“Can I? Because I thought you said no.”
Ride. Ha ha. I had read between the lines. I had said no to sex. He wasn’t used to being rejected. Whatever.
“See you tomorrow?” I asked nervously, suddenly worried that I’d offended him.
His face cleared into an easy smile.
“Tomorrow. Enjoy Brooklyn.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes.
“Always.”
His lips twisted up in a smirk.
“Enjoy it while it lasts...”
I stuck my head farther out the window as we began to pull away—sure that I hadn’t heard him correctly. “What was that?”
He just smiled and waved, raising his hand for another cab as I rounded the corner.
The second he disappeared from sight, I stuck my head back in the window, frowning to myself as I played the words back again in my head.
Enjoy it while it lasts? What the hell does that mean?
As it turned out, I wouldn’t have to wait long to find out...
* * *
Considering the crazy night I had, the next morning was relatively normal. I woke up, got dressed, brushed my teeth, and headed out to my favorite little café around the corner to grab a bagel for breakfast.
I had made a conscious effort not to check the newsstands that morning, in case I happened to walk past a random picture of me and Nick naked in a boxing ring, and decided to keep myself deliberately optimistic instead. Oh my gosh! Listen to myself. He’s dragged me into all his craziness.
I remembered the moment of the flash exactly. (I remembered it exactly, because Nick had been just a second away from impaling me with the biggest penis I’d ever seen. That’s not the kind of moment a girl can forget.) Because of this, I knew for a fact that the cameraman hadn’t gotten anything vital—at least, not of me.
Moving with the skill and speed of someone who had been in that position countless times before, Nick had shielded me from the worst of the blast—meaning that while naked photos of himself might be spread across this morning’s Newsweek, I was pretty much covered.
With that particular worry set aside, I was able to focus on much more exciting things as I sat at the outdoor table and sipped my morning coffee.
Nick and I...hooked up.
There were no two ways of saying it. No masterful spin that even I could come up with to paint it a different way. While we may not have actually had sex, we’d done other things. Other things that were also, irrevocably, burned into my mind.
Yes—we’d been drinking.
But we were by no means drunk.
Yes—we’d been in a fucking bizarre situation.
But ever since I’d started working for the Hunter family, it had been one bizarre situation after another. Two years in, that was hardly an excuse.
We had just...done it.
Or at least, we’d tried to. It seemed like no matter how often we attempted to take each other’s clothes off, something always got in the way.
Still...it wasn’t like either of us had walked away empty-handed.
Have I always liked him? I asked myself the question again and again. Have I just never noticed it before because he’s always been a client? Because he’s always been with other girls?