Stepping inside Funda, the upscale restaurant tucked inside the hotel, is like walking into a different planet. The hotel is loud and glittery, everything buzzing and pulsing with energy as casinos typically do. But inside the restaurant, nestled into a back corner, it’s the exact opposite.
I smooth my hands down my dress, a sheer, nude sheath dress with a turquoise embellished overlay. It has beautiful ribbons that wrap around my waist, making me look curvier than I really am. A dapper-looking man in a suit smiles as I walk into the restaurant and I nod politely, but don’t make eye contact. I’m nervous enough as it is—too nervous to risk opening my mouth. Besides, I’m here to see one man. The man that left the suite nearly five hours ago.
I didn’t hear from him all day. I headed to the pool after talking to Presley and read a little on a chair until my skin started feeling like it was going to melt off in the Nevada sun. There’s a little ice cream shop on the way to the room that I stopped in for lunch and then napped a little in the room. I was surprised that it had been two more hours and still there wasn’t a missed call or text. After showering and trying to read again, the text came to meet him at Funda.
People sit on oversized, backless sofas in the entryway as I make my way to the hostess desk. Once I identify myself as a guest of Fenton, I’m whisked through and pass other impeccably dressed diners through an archway to a more private dining room. There are five or six tables, but I don’t check them out. I’m focused on the man sitting at the table in the far corner.
Fenton’s running his finger around the brim of a tumbler, looking off into the distance. His forehead is marred, his mouth forming a thin line. The waiter clears his throat as we approach and Fenton jostles back to the present. Once again, his gaze roams slowly over my body. When it lands on my face, the stress melts from his.
He stands and whips around the table, pulling out my seat. “You look gorgeous, Brynne.”
“Thank you,” I tell him, sitting. “You look more stressed than I’d like to see you.”
He moves back around the table and takes his seat once again. He pours me a glass of wine. “I apologize for being gone so long today. Things took longer than I expected.”
“It’s fine. Like you said, you came here to work, after all.”
“True. But that doesn’t mean I’m happy about being gone all afternoon.” A stormy look passes over his features and I wonder what happened today, but I don’t ask. It’s not my place. So I go for the more general inquiry.
“How was your meeting?” I ask.
“Good. Tense. Frustrating.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. Some people are just really hard to deal with. I wonder sometimes if they get off on just being complete jackasses.”
I laugh, having had those same thoughts before myself. “I think they do. You can completely bend over backwards for some people and it’s just not enough. They’ll press you for more and more. Or they’ll turn you around and bend you over again and stick it to you from behind.”
A waiter slips in and places a covered dish in front of each of us and is gone within seconds.
“I ordered for you. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” I say, lifting the lid. “This looks great.”
“I hope so. I didn’t want to spend any more time here than we need to.”
“Good idea.”
His eyes sparkle with promise, making my mouth water. He’s so different than any guy I’ve been with before in every way. He puts them all to shame.
We begin to eat, a comfortable silence descending on the table. Every move he makes is done in a way I’m realizing is the way he does everything—exquisitely. Each motion is purposeful, every movement executed in a precise way. He may be incredibly good-looking, but that aside, just being around him is intoxicating. I catch myself wanting to know more about him, what makes him tick.
This is a rebound, not a date.
“What did you do today?” he asks, taking a bite of his food.
“I called Presley and took a nap. I laid out for awhile today at the pool.”
His jaw drops an inch. “You were in a bikini without me?”
My insides do a flipflop, tumbling head over heels. The idea of him being annoyed by that little fact never occurred to me, but the stormy look on his face makes me deliriously happy.
“What else am I supposed to lay out in?” I taunt, watching the storm darken.
“Without me? A trash bag.”
“Fenton!”
He shakes his head and suppresses a growl. It’s the sexiest sound I’ve ever heard. Ever. “Look, Brynne, I know I told you to do whatever you wanted while I was gone. And I want you to enjoy yourself—I do. But I need you to do those things clothed.”
“So the fact that a guy bought me a drink is probably a no too?”
His jaw drops wide open, but I start giggling before he can comment. “Fenton, I was kidding. About the drink anyway. I was in a bikini, a very little red one that Edie said you’d love . . .”
“I’d love. Me. That’s the part you seem to have missed.” Everything about the way he looks at me tells me he’s serious. But the tug at the corner of his mouth makes it feel playful and I run with that.
I shrug casually. “It’s a good thing I’m not sure if there were guys at the pool today or not, since I spent the whole time imagining what you would look like shirtless.”
A faint rumble drifts to my ears and the smirk that melts me trickles over his lips. “Good girl.” He composes himself before continuing. “You do look like you caught some sun. You’re golden.”
