Love Me Nots (Jasper Falls 3)

The door creaked and she sucked in a breath as he filled the opening, staring at her. The swelling in his face had already started to ease. “I still want to have dinner with you,” he said.

Licking her dry lips, she tried to think of an excuse. “Your eye’s still swollen, and you should really keep your hand up so the bleeding doesn’t start again. Let’s just take a rain check. Besides, I didn’t really give you a tour like you asked, so we’re even. It’s cool.”

“Are we really going to pretend dinner was some sort of a payback for a tour.”

“Isn’t it?”

“You know it’s not.”

“Then what is it?” And why was she breathing so fast?

“A chance for us to get to know each other.”

“Why?” There seriously wasn’t enough oxygen getting to her brain. Every breath seemed more shallow than the last.

He crossed the threshold, and she sucked in a sharp breath as he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The small bathroom left no room for escape. “Who hurt you, Perrin?”

Her eyes blinked rapidly. “No one.”

“You don’t talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to discuss. He was nothing. He’s no one.”

Gage nodded as if he understood, then softly said, “I think the worst thing in the world is giving someone a piece of your heart only to have your trust shattered in the end. It teaches us that people are cold and calculating and then we become cold and calculating in return. It’s a defense mechanism, but it only ends up hurting us in the end.”

It was like he could see into her soul and spot all the fractured scars on her heart. “No one will ever get that close to me again. He did me a favor.”

His brow pinched. “Don’t say that. Maybe he did you a favor by showing you who he was, but don’t shut the rest of the world out because of one asshole.”

She turned her face away, and his touch disappeared. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Just dinner.”

That was a lie. “I’ll feed you, but then you have to go.”

“Deal.”

He waited at the quaint table as she tossed together some microwavable ramen noodles and soft boiled an egg on top. She wasn’t a chef and she wouldn’t try to be, though she did know how to bake a pie, like she’d said.

She placed the small bowl in front of him, and he smiled appreciatively. “Smells great.”

“It’s nothing fancy.” Nothing could shake the sense of inadequacy that came from cooking for a man who probably dined at some of the world’s most renowned restaurants.

He took a bite and moaned appreciatively. “Tastes great, too.”

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to pretend to like it.”

Frowning, he studied her for a moment. “You know I wasn’t always wealthy.”

“No?”

He slowly shook his head. “I grew up in a shelter for young boys, so I never really had anything of my own, until I was old enough to work. But I could never keep a job, because I moved around a lot, shifting from foster home to foster home, until I was old enough to go out on my own. I didn’t finish high school, because I wanted my independence too much. At seventeen, I worked in a slaughter house, doing things I won’t trouble you with describing. I made a few hundred dollars, legally changed my name to King, and filed for emancipation from the state. After that, I saved every penny I made and spent the next ten years building an empire. So, when I tell you something tastes great, you can trust I’m being sincere. There’s not much I tend to lie about these days.”

She stared at him, not used to such brutal disclosures from men. It was refreshing but also intimidating. Taking in his healthy glow, which had returned, and his perfectly polished skin, thick dark hair, beautifully tailored clothing, she found it hard to recognize the hard up little boy he described. “I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know any of that.”

“I sort of figured you didn’t. Google me.”

“Why would I Google you?”

He shrugged. “People do. They like to know the details, so they don’t have to ask.”

She hadn’t asked. “Oh.” And now, she found it really difficult to judge him harshly, imagining him as a poor orphan, working in a slaughter house, trying to break free from the system. “Your soup’s getting cold.”

He bowed his head and took a bite, as if wasting a warm meal might be a mortal sin. How the hell was she going to get over him now?

“How come you don’t know how to change a tire?” she asked.

He flushed. “I didn’t own a car for most of my life. When I bought my first one, I made sure I could afford all the maintenance. I’m sort of an all-or-nothing kind of guy.”