Noemi flashed him a small, watery smile, but it was the kind of smile that had the power to wrench a man’s heart from his chest. Even a man who was generally, as a rule, fairly immune to female attention. He’d experienced enough of it over the course of his life that hook-ups had become little more than something mechanical and flirting actually annoyed the hell out of him.
Noemi wasn’t flirting though. She was just smiling, trying to be friendly.
He sensed her defeat looming and pressed on. “Please. I rear-ended you. You look like you could use a cup of coffee at the very least.”
“I actually have a latte in the car.”
He shook his head. “Don’t drink that. The stuff that place makes is bad.”
One perfectly manicured, dark brow rose a little higher than the other. “Why were you drinking it then?”
“Uh- well- it’s close to my place,” he lied, thinking on the spot. “It might be terrible, but it will do in a pinch.”
“Are you- don’t you have someplace to be? I mean, it’s the middle of the day.”
Shit. He was a terrible PI or whatever he was playing at. He might have found her, but he had zero plans about how he was actually going to get her home. Maybe, if he could convince her that he wasn’t a terrible guy, they could come to some kind of understanding that involved them both getting something that they wanted. Namely, a divorce a few years down the road and a hell of a lot of fake shit before that, but in the end, he’d come up with something that made them both happy.
He just had to a) find out what made her tick and b) exploit the hell out of that. So far, he seemed to be having a good start, even though he was just flying by the seat of his far too tight, far too uncomfortable, ball pinching, cock squishing jeans.
“I- I work from home. I- yeah. I can do it later. Don’t worry. I can spare an hour for something to eat.”
“So, you went down to a coffee shop to get horrible tasting coffee which you don’t like, and you are no longer in a hurry to get back to work which is home?” Noemi’s beautiful black eyes narrowed. They were the kind of raven black, so dark that you couldn’t distinguish between iris and pupil. They were almost otherworldly, and they were like a punch straight to his groin.
“Yup.” He nodded. “That’s pretty much bang on.” He raised his fake cup of coffee into the air in a mock salute. “Living the American Dream right here.” He chuckled, dark and low in his throat, because he also knew women liked that half laugh-half growl. Noemi’s eyes narrowed a little further. “In all honesty, I ran out of coffee at home. The thing about working from home is that you don’t have a regular routine and you sometimes forget to eat and that includes getting groceries, or sometimes you just forget to get groceries so there is nothing to eat. Other times, you do get groceries, but you forget the one thing you went for, which was coffee, so you have to go down to a place you hate and drink their swill until you get your butt motivated to go back to the grocery store to probably forget the coffee all over again.”
That worked. Noemi cracked a smile.
“We might be blocking the street soon.” He wanted to push her over the edge, into agreeing with him. It didn’t matter that what little traffic there was drove around their two cars easily.
“Oh!” Noemi’s eyes widened again. She glanced around rapidly. “I-alright. I give in. I could use something deep fried and greasy and a triple thick milkshake, so I hope they have those.”
“You’re in luck.” God, he hoped they had them too.
He quoted the name of the place, and gave Noemi brief directions, thanking his photographic memory for pulling that shit out of his ass at the last second. He let her drive off first. When he was sure she was a good few blocks ahead, he pulled out. He’d park his car down the street from the diner and walk. He couldn’t chance Noemi realizing that his car, just like hers, was also a rental.
He might be a fast thinker, but he wasn’t that swift. He couldn’t lose whatever shot he had, even if it was a wild shot in the dark that would probably just end up with him getting maced or kicked hard enough in the crotch that his ability to have children would be in serious question.
Oh. Fucking. Well.
He never saw himself as a father anyway.
CHAPTER 4
Noemi
“So…” Noemi folded her hands on the table. The only thing more awkward than just basically causing an accident, even though she was the one who technically got hit by him, was sitting across from a complete stranger after having a breakdown in front of him. It felt weird to make small talk to someone who had literally just seen snot dribbling down her face. “What brings you here?”