Six

Dahlia

 

At seven forty-five, I got out of the cab outside Figaro’s after paying and tipping the driver. My black and white lace dress had ridden up my thighs as I’d exited the car, so I pulled it down before approaching the doors to the restaurant.

I’d spent way too long getting dressed for this damn dinner. It wasn’t a date, but business-smart wasn’t classy enough for Figaro’s. I could count on one hand the amount of times I’d eaten here, and there was no chance in hell this was where two people went for a business dinner.

Then again, I’d never said it wasn’t a date, so Damien was perfectly within his rights to assume it was, even though I could almost guarantee that wasn’t it at all. He probably just wanted me to think he thought it was a date, so I had to tread carefully. Unless the subject came up specifically, I had to play the line between professional and personal.

Thankfully, it was an invisible, metaphorical line. If it were real, I’d be screwed in my four-inch heels.

The line meant I had two rules for tonight: think before I speak, and no more freaking blushing.

The young guy at the door smiled at me and opened the glass-front door for me. “Ma’am.” He dipped his head.

“Thank you.” I shot him my best smile and stepped inside. The light was low, and I was only able to see thanks to the dim lights that hung over each table. “I’m here for Damien Fox,” I said to the hostess.

She smiled and ran her finger down the list in front of her. “Follow me, Ms. Lloyd.” She stepped out from behind the platform and guided me through the dimly-lit restaurant to the very back. The high-backed, black leather booths provided privacy from the other patrons, and I wasn’t at all surprised that this was the table he’d booked.

I also knew that these particular tables booked out months in advance, so he’d pulled some serious strings for this.

A smile crossed his lips as he caught sight of me. He slid out of the booth, and I took the moment to admire the way his black shirt hugged his body. It fit him perfectly, like a second skin, and just gave the hint of solid muscles on his upper arms.

What? I was human. He might have been an arrogant ass, but he was a hot arrogant ass.

“Ms. Lloyd,” he said in a low voice, taking my hand.

My skin tingled as he brushed his lips over my knuckles. “Mr. Fox. I see you’re pulling out all the stops.”

He ran his dark gaze over my body. “Speak for yourself, sweetheart.”

I raised an eyebrow. I wanted to say, “What? This old thing?” but then he’d assume I’d bought it for him, and I’d owned it for nine months. I just hadn’t worn it yet. “That sounded like a compliment.”

“I am capable of such things.” He kept hold of my hand until I was sitting down. Taking his own seat, he said, “Red or white?”

“Rosé.”

He ran his tongue over his lower lip, hiding a smile, and turned to the hostess. “A bottle of your finest rosé for the lady.”

With a nod, she disappeared.

Damien pulled his attention back to me. “I’m starting to think you do that to be awkward.”

I had to fight my own smile. “Partially,” I admitted. “But I do prefer rosé to the others.”

“You don’t drink red or white?”

“I’ll drink Chardonnay if I can’t get a rosé, but why would I choose to not drink my favorite wine in a place I know they serve it?”

“Especially when I’m the one asking you.”

“Exactly.”

His eyes shone with amusement. “You look beautiful.”

He was taking the charm offensive route, obviously.

“Thank you. You don’t look so bad yourself,” I replied, crossing my legs under the table.

It was at that moment that a waitress returned with a bottle of wine. We went through the whole pour, sniff, sip, approve, pour some more routine before she set the bottle down and left us to look at the menu.

“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Damien said when we were alone. “Have you been drinking already?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t tempted.” He didn’t need to know about the vodka shot for some good old Dutch courage. That little moment was between me and Mr. Grey Goose.

He offered me a menu and, wordlessly, I took it. The leather-bound book was soft beneath my fingers as I opened it to the appetizers page. Minutes of silence passed while we both looked through the dishes on offer, but I wasn’t really focused.

What was the purpose of this dinner?

What was his aim?

What was his game?

Surely, he had to know that on some level, there was no chance I’d sell to him. Was he really attempting the seduction technique to see if he could win that way? Would he give up when he didn’t?

Why didn’t I have any of these answers still? And why wasn’t I bold enough to just ask all of them to his face?

I knew the answer to that last question; he’d have all the answers, but none of them would be genuine or true. They’d all be lies, fabricated to further whatever his agenda was.

I glanced at him over the top of my menu. He was focused on his own, his eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks with his downward gaze.

He was smooth. Too smooth. Too handsome. Too sleek and perfect and untouchable.

And secretive.

Why didn’t anybody know anything about him? Here I was, having dinner with him, and all I really knew about him was that he was relentless in his pursuit of the things he wanted, he owned a ton of business, and his dad potentially had contacts within the mafia.

It wasn’t exactly a stunning character reference.

The waitress came back, breaking my inner monologue. It took me a few minutes to order given that I hadn’t been paying attention to the menu. I ignored Damien’s smirk as I placed my order and shut the menu for the waitress.

