Six
One Eighty was named for its half-circle shape. The restaurant hovered over Dallas, on the eighty-eighth floor of one of the city’s most shimmering skyscrapers.
Outside the smudgeless windows, deep blue skies were losing their light and the moon was making its nightly appearance.
Pen had stopped working at five, unusual for her, but then so were billionaire dinner dates that were personal rather than solely business.
“How are your prawns?” Zach, fork and knife in hand, leaned over his steak dinner to ask.
“Delightful. How is your strip?”
“Fantastic.”
They shared a grin over the low candlelight, and a ping of awareness that started in Pen’s stomach radiated out until it created a bubble around her and Zach.
Along with that ping of awareness came a lower, subtler thrum of warning.
She liked him. A lot.
Their chemistry was off the charts in bed, but also out of it.
She could’ve easily dismissed him as a playboy—a charmer who knew what to say to get a woman out of her clothes. Admittedly, Zach had done just that. But along with getting her out of her clothes, he’d also made a point to keep her in his life.
After what went down with her ex-boyfriend, Cliff, in Chicago—where she’d quite literally been bamboozled by a smooth-talking charmer—she should be wary of Zach.
But she wasn’t wary.
Maybe it was because she’d gotten to know his brother, the mayor, and Stefanie, his sister. Maybe it was because of the way Zach had asked her to dinner when he full well could have invited her to his place.
She’d have said yes either way.
Did he know that?
She sliced into her shrimp dinner—buttery, garlicky, lemony heaven. “I contacted Yvonne today and let her know you were willing to talk about—”
“Penelope.”
Fork hovering over her plate, she hazarded a glance at her date. Zach didn’t look perturbed as much as patient.
“Sorry,” she said. “I want to get this over with.”
His eyes narrowed, eyelashes a shade darker than his hair obliterating his gorgeous green stare. “With Yvonne, yes. You and I? Not so much.”
When she’d called him a caveman at the mayor’s party, she hadn’t been far off the mark. But she saw no reason to argue the point. The fact was she would wrap up the issue with Zach’s ex-wife and then they’d have no reason to see each other. She’d make her services available for Chase or for their party-loving sister, but Pen and Zach had an expiration date.
So why are you here?
Excellent question.
“Did you pack a bag like I asked?” Zach lifted his wineglass, which was as foreign as the black shirt and black suit combo. She’d been so sure at that jazz club that she’d run into a blue-collar guy moonlighting in slacks. Now that she’d seen him in tuxes and suits, her brain scrambled to make sense of it.
He’d seemed safer when he was a contractor. Before she learned of his bank account or his heritage.
Nevertheless...
“I packed a change of clothes, yes.” She took a dainty sip from her own wineglass. While she wasn’t sure how to define what she and Zach had or to know how long they had access to it, she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to fill her head and heart full of sexy, vivid memories that would last if not a lifetime, at least a few years.
“Good. I want to show you my place. I think you’ll like it.” He took another bite of his steak, but not before dragging it through his mashed potatoes. A steak and potatoes guy. She shook her head as she tried to merge the two versions of Zach she thought she knew.
“Why did you leave Chicago? You seemed...at home there.”
“I like the city. I liked the work more,” he said. “But my family needed me, so I came home.”
“Do you mean Stefanie?” She could imagine the youngest Ferguson sibling asking for his help.
“No. She leans on Chase.” His smile took on a slightly sad quality. In a firmer voice, he added, “My father’s heart attack required surgery and a long recovery. He was under strict orders not to return as acting CEO of Ferguson Oil.”
“Doctors,” Pen said with a roll of her eyes.
“Worse. My mother.” Half of Zach’s mouth pulled to one side in good humor, his dimple shadowing his stubbled cheek. She liked him a touch unkempt. “Once Dad was benched, that left me to work for the family business. Chase is obviously busy and Stef is obviously uninterested. She’ll grow out of it.”
Pen couldn’t imagine Stef giving up her life as a socialite heiress to go into the oil business, but she kept that thought to herself.
“What about you?” Zach asked, turning the tables on her. She’d seen that possibility coming and had already decided she wouldn’t deflect. She’d been eager to leave her life behind in Chicago, but face it—the internet was alive and well. If Zach typed her name into Google, he’d learn about her association with Cliff.
Still, she inhaled deeply before telling him the sordid, slightly embarrassing tale.
“Ever heard of the phrase ‘the plumber’s pipes are always leaking’?”
“The cobbler’s children have no shoes?”
“Same idea.” She laughed, already feeling better about confessing. She sobered quickly. “I had a PR problem I couldn’t spin.”
Zach’s eyebrows lowered. He didn’t know.