“I didn’t stay long,” I report. “The sun is so hot. And there were so many people.”
“You aren’t a fan of large crowds?”
“Not really. I’d prefer watching a movie at home over going to the theater any day.”
“And I bring you to Las Vegas.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “But for the record, I’m the same way. I always feel like I’m strange because I don’t like going out in public. But maybe I’m more normal than I thought . . . or you’re just weird too.”
The waiter comes by and checks on our table. Fenton has a quick conversation with the man and I wonder if they know each other. They have a much more natural rapport than anyone I’ve seen him with yet. I don’t have time to think about it much because before I know it, he’s gone.
Fenton takes a sip of his wine, watching me over the brim. He places it back on the table and relaxes back in his chair. “So what do you normally do when you date?”
“I don’t know. Dinner. A movie, if the guy is uncreative,” I confess. “I’d rather go to the beach with a picnic or to a play or ballet though, really.”
“I haven’t been to something like that in years.”
“I make sure I see The Nutcracker every December. There’s nothing like it. And if I can sneak another one in, I try to.”
He drops his napkin on the table, his eyes wistful. “My mother loved ballets and plays and operas. We would see something on Broadway every year for her birthday.”
“She sounds fantastic,” I whisper.
“She was.” He nods his head solemnly. “My father was a successful businessman. When they married, I think he expected her to stay home and just enjoy being taken care of. But not my mother,” he laughs. “She started her own endeavors, built her own empire in a way. But where my father’s was purely aimed at making coin, my mother’s was aimed to make a difference in the world. She was fearless.”
I watch him gaze across the room, deal with the memories he’s feeling. A small grin touches his lips before he looks at me again.
“So who are you more like? Your father or your mother?” I ask.
“I’m a mix, I think. Somewhere in the middle,” he shrugs. “I’m like my dad in that work comes first. It came before anything besides my mother, and I think she was an anomaly. If he hadn’t found that exact woman, I think he’d have been a bachelor his whole life.”
I nod, letting that sink in.
“But I’m like her, too. She had a hard time connecting to people on a personal level. She could do these big things and her heart was always in the right place, but she never had close friends or acquaintances. Just my father and I for the most part.”
“You don’t have friends?” I find that hard to believe. The pull to him is a force to be reckoned with.
“Not really. I just don’t connect well to most people. I grew up with a bunch of clowns with inheritances, but like you, my parents made me work. I helped them, had chores, didn’t get spoiled to the level of the kids I went to school with. My mother came from a poor background and she didn’t believe in making me ‘rotten,’ as she’d say,” he grins. “Why? You seem surprised.”
“I am. It’s just not what I was expecting you to say. That’s all.”
He shrugs again. “What about you? Are you like your parents?”
“Nope. Not at all. They’re both detailed and organized and I’m more of . . . a mess.”
He laughs at the look on my face. “I hardly would call you a mess.”
“You haven’t seen my house.”
“True,” he grins. “You live with Presley, right?”
“I do. We’ve lived together for a couple of years now. I think she’s the only person I could ever live with.”
“You’ve never lived with anyone else?”
I shake my head. “Nope. Besides my parents, of course. I haven’t trusted anyone else enough to live with them. What if they don’t pay the bills or steal from me or something?”
He seems baffled, his forehead crinkling at my statement. “You’ve never lived with a boyfriend?”
“No.” I look at the table and take a deep breath. “I’ve had various boyfriends, of course, but only one I dated for an extended period of time. He was never . . . responsible enough . . . for us to co-mingle our things, our lives. So I’ve always lived at home or by myself . . . or with Presley now.”
“Sounds like a smart thing. But you know,” he chides, “men are generally irresponsible. You may have to make concessions as you go through life on that.”
Laughing, I place my fork on the table. “True. But I can take your typical irresponsibility—leaving the toilet seat up and shoes all over the place. But when I have to pay a guy’s bills because they can’t manage their money, that’s a different thing, you know?”
“It absolutely should be. If you’re paying for his things when you’re dating, there’s no hope of him ever stepping up in the future. A man should want to spoil their woman, give her things, make her life easier. Not the other way around. That’s a sign of a lack of character that you’ll never get around.”
I snort. “No joke. That’s obvious now.”
“You are better off without him. Trust me.”
“Probably so.”
Watching the candle flicker on the table, I wonder where Grant is and what he’s doing. For the first time since we broke up, my immediate reaction isn’t to hate him or to think back to what we used to have before Africa. I just feel ambivalent. I don’t know if it’s because I’m here with Fenton or because of this reset button I’m pushing, but the unfeeling about Grant is like a gush of fresh air.
