“This is nice,” I said. “Fancy for you.”
He sat across from me and shrugged. “I thought it’d be a good excuse to get you to go shopping.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “I would have gone without bribery.”
“Hey, I know how you feel about this all.”
“And yet, you brought me to a swank restaurant.”
“All right, maybe this isn’t a lesson, but you should be comfortable here.”
I shrugged him off and opened the menu. My eyes ballooned at the prices, and I closed it again. “Are you sure you want to eat here? How long did it take you to get a reservation?”
He sent me a cocky look. “I got it yesterday. And yes, I want to eat here. Get the most expensive thing on the menu.”
“Who are you, and what have you done with Penn Kensington? I would have been fine with pizza.”
“Oh, I know,” he said with a scoff. “No one eats as much pizza as you.”
“Hey, don’t diss pizza.”
“As if I could. It’s your favorite.” His glittering blue eyes bore into mine over the menu. A perfect Manhattan playboy smile on his face. “And to answer your question, Penn Kensington realized that he can be both people with you. Weren’t you the one to say that you liked it?”
I flushed all over again at the memory. “I did, didn’t I?”
The waiter came over, and Penn swiftly ordered us an exorbitantly priced bottle of red wine. He got a steak with all the trimmings, and I forced down my apprehension about money and ordered the lobster. The sommelier appeared shortly and poured our wine.
I brought the glass to my lips and took a small sip. My eyes closed briefly at the exquisite taste, and I sighed. “That is…delicious.”
His eyes widened. “Are you trying to convince me to leave early?”
“Oh no, I’m eating that lobster.”
He took a sip of his own and then smiled sadly. “This was my father’s favorite wine. He always had it in the house.”
“You don’t talk about him often.”
“No. Well, not many pleasant memories. It’s kind of amazing that he could even taste it after all the cocaine,” he said nonchalantly. “But he did have excellent taste in alcohol. One of the few good things about him.”
“I’m sorry that you never had a real relationship with him and that he died before you could work it out.”
Penn shrugged it off, setting the glass down. “We wouldn’t have worked it out. And anyway, him dying was the main thing that set me on a better path. In some way, it was a blessing.”
“Still, not great.”
“No,” he said carefully. Then his eyes met mine. “Are you going to tell me why you’ve been jittery and fidgety since I picked you up?”
God, I’d hoped that he wouldn’t ask again. That he’d let it go. “I’m not jittery.”
His foot settled over my own, which had been tapping incessantly and I hadn’t even noticed.
“Talk to me.” A command, not a request. His sexy alpha voice made me want to do exactly what he’d said. But damn, I did not want to ruin dinner.
“You won’t like it.”
“I don’t have to, but if it gets it off your shoulders, that’s all that matters.”
“My agent called today,” I said with another sigh. “She said that Warren called back, and Gillian wants to acquire my next book. They’ve offered to match my last advance.”
Penn’s lips pursed. “That’s…coincidental.”
“Is it?”
“Lewis?”
“Yes. I mean, she didn’t say that. She probably doesn’t know. But I do. I know that I yelled at him in the doorway of my apartment, and now, they’ve made an offer on my book. As if he thinks that he can fix his mistakes and that will fix us.” I paused over the words, anger boiling in my veins. I took a gulp of the expensive wine, hardly tasting it this time. “He wants to control me.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I know,” I said softly. “I told her to turn it down.”
“Oh, Natalie.” His voice was so tender that it cut through me like glass.
“Yeah. I mean, it’s one thing to have my career stolen. It’s another entirely to have to throw it away on your own.”
“This is just with Warren,” he assured me. “You can go with another publisher. Then you won’t be trapped under Lewis.”
I shook my head and glanced away, blinking away the tears that threatened to spill. Talking about it like this was way worse than when I’d told Jane. Penn knew how much this had destroyed me. He knew my hopes and dreams and how they were now crumpled to ash.
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
“That motherfucker,” Penn said under his breath. “I cannot believe he’s doing this to you.”
“Why wouldn’t he when there are no consequences to anything he does?” Fire replaced the despair in an instant. “When he never has to pay for the way he treats people?”