Making It Last (Camelot 4)

She glanced at him sideways, accidentally smiling again before dragging her gaze away to the liquor bottles lined up behind the bar.

No, he wasn’t indirect. He was one of the most direct people she’d ever met.

If she dropped the act and asked him why he was here, he would tell her, and … and then she would know. She’d have to figure out what to do about it.

There was a reason that she cried in the shower or sitting on the toilet, locked in the bathroom, even when no one was home.

She wasn’t ready to have that conversation.

She was afraid that once they had it, all her options would be laid out on the ground in front of her, and she’d have to start making choices that broke her heart. Or he would.

“I guess you’ll have to work on that,” she said. “If you want to be sitting with me at a table in ten minutes.”

“You don’t like direct men?”

She inhaled and drank some of her vile drink. Looked over at him. “It’s not that, exactly, Steve. It’s just—you’re dying to tell me what you want from me. What you saw from the other side of the room that made up your mind to come over here and buy me a drink. You have this story you want to tell me, and you think it’s going to get you something. But from my perspective …”

She trailed off, looking at his forearm on the bar. Tony’s forearm.

“From your perspective?”

“I didn’t come to this bar to give anybody anything.”

“Why’d you come?”

“I thought it might be more fun than the room.”

“Is it?”

She looked at his upper arm now, his shoulder. His shorn hair, black and gray mixed together.

Tony.

Not Tony. Steve.

“It’s looking up,” she said.

“You know what I’m thinking now?”

“Yes. You’re thinking if you show me a good time at the bar, maybe I’ll let you show me an even better time in the room.”

He put his hand to his chest, eyes wide with mock amazement. “How did you know that?”

She met his eyes, and she smiled.

Because he was making it so easy for her. She could be Jennifer with this man. She could say what she liked. Flirt with a hot guy at a bar. Feel pretty. Feel seen.

She could be Jennifer if he would be Steve.

“Jennifer knows many things,” she said.

“I’m not supposed to say that I want to find out what Jennifer knows, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m supposed to say something smooth, like, ‘You’re an intriguing woman, Jennifer.’ ”

“If that’s your idea of smooth.”