He stared at me for a moment, before raking his fingers back through his wet hair with a little sigh. “You said...you said you were proud of being able to take care of yourself, because in the neighborhood where you grew up—it wasn’t the easiest thing to claim.”
He remembered the quote exactly. That brilliant mind of his working again.
Not that it made any sense.
My face softened, and I took a step forward. “Okay, well...Nick, that isn’t exactly a rare thing. There are lots of neighborhoods around New York like that—”
“But you’re not living in them,” he interrupted fiercely.
A sudden silence rang out between us, one that grew more and more awkward the longer it was allowed to go on. Twice, we tried to break it. Twice, we came up short.
In the end, he merely bowed his head with another sigh.
“I’m sorry I moved you without permission, Abby,” he said softly. “I really am. If you don’t want to stay here, then I’d be happy to find you other arrangements. Not in Brooklyn.”
The surprises just kept coming.
My lips parted, and despite having stormed in here with enough rage to power the entire island, I found myself profoundly touched. There was a method to the madness after all. He was trying to take care of me. In his own, bizarre, Nick way...
This time, it was my turn to avert my eyes. No matter how far the two of us might have gone yesterday, I simply didn’t feel right about seeing him naked. This was still supposed to be an arrangement, after all. I was still supposed to be able to determine between what was real.
For this next part, I chose my words carefully. Well aware that when you were talking with Nick, there was no practice round. You were playing with live ammunition.
“I don’t want to be tricked into staying here.” I emphasized the word carefully, hoping like hell it would hit home. I wasn’t disappointed.
Nick’s eyes lit up, but he kept a careful calm—coaxing me toward that final ledge.
“Then let me convince you.”
I took a step back, tilting my head doubtfully to the side as he stood in supplication before me. “Convince me? Well so far today, I’ve already been forcibly evicted. You’re off to a really great start.”
Most other people would have blushed. Nick didn’t. He rose to the challenge.
“Then let’s start over.” His eyes danced as his mind began spinning a million miles a minute. “Let me give you a day in my world. We can start with crepes at Le Lapin Blanc, then head over for a private viewing at Christie’s. After that, if you’re not opposed to a little light travel, there’s supposed to be this incredible nightclub opening in Saint-Tropez—”
“Nick,” I held up a hand to stop him, “I don’t want a day in your world.”
He pulled up suddenly short, looking as though he didn’t quite understand.
“You don’t...that’s okay!” He was quick to recover himself. “We can stay Stateside, no reason to go jetting all over the world. I heard that Cartier is actually unveiling a new—”
“Do you think we could just stay in?”
Okay—now he definitely didn’t understand. All the words were familiar, and yet, when strung in that particular order, they didn’t compute.
“Stay in?”
He glanced down without thinking about it at my breasts, and I realized that in Nick’s world, ‘stay in,’ could mean only one thing. I was quick to dissuade that notion.
“Normal people don’t go jetting around the globe at the drop of a hat,” I said with the hint of a smile. “When normal people want Chinese food, they order in. They don’t go to China.”
His eyes tightened almost imperceptibly, and I could tell he was having similar problems with the word normal. Surely he’d heard it somewhere before. What exactly did it mean?
A little smile crept up the side of my face, and I looked at him fondly.
“I’ve spent the last two years living in your world. Two years doing anything and everything you wanted to do. How about, for one day only...we live in mine?”
Nick spoke slowly, trying out the words for the first time.