“Did you love him?”
I’m startled by Fenton’s question. He asks it cautiously, leaning back in his chair again. I wonder if it’s intentional, to put some actual space between us, or just a coincidence.
“Yes,” I say honestly. “I did. He was the first guy I ever thought I loved. We were together for a long time and I thought we’d be married.”
“How long have you been apart?”
“Almost a year now.”
Fenton leans forward, looking me straight in the eye. “Do you still love him?”
“I don’t know.” He doesn’t respond, just sits there and waits for me to expound. “I did love him. And I definitely don’t feel like that now.” I think to the cloud hanging over him being involved with Brady’s disappearance, and I know I could never love him like that again. “But maybe once you love someone, you always do in a way. I don’t know. But would I go back to him? Would I want to be with him again? No. There’s just too much that’s happened.”
“Like what?”
“He had issues with money. He’d tell lots of little white lies and that drove me crazy. It got to the point where I second guessed everything he said, no matter how stupid. He cheated on me,” I say, rushing over the topic. “My brother is messed up in some things and Grant might be involved somehow. I don’t know.”
“And you thought you’d marry this guy?” he snorts. “Come on, Brynne. You seem smarter than that.”
I shrug, feeling put on the spot. “Love blurs things. I’m sure you know that.”
He laughs, patting his lips with his linen napkin. “So I’ve heard.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve never been in love.”
“Come on, Fenton,” I roll my eyes, tossing his words back at him. “I’m smarter than that.”
He runs his bottom lip between his teeth, his smile hidden in his eyes. He’s amused at my retort, but I’m not sure it’s going to make him tell me anything.
“I’m not sure I believe in love at all,” he says finally.
“What? How can you not believe in love? It’s as real as the air we breathe or the water we drink!”
“No, those things are quantifiable. Love is . . .” he sighs. “If love is real, it’s simply a comfort level in a relationship built on a network of dually respected qualities and preferences. It’s two people that both acknowledge they like most of the same things and enjoy being with the other person and, eventually, they agree to just do those things together. They have a different capacity for feelings for that person over most others. Maybe that’s what everyone calls love.”
“No,” I protest. “It’s more than that. It’s chemistry. Someone making you want to be a better person. A willingness to put someone else before you. A feeling of not being able to breathe without the other person at your side. A feeling of . . . completion.”
He presses his lips together in amusement. “And this ex-boyfriend of yours did those things for you? How is that? How did his lies make you feel complete? How did his needing to borrow money from you make you feel like he put you above himself?”
“What?” I hiss. I’m appalled and affronted and embarrassed in the same moment. How does this man think he knows who I love or how I love? I’m not going to defend the way I love to anyone.
“If love exists,” he quips, his voice gruff, “Then it should be something that’s given out after thoughtful consideration.”
“Love exists,” I insist, “And it’s given out because you can’t not.”
“Let me tell you something,” he says, narrowing his eyes, “I’ve had women say they love me before. And those same women confessed their undying devotion to me based on a façade I present them. They know what it feels like to have an orgasm at my hands. They know what it’s like to go to a fancy dinner on my arm or spend a weekend in a city while I work. But those women, those same women that ‘love’ me, know nothing about me. And do they care?” he shrugs, amped up by his little speech. “No. They don’t. Because while they profess their love for me, they’re really in love with what I offer them and that has nothing to do with me.”
Narrowing my eyes, I smirk. “I guess it’s good for you that I’m not looking for love. Just a good time.”
“No, that’s good for you because a great time is all I’m giving you.”
We’re both breathing hard, impassioned by our debate. When the waiter clears his throat, we both jump.
“Can I get you anything else?” he asks, looking from Fenton, to me, back to Fenton.
“No, I think we’re done here.” Fenton looks at me with raised eyebrows and I nod. I’m too worked up to eat. The last couple of days have had me on edge, and this little exchange has me riled up yet again.
The only thing I need is a break from the anxiety, a way to settle down. And the key to that sits with the gorgeous, frustrating man staring at me from across the table.
The server scurries away.
“Are you ready?” he asks, scooting his seat back and coming around the table. He takes my hand and brings me to my feet. The corners of his lips turn and there’s no denying that question is filled with innuendo.
“Maybe.”
He chuckles, pressing a palm in the small of my back, urging me towards the entrance. “You better be,” he rasps. “You better be ready for what I’m going to do to you. And if you aren’t, you shouldn’t have worn this dress.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, smiling politely at a man holding a door open for us. When we walk through, I lower my voice so only he can hear. “I won’t fall in love with you.”