“I thought you’d at least order quickly since you kept me waiting.” He lifted his glass of whiskey to his curved lips.

“Oh, please. Fifteen minutes isn’t late. That’s a minor delay.”

“Was it accidental?”

“Define ‘accidental.’” I grinned, unable to fight my amusement. It wasn’t an accident. I knew it, he knew it. Hell, the freaking hostess who’d brought me to the table probably knew it, too.

“I’ll take that as a no,” he muttered into his glass.

One more thing to add to the list of things I knew about Damien Fox: he didn’t like to be kept waiting.

Surprise, surprise.

I sipped my wine and twirled the stem between my fingers before saying, “Shall we get to the point of this dinner?”

Damien raised an eyebrow. “We will as soon as our food is brought out. Eating is the point of dinner.”

Great. He was a smartass. Like me.

“I mean the reason for us coming here in the first place.” It took everything I had not to roll my eyes. Did we have to be so literal, smartass or no? “There was a reason you asked me to dinner, and I want to know what it was.”

“Do you often ask men who take you on dates for that reason?”

“This isn’t a date.”

“How do you know that?” He leaned forward with his forearm on the table, an action that made his shirt strain over the shape of his tensed bicep. “Maybe this is a date.”

I twisted my lips to the side. “I’d be more inclined to believe that if you hadn’t told me to come to dinner right after you attempted to buy the bar.”

“Touché.” His sexy, little half-smile made an appearance. “It’s more of a business dinner, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to know more about you.”

“Know more about me?” The man was still taking me for a fool. “Don’t tell me you offered to buy Scarlet without finding out everything you could about me and the bar’s history.”

If he was sheepish or embarrassed I had him pegged, he didn’t show it. I wasn’t sure he was capable of such humble emotions, to be honest.

Instead, he laughed. Low and strangely seductive, it filled the small space between us, eliciting goose bumps along my bare skin.

It was one more unfair weapon in his charismatic arsenal.

“You’re twenty-five-years-old and your birthday is June seventeenth. You graduated both high school and the University of Las Vegas a year early, opening you up to study for your Masters from home while working for your father. You were born here in Vegas and have lived in the same house your entire life. You have one parking ticket from nine years ago and are the sole owner of The Scarlet Letter.” He picked up his glass and sipped, smugness radiating off him.

“That’s pretty creepy.” The words left my mouth before I could stop them. “You know it’s not normal to know so much about someone you’ve only just met?”

“Not if you want to buy what they’ve got.”

“Knowing about a parking ticket I got when I was sixteen is slightly excessive. So is knowing that much about my education.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “To be fair, I didn’t know you’d done your Masters until you mentioned it. I was interested. Looking you up on the university website wasn’t hard.”

That was slightly annoying.

All right, that was a lie. It was really freaking annoying.

“What does my parking ticket have to do with anything?” It was the lone blot on my record, a total mistake, and I hated it when it was brought up. I’d paid the damn thing within twelve hours, for goodness sake.

“Nothing. It came up when I checked your criminal record.”

“I don’t have a criminal record.”

“The parking ticket says otherwise.”

I went to respond, then stopped. He was grinning—he was freaking well goading me into annoyance. “You’re the most annoying person I’ve ever had dinner with, and I’ve spent the past three months living in a house with four kids under the age of eight.”

“Why, thank you.” He grinned even as he took another sip of his drink. When I didn’t back down from his amused stare, he sobered, a heavier look flashing in his eyes. “Listen to me, Dahlia.”

Dear God, even the way he said my name was hot. Deeper and lower with a weirdly sexual inflection at the end.

Aside from his obvious personality flaws, was there anything wrong with this man?

“Yes, the point of this dinner was originally to discuss The Scarlet Letter.” Damien twirled the glass between his fingers. “I’m not going to change that, but it’s not a lie when I tell you I want to know more about you. Like I’ve said a hundred times, you fascinate me.”

“You know what else fascinates people? Serial killers.” I paused. “Satanism. Scientology. Not all fascinating things are good.”

“Did you mean to go for a bunch of ‘s’ words there?”

“No, but it flowed.” I shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know what else you possibly need to know about me when I know nothing at all about you.”

So, that was a lie, but whatever. I was having dinner with Damien Fox—I either wanted a job or to get lucky, in the eyes of everyone else.

His dark eyes twinkled, and he leaned forward fully, shifting so both his arms were resting on the table. “My name is Damien Fox, I turned thirty in January, and I’m the CEO of Fox Enterprises. I co-own the company with my father who is almost retired, and while we primarily run strip clubs, we also own a restaurant in Vegas, one in Reno, and a cocktail bar on Lake Tahoe that’s part of the Fox Casino there.”

“If I did publicity, I’d be signing you right now.”

