster into her mouth, and I curse biology once again for making such a benign action distracting.
“Have you read the gossip about us?” I ask, wrenching my mind away from her delectable lips with effort.
Still chewing, she nods.
“That saves time.” I look her in the eyes—a technique Eidith suggested for when I want to show people I’m about to say something very important. “I want us to play along with that gossip.”
She swallows the lobster with an audible gulp, and in my mind, I see a whole sequence of events play out: she chokes, I get behind her and do the Heimlich (in the least pervy way possible), she’s grateful for her life and—
“What?” she asks, not choking in the slightest.
I shut the door on the bizarre fantasy and refocus on the conversation. “I want the world to think we’re dating.”
She dabs her mouth with a napkin. “Me and you… dating?” Her face takes on a delicious pink glow. “That’s the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard.”
I rub my temples. As is now becoming a tradition, talking to her is giving me a headache. “For a change, I agree with you. Us dating is ridiculous, but nevertheless, that is what we will be pretending to do.”
She leaps to her feet. “Like hell we will.”
Unsure of what the gentlemanly action would be, I stand up too. “I’ll pay you a lot more than what you would’ve made at the job you didn’t get.”
She backs away from the table. “You want to pay me to date you?”
I open my mouth to tell her how stupid that question is, but then I close it to avoid further escalation. The last thing I want is for her to run out of the restaurant. “Not date me. Pretend to date me. The difference is huge.”
Her nostrils flare. “The difference is one between a prostitute and an escort.”
“It’s more like acting,” I say. “There won’t be any physical component to our pretense.”
The waitress—what was her name?—comes out of the kitchen and doesn’t blink an eye as she places small plates of the chef’s signature black cod on the table before sprinting away.
“Will you sit?” I say, doing my best to keep my voice even. “This dish is worth it.”
“No.” She punctuates her point by stomping her distractingly perfect foot, like a fucking toddler.
I can feel my headache pulsing through a vein in my forehead. “We both know you need tuition money.”
Great. She looks like she might turn into a fire-breathing dragon. “How do you know that?”
“The alleged invasion of your privacy that you berated me about. Did you already forget?”
She lifts her chin. “I’ll make the money another way.”
“Oh?” I told myself I wasn’t going to play dirty, but that’s out the window now. “Do you think you’ll get a job now?”
She pales. “What do you mean? I will get a job, if not with your company, then elsewhere.”
I shrug. “What if word gets out about how inappropriately you behave in public places… such as elevators?”
She staggers back, green eyes wide. “You wouldn’t.” She presses a tiny fist to her mouth. “What am I saying? Of course you would.”
I obviously wouldn’t, but she doesn’t need to know that.
“Will you sit so we can discuss this like civilized people?”
Looking defeated, she plants her backside on her chair, and I mirror her action.
“How much money are we talking about?” she asks warily.
I add a zero to the number I originally had in mind and tell her.
Her eyes widen again. She knows that’s enough to cover four years at any university—including tuition and all other expenses, with quite a bit left over.
To my surprise, she recovers quickly. “Double that, and I’ll think about it.”
“Done.” If only to reward her impressive negotiating skills. Her poker face is better than most I’ve seen in the boardroom.
“Elaborate on the lack of a physical component,” she says, and the poker face cracks a tiny bit—probably because she finds the idea of doing anything with me disgusting.
Trying not to dwell on that, I ask, “What would be the bare minimum required to sell this illusion?”
Her forehead creases. “That would depend on how much time we spend in public.”
“I’d say expect the maximum time we can spend together without murdering one another.”
“Ten minutes,” she says with a snort, then stabs her fork into her cod and sticks it in her mouth.
I follow her example.
Delicious. This dish alone makes this restaurant worth the extravagant price I paid for it.
Realizing I’ve closed my eyes in pleasure, I open them to see a blissed-out expression on Juno’s face too.
Is that what she looks like post-orgasm?
Fucking biology. Why should I care about her O-face, sexy though it might be?
She swallows reverently. “I’m tempted to change our deal. On top of the money, I want this dish for every single meal until I get sick of it, assuming that’s even possible.”
I chuckle despite myself. “It’s been five years for me, and I’m not sick of it yet.”
Smiling, she finishes her piece, and I make the mistake of watching her.
Fuck. I like both her smile and that second O-face—or whatever you call it.
I know she was joking about that adjustment to our deal, but I’d throw that in—provided I could watch her eat.
No. She’s skittish even with a purely platonic arrangement. Something like “I want to watch you eat” would be as odd as me demanding that “I shall massage your feet anytime I want”—another stipulation that may have crossed my mind.
She downs what remains of her wine. “Okay. With minimal public appearances and PDA, I think I could be your stupid girlfriend… for three times the number you named earlier.”
“You have yourself a deal.” I take out a folded bundle of papers from my suit jacket’s inner pocket. “This is the contract and the NDA. Have your lawyer review it and get back to me.”
“Right, my lawyer.” She snatches the papers so fast she nearly gives us both papercuts. “Her Honorable Imaginariness will jump right on it.”
“You want a down payment so you can hire someone?”
She blinks, then nods. “That would be great. Also… I just thought of a new condition.”
The waitress comes back with the geoduck clam dish, and I wait for her to leave before I ask, “What’s the condition?”
Juno eyes the new dish skeptically, then locks eyes with me. “You can never—ever—mention what happened in that elevator again. That’s my version of an NDA.”
I resist the urge to grin. “If that’s your wish.”
She narrows her eyes. “I mean it. The deal is off if you so much as mention elevators. Or bottles.”
The fight against the grin is impossibly difficult now. “What about cats?”
She rolls her eyes. “You can talk about cats.”
“How about Roman numerals?”
“No,” she says sternly. “Roman numerals are where I draw the line.”