br />
“You were very, uh, gentlemanly about that.”
“You were very intoxicated.” He turned away to set the paintbrush down on the tray at the base of his easel.
“Yeah.”
She stared at her toes until they uncurled. This was her cue to ask what he’d done with her clothes. She would have, only City asked, “How are you feeling?” and so she had to keep talking to him. She tried to mind it but failed. The man was proving to be an enjoyable conversationalist, and he was remarkably easy on the eyes.
“I’m fine, thanks. I have a little headache, but the shower helped. And the toothbrush.”
“Glad to hear it. Would you like breakfast? I fried up some bacon.”
The mention of bacon made her stomach rumble.
“That sounds like a yes.”
“I do have a weakness for the bacon-sandwich hangover cure,” she admitted. “But it seems a little lowbrow for you, City. I can’t imagine you drunk, much less hungover.”
He took a few steps closer and studied her, an unabashed appraisal that should have been rude or even scary but instead sent syrupy heat creeping through her abdomen. “Considering you don’t know my name, you seem to have a lot of ideas about me.”
Oh, she had ideas. She had a whole slew of new ideas about him, and she needed to find an exit strategy quick, because none of them was on the list of things she was supposed to be thinking about. Banker, she reminded herself. He’s a banker, a very boring banker. Enough already. Just, whatever you do, don’t flirt with him.
“I don’t need to know your name. I’ve seen you around, and I know your type.”
Aaaand she was flirting with him.
It won her a smirk. “What’s my type, then?”
“For starters, you come from money. You went to expensive boarding schools, graduated from either Oxford or Cambridge, and now you work at a bank in the City—thus the name.”
He frowned and wiped his hand over his mouth. What a mouth.
“Just let me know when I get something wrong,” she offered.
“By all means, carry on. You’re doing a brilliant job so far.”
“Which was it, Oxford or Cambridge?”
“Cambridge. Trinity College.”
She resisted the urge to gloat. Gloating was well outside the range of acceptable responses to City on this particular morning.
So is flirting with him.
Right. But it was so much fun. She hadn’t flirted in ages.
“Let’s see,” she said. “I know you like to jog. Judging by those shoulders and arms, I’d say you also row, yeah?”
“Some. I play rugby, too.” He gave her half a smile, and she made an effort to suppress the image of City in a rugby jersey with pink cheeks and dirty knees, tussling over a ball. A human orgasm.
Her good sense was now officially yelling Mayday!
She was now officially ignoring it.
“What do I do for fun, then?” He stepped even closer. This flirtation had turned into a two-way party. She needed to find a method of steering the conversation back toward bacon sandwiches and, say, the location of her skirt, because it probably wasn’t good that she could smell him now, and on this man linseed oil was an aphrodisiac.
“Well, you go to the symphony, spend weekends in the countryside, and date women who wear twinsets and have names like—”