“Men are all a bunch of pigs who cannot think without their dicks for more than five seconds in a row,” she said with so much feisty passion; she was turning me on. “How did that feel?”
“Like the truth,” I smiled.
She pursed her lips. “You are beyond hope.”
“Your paper doesn’t suck,” I replied without thinking.
“But you just said-”
“I said it could use some work, which is what we are going to do. Don’t worry.”
“Can we do it without being sexist?” She bit her lips, as though she didn’t really mean to say that. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you were sexist.”
“You straight up called me a sexist. That’s not implying anything,” I frowned. I really wasn’t. I just had been searching for a woman who could match my intelligence, and I had yet to meet one in the financial industry. I still hired plenty of women and they all got equal pay. Aria was intriguing though.
She mumbled something inaudible.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” she flashed me the brightest smile she could muster. “Would you like some coffee?”
“You keep offering to make me coffee, what’s your game?” I eyed her suspiciously.
She looked furious. “My ‘game’, is giving you some caffeine for energy while you seem to be working hard on whatever big important thing you’re working on. It’s called being nice; some people do it sometimes without an alternative agenda in mind.”
Oh. Shit. I must have hit the wrong button.
“I did not mean to offend you,” I said after a few moments. “I’ll take that cup of coffee.”
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She walked out without saying a word, and I felt a strange emotion that I couldn’t quite identify. Remorse? That couldn’t be true, why would I feel guilty about questioning her motives? Everyone had ulterior motives. I was doing so many nice things for Aria, and not a single one of them without the intention of fucking her. Am I so horrible to assume she was attempting to do the same for some unspecified intentions?
Yes, yes I was. It was just coffee. For the second time in the last twenty-four hours, Aria Roberts had unintentionally managed to make me question my cynicism. I was starting to believe that this girl was simply a terrible influence. Another, much smaller part of me was intrigued by the very possibility that I could question my outlook on life. That thing she had said about objectifying women, for instance. It stuck with me. I wasn’t deluded enough to think myself innocent of such behavior, but twenty-three times in just a few days’ worth of conversation with a single person? That felt like a little too much, even for me. I would have to be very conscious of that around her from now on, especially if I was going to seduce her. It was essential that she believed that it was a good idea.
---
By the time she returned, I had already heard back from the Economics Journal.
“I have good news,” I said as soon as she walked in.
“I’m out of the contract and now you’re just going to loan me the money out of the goodness of your heart?” she asked with a straight face.
Technically she didn’t have to do anything significant as a part of the deal, so I was surprised by her attitude. I felt a surge of rage begin to bubble up when I made the mistake of catching her eyes. They were shining and there was a slight hint of a dimple on her soft cheeks. She was joking.
“We both know that I don’t have that good of a heart,” I said.
“I think you have a better heart than you think you do,” she shrugged.
Hearing those words made me feel way better than it should have. She thought I was a good person? That wasn’t something I was used to. The best I got from people, as far as positive reactions go, was fearful reverence. People respected what I had done with the company, they were impressed by how successful I had managed to become at a relatively young age. Never, or at least not in a very long time, had somebody actually appreciated my character. Not even me, I realized. After my dad passed away, all my morals began to intertwine together into a deeply gray area, where right or wrong only differed in the dollar value it brought to the company. Or in my personal life, on how easily and frequently it got new women to my bedroom. My dad was the person who always kept me on my toes and insisted on a regular morality check. After he passed on, it almost didn’t seem to mean anything anymore. Who should I have to be a good person for since he was no longer there? Mom wasn’t anything close to the epitome of any virtue; more importantly, she couldn’t care less what kind of a person I was turning into, as long as I showered her with gifts and nice fat checks.
What Aria had just said really startled me, because the truth of the matter was that my heart had nothing to do with anything I was doing for her; a whole another organ was responsible for my actions. But she knew that. And I had never made any attempts to conceal my true intentions. That’s what surprised me the most: she thought I was a decent person, despite my intentions! Maybe she was just sucking up to me, maybe she just needed something, maybe she was just playing a game. The cynical part of me had all these suspicions, but somehow they didn’t seem to matter in the face of the knowledge that there was at least one person in the planet that didn’t think I was a total and complete douchebag. And that meant a whole lot more to me than it should have. Which made me wonder if what I was supposed to tell her next was a good idea.
“You are getting published,” I said as though I was merely complementing her hair.
She looked confused for a few seconds, and then looked behind her as if to check if I was talking to someone else. Then she looked at me, followed by my computer and I watched in satisfaction as her eyes widened in realization and her whole face turned as bright as the daylight. Her gasp was loud enough to echo throughout the whole office building, and she probably realized that and covered her mouth.
“How?” It came out as a little squeal.