“That wasn’t what you hoped for, huh?”

I rested my chin on my hand and raised my eyebrows. “You’re not the only person who can use Google.” Even if Reno and Lake Tahoe were news to me. “Not to mention you sound like you’re introducing yourself at a group therapy meeting.”

He laughed again. “All right…I hate Jennifer Aniston, libraries, and Marvel.”

I blinked at him. “I think we might be done here.”

More laughter.

“What would possess you to buy a bar based on a book if you hate libraries?”

“I didn’t say I hate books,” Damien spoke slowly. “I said I hate libraries.”

“They’re one and the same.”

“A book, a library.” He motioned the book on his left hand and the library on his right. “Technically, different. One is a single book and the other is a lot of books.”

I stared at him. I didn’t know how I could be in the presence of someone who hated what was essentially, Rachel Green, escapism, and Thor.

That was it. I’d just found the biggest personality flaw of all.

“You do know that The Scarlet Letter has an almost-secret library-type function, don’t you?” I blinked a few times.

He went to respond, but at that moment, our appetizers were brought out.

“A what?” he said when the server had disappeared.

I raised an eyebrow. So, he didn’t know everything about the bar. Then again, I wasn’t exaggerating when I said it was almost-secret. “You didn’t find out everything in your little cyber-stalking mission then, huh?”

“I’m not dignifying that with a response.”

I grinned as I stabbed a shrimp with my fork. “A lot of the books on the walls are real books. It doesn’t operate like a library, per se, but similar. We have the check-out sheets at the front of the book, and the idea is that you write your name with the start and finish date.”

He chewed slowly, studying me closely.

I ate my shrimp and continued. “The only rule is that you don’t read a book someone else is reading unless it’s been over four months since the start date and they haven’t noted that it’s finished. People come in, get their drinks, collect their book, and sit down.”

“Social,” Damien replied dryly. “Isn’t that the opposite of what bars are about?”

Scratching my chin, I fought a smile. I ate a little before I replied. I needed to answer that carefully—because yes, it was, but we’d cultivated it so carefully, it wasn’t what my bar was about.

“Social situations are stressful for introverts,” I said carefully. “They don’t like people and struggle to deal with the chaos Las Vegas brings—especially students. Before we started the library-style system, we did market research on the customers. Most of the introverts came to the bar because it was quiet and they liked the library theme because they were bookish kinds of people.”

“It’s still the opposite of what a bar is generally about.”

“Which is why it’s so successful.” I gave him a tiny half-smile. “It gives the unsocial a place to be social. It gives introverts a place to feel like they still fit in with the club scene. And, it’s the perfect place to meet people who are the same as you.”

He raised his eyebrows in what was quickly becoming his signature look of disbelief. “What do you run there? Book Nerds Anonymous? Dating for Book Lovers?”

“No, but we do have a weekly book club who rent a back room on Monday evenings. Actually, they don’t rent anything. They typically drink so many cocktails that it doesn’t matter and they end up forgetting about what book they’re reading.” I paused. “Book Nerds Anonymous is a good group name. They were looking for one of those. Thanks.” I flashed him a quick smile.

He tried not to, but he succumbed to temptation and smiled back. “You’re welcome, sweetheart. Tell me more about these people who fall in love over books and booze.”

“I should start a dating website type thing and use that as the tagline.”

“Joint venture.” He put his cutlery down. “We could go into business together.”

“No offense, but I’m only here for my own curiosity. I can’t imagine you running a dating service. Not to mention it wouldn’t be good for business if I ended up murdering you.”

“I’m the perfect gentleman.”

It was my turn to quirk an eyebrow.

Damien held up his hands. “Have I tried to come onto you?”

I stared at him. Just stared. Now that was a statement not worth dignifying with a response.

“Never mind,” he muttered.

I rolled my eyes. “Back to the bar.”

“Yes. Let’s go back to that. Good idea.”

Was he…embarrassed?

He couldn’t be. There was no way in hell he was even capable of feeling such an emotion, let alone showing it. But, he sure as hell wasn’t comfortable.

I’d take discomfort, if only for my own amusement.

“Scarlet gives introverts a place to find like-minded people. I’ve seen people set dinner dates because of the book the other person is reading.” I drew a circle on the table with my fingertip. “People are around others who understand them, and that’s hard to find when you’re an introvert. Besides, there’s nothing better than making a date because of a book.”

“Why?”

“Because books are easy to talk about.”

“So are movies, and since they make movies about books…”

I shook my head. “They attempt to adapt books into movies, but anyone with half a brain cell knows the books are always better.”

“I think you just called me stupid. Again.”

I froze.

He grinned, his eyes twinkling with silent laughter. “Do you always get this passionate about books?”

Yes. “Not always. I just really like books.”

“Interesting.”

Was it?