Her nose twitched as she helped herself to a plate. “Not me. We had a cook when I was about fifteen who always did curry on a Friday night.” She frowned. “She didn’t stay long.”
Her family had a cook? I hadn’t found out anything really personal about Skylar, but the way she was wired made me want to know more. I would never have guessed she came from money.
“Reminds me of home, too,” I said.
“You eat it a lot in the UK, right?”
“Yeah. It’s man-food,” I said in a growly voice and grinned.
“Interesting. Which is why you and Harvey are here?”
I shrugged. “Absolutely.”
“You feel the need to overcompensate because you’re not secure in your masculinity?” Her face was blank of expression, and for a moment I thought she was serious until she broke out into a grin. “It’s a shame, but I’m happy to vouch for you.”
I chuckled. “So curry night in your family was homemade?” I asked. Did Skylar’s family have serious money?
“Kinda. Did you have takeout?” she asked, not answering my question.
“If we were lucky.” I wasn’t going to be thrown off course. I wanted to know what Skylar would share with me. “Do you have brothers and sisters?” I asked.
Skylar shook her head and glanced down at her plate. “No. My mom . . . It was a lot for my mom, having me.”
“A lot?”
Skylar shrugged. “Yeah, one kid was probably too much.”
I didn’t respond, wanting to hear more. What kid thought they were a lot for their parents? It was kind of heartbreaking hearing her talk like that.
“What about you? Any siblings?” she asked. I wasn’t getting anything from this girl.
“A brother.” I cleared my throat and took a sip of water.
“Is he in the army, too?”
I laughed, glancing at Harvey to see if he’d heard the question. Anyone who’d ever met my luxury-loving brother would be amused at the question. Unsurprisingly, Harvey hadn’t heard. He was lost in an alternate reality with August. Hayden would never have survived in the army. He was far too reliant on his home comforts. “Nope.”
“You don’t like to talk about yourself much, do you?”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black,” I replied. There was a lot about me that Skylar didn’t know, and I’d had plenty of opportunity to tell her. The fact that I was just killing time before I took up a new position. That I’d just sold my business for more money than I could have possibly imagined. That I knew more about Walt Williams than she did.
“Most men like to talk about themselves a lot.” She sighed and bit into her naan as if she hadn’t been fed for a week.
“Is that anything to do with the type of man you date?”
“I don’t date,” she replied. “Not really.”
“Because not enough men fulfil your criteria?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
The less she gave me, the more I wanted to know.
“You must have plenty of men who want to measure up,” I said. Skylar turned heads. Although we had our backs to the rest of the restaurant, I was pretty sure that if I turned around, I’d find most of the men in this place sneaking glances at her.
But she wasn’t the archetypal pretty—a rail-thin model, or the overly botoxed wanna-be actress—who hung around Cannes. She was old-school beautiful. Classic.
“You flirting with me?” she asked, grinning.