He sounded disinterested. She found herself unexpectedly staring at his mouth when he brushed away a dab of mayonnaise. He had sensuous lips. Almost as full as a brother’s.
He turned the question on her. “What made you decide to do the Scarlet Auction? You that hard up for money?”
She was taken aback. Because Jake had shown no interest in learning about the women he had purchased, she had expected the same from Ben.
“Why do you care?” she threw back at him.
He stared at her, his eyes ever appraising. “Just making conversation.”
She was irritated and amused all at once. “Sure, the money’s good. Pretty damn good if you break it down to a per-hour wage.”
“You don’t have a problem prostituting yourself?”
She bristled. Was he trying to make a moral judgment? He was the one shelling out a ridiculous amount of money.
“If men don’t have a problem paying for sex, why should women have a problem selling it?” she returned.
“They shouldn’t. Your body, your choice.”
She was stunned. He made prostitution sound like a progressive value. He wadded up the sandwich wrapper and tossed it into the wastebasket like he was making a jump shot. From the soft flick of his wrist, she could tell he had some shooting skills.
“You play,” she commented.
“Do you?”
“In high school. I wasn’t good enough to play for Tara, however.”
“Very few people are.”
She couldn’t help but like that he knew a little about Stanford women’s basketball and the name of the coach. Most men knew next to nothing about women’s team sports. Having eaten half her sandwich, she wrapped the other half to save for Claire.
“You ever watch the team play?” she asked.
“I took my younger sister to a few games. She thought about playing for VanDerveer.”
“What position?”
“Small forward.”
“That’s the position I played—in high school. Did your sister go to Stanford?”
“UCLA.”
“She must be really good.”
“She is.”
Kimani looked down. This was surreal. She was having a conversation about basketball while half-naked in a remote cabin with a stranger who had paid two hundred thousand dollars for sex without batting an eye.
He paid to own you for a week, she reminded herself, and reasoned that she was getting chummy with him so that she could learn more for her story.
“You look like you could use a nap.”
Her gaze snapped up. Was “nap” a code word for some kind of kinky sex?
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing. I...”