“Cliff Goodman started out as a client. He hired me to repair his business’s reputation when he was accused of dishonest practices.” She’d believed him at the time—the research she’d done on him pointed to his upstanding reputation. “Once the issue was handled, he and I started dating and then—” she lifted her wine and ripped off the Band-Aid “—he became involved in my public relations business.”
Her date’s face darkened. Pen looked away from his intense stare. Diners quietly chatted at their tables, points of candlelight dotting the dimly lit room, mimicking the city lights outside the windows. The blue sky had gone black.
“Long story short, he went from involved to over-involved. I found out he’d been meeting with my clients in my place, cashing their checks and never following through. He left the city with a lot of my money after destroying my hard-won reputation. I didn’t want to leave Chicago, but I didn’t want to stay, either.”
“Why Dallas?”
“A college friend of mine started an organic cosmetic company. She lives here and needed help maintaining her pure reputation in the face of a nasty divorce. So she hired me.”
“And you stayed.”
“I did.”
They shared a silent moment. Pen wondered if he was thinking what she was thinking—that had it not been for her friend Miranda’s phone call, Pen and Zach may never have seen each other again.
“It’s a beautiful city.” Pen swallowed some more wine, smoothly changing the subject.
“You’re beautiful in it.”
See? When he said things like that, she forgot all about her past and her rules and her personal struggles.
She forgot everything—including her promise to herself about not letting a client get too close. Especially a male client.
The waiter approached after they’d finished their plates.
“Madame, sir,” the older man greeted, hands clasped in front of him. “Might I interest you in our fine dessert selections, or perhaps a glass of port wine or coffee?”
“No,” Zach answered for them. “We’ll pay and be on our way. My compliments to the chef.”
“Such a gentleman,” Pen teased.
“I grew up right.” He leaned over the table and then, tossing the idea of his humble upbringing on its ear, took her hand and murmured, “I’m making you my dessert, tonight.”
* * *
“Your post-dessert dessert.” Zach’s hand appeared from behind Pen, a glass of port wine in his grip. “It’s a tawny, which I prefer. That bit of vanilla goes a long way.”
She accepted the miniature wineglass and a kiss to her cheek. Zach rounded the enormous brown leather couch wearing nothing at all, another miniature glass dwarfed in his large hand.
Pen wasn’t wearing anything, either, but had curled up in a blanket she’d found tossed over his ottoman. A blanket she now opened to include Zach. He accepted, cradling one of her breasts and delivering a tender kiss to the side of her mouth.
They’d stepped foot in his expansive apartment and stripped off each other’s clothes in record time. She hadn’t so much as seen the bedroom yet, though she did make a quick stop to the bathroom. Zach’s apartment was a manly array of exposed brick, lights suspended from long, metal rods, his furniture deep browns and grays. The overall vibe was more industrial than rustic, yet had warmth that mirrored the owner himself.
She sipped the super-sweet wine, savoring the vanilla notes that Zach mentioned and quirking her lips at the way her dress had been haphazardly tossed over a chair along with Zach’s discarded suit. Their shoes made a line from the foyer to the living room, the first articles of clothing they’d kicked off.
“You have a really nice apartment.”
“Thanks.”
“No billionaire mansion for you?”
“Nah, that’s Chase’s style.”
“What about Stef? Does she tend toward high-rise apartment or sprawling mansion with horses and twenty-two bathrooms?”
“See, you think you’re being cute, but my parents’ house has twenty-two bathrooms.”
“I know.” She sipped her wine and peered over the tiny rim at Zach. “I looked them up and their house was in Architectural Digest. It’s incredible.”
“It’s ridiculous. But my mother likes to redecorate. With thirty-seven thousand square feet, she’s never at a loss for a room to have painted or altered to her ever-changing preferences.”
Zach leaned back on the sofa, his arm draped around Pen. She snuggled closer and he adjusted the blanket to cover them both.
“Do you get along with them? Or are you the classically overlooked middle child?”
A low laugh that might have been confirmation bobbed his throat. “I get along with them. I joke about my mother’s frivolity, but she’s a great mother. My dad became sick and her world stopped on a dime.”
“How is he now?”
“Good. Misses his bacon and sausage.”
“And strip steaks?” she teased.
“It’s Dallas, sweetheart. Men eat steak.”
“Right. Heaven forbid you do something as effeminate as not eat a cow.” She grinned, liking the way she could volley back at him. He was one of the easiest people she’d ever been around.
He moved in on her again and the kiss lasted a little longer than either of them intended. “Glad you packed a bag, Penelope Brand.”
Her heart kicked into overdrive when Zach set aside his wine and took her wineglass from her hand. His insistent kisses peppered down her throat and collarbone. When he reached her stomach, his hand flattened on the space between her breasts and he pushed her to her back.
Then he lifted one of her legs onto his shoulder and made her dessert.
Again.