Villain (Hero 1.50)

“I know everyone worth knowing.” He winked at Barbara and she tittered like a schoolgirl.

Dear God.

And then I was the focus of his attention. He leaned against Andrew’s chair who was, as always, oblivious to anything but himself. “So this burger… will it put you in a good mood?”

“Excuse me?”

Those blue eyes were too intense, much too intense. “A good enough mood to agree to have lunch with me tomorrow?”

I was going to kill him.

How dare he put me on the spot in front of my colleagues, in front of Barbara! What? Did he think I’d be civil to him because we had an audience? I scowled. “No.”

“Are you seeing someone?” he persisted.

“No, she’s not,” Barbara interjected, giving me an “Are you crazy?” look. “And yes, she’s free for lunch tomorrow. You can pick her up from the station at one.”

“Fantastic.” Henry gave her a grateful, gorgeous smile before turning it on me. “See you tomorrow.”

He was gone before I could even get past the shock that had sealed my lips. Finally, they parted. “What was that?”

Barbara shrugged. “Me making sure you don’t miss out.”

“How dare you decide if not making a date with Henry Lexington is me missing out.”

She raised an eyebrow at my snippiness. “He’s Boston’s most eligible bachelor, Nadia. For a reason.” She gestured to where he’d been standing. “You can’t tell me you don’t find him attractive.”

“I’d have to be blind,” I gritted out begrudgingly. “But he and I don’t exactly see eye to eye.”

“Didn’t seem that way to me. You could’ve cut the sexual tension with a knife.” She shuddered, wearing a dreamy smile. “If a man looked at me the way Henry was looking at you, I’d slather myself all over him like butter on bread.”

I chuckled because she was hard to stay mad at. “Barbara, the man is a known slut. He’s not the settling-down type. When he looks at me, he’s merely thinking about sex.”

“Sweetie, so are most men and plenty of women,” she patted my hand, “but is there anything wrong with sex?”

Only the fact that I hadn’t had it in a while. “No.”

“So why can’t you go on a date with him expecting nothing but a free lunch and, if you’re interested, the possibility of sex? I’ve heard he’s very good.”

“Well, he’s had plenty of practice.” I huffed. “I don’t like him very much.”

“Oh, sweetie, does everything have to be so serious? You don’t have to like someone to have fantastic sex with them, believe me.”

I stared at my friend, contemplating her advice.

She had a point.

I mean, it wasn’t like trusting a man long enough to get into a serious relationship was in the cards for me at the moment. But I liked sex. My sex life didn’t need to dry up because I didn’t want to be in a relationship. And the last relationship I was in was over a year ago. Pete. He hadn’t lasted long. Neither had Mike before him. Or Denny before that. I was kind of a serial monogamist because I wasn’t very good at letting the men in my life really get to know me. Pete, Mike, and Denny had all dumped me for the same reason: I couldn’t trust them long enough to be real with them.

But I missed sex.

Maybe I should start being more like Henry Lexington. A true bachelorette.

Maybe the man himself could teach me how, and by reducing him to no more than a one-time sexual partner, I could purge myself of the hurt that he’d added to when he’d treated me so poorly. Maybe I could dispel myself of some of the anger that had nestled, seemingly permanently, in a painful hollow in my chest.

* * *

There was a big beautiful vase of flowers waiting on my desk when I returned after hair and makeup the next morning.

I admit to feeling a traitorous little thrill in my stomach when I saw the expensive calla lilies (how he knew those were my favorite, I did not know). Shaking my head in frustration that he could both piss me off and surprise me, I reached for the card.

Changing your number doesn’t change how I feel. Darling, talk to me.

Fuck.

Of course Henry didn’t know I loved calla lilies.

But he knew.

Worry pricked at me as I stared at the card. I’d told him too many times to count to leave me alone. I’d changed my number… He wasn’t going all stalker on me, was he?

Hating to rid my desk of the beautiful flowers, I flipped the card and called the florist who was clearly up at the butt crack of dawn.

“Olivia’s Garden, how can I help?”

“Ah, good morning, I received some flowers this morning.”

“Miss Ray?”

“Yes,” I said surprised.

“Yours were a very early delivery. Did you like them?”

“The flowers are beautiful. However, I really don’t want contact with the man who bought them. Would it be possible for you to take them back and let him know that I sent them back?”

“I’m afraid flowers are nonrefundable.”

“No, I don’t care about him getting his money back. I care about sending a message.”

“What flowers would you like to send him to do so?”

Was she for real? “No, I don’t want to send flowers.”

“We also send chocolates, gift hampers, and wine.”

“Never mind.” I hung up and slumped into my chair.

“Ooh, who sent the flowers?” Angel asked as she passed by.

“A misogynistic, egotistical, shallow, social climbing, cheating asshole.”

She considered this. “He has good taste in flora.”

Because she was funny, but mostly because I needed to, I laughed. Hard. And for a moment I felt better.

* * *

The flowers were another reminder of what happened when I trusted men. I wasn’t saying there weren’t men out there who could be trusted. Of course there were. I trusted Joe!

But that was different. When it came to men I was sexu

ally interested in, I never seemed to be able to discern the trustworthy ones from the untrustworthy ones. Before Pete, Mike, and Denny, when I was still naïve enough to trust, I’d ended up choosing the latter, and paying for it emotionally.

It made me more determined to try things the way Barbara suggested, the way that Henry did things.

I didn’t need to trust him to have sex with him, right?

I ignored the voice screaming in the back of my mind: Wrong!

It was Joe’s voice. I’d called him the evening before to relay my thinking to him.

“No, no, no,” Joe had cut me off. “Nadia, you are not the one-night-stand kind of girl.”

“We don’t know that,” I’d argued.

“Yes, we categorically do. Don’t do this, honey. You’ll get hurt and you know I hate seeing you cry.”

“Joe, I’m older and wiser now. Maybe this is the path my life is supposed to take.”

“It’s not. One day you’ll meet a man you’ll instinctively know you can trust. If you do this… I think it’s going to take you back to a bad place. You’ll start hating yourself again and I can’t watch you do that to yourself.”

Uncertainty and unease, and maybe even a little bit of panic, settled over me at Joe’s words. He was the only friend I had left from college, the only one who’d stood by my side, so he knew what he was talking about. Yet, I was tired of standing in one place. “Joe, I need to make a change.”

He was silent for a while. “You’re a grown woman, honey. You do what you have to do and you know I’ll be here. But I am officially worried about this strategy.”

“Barbara thinks it’s a great idea.”

“Barbara doesn’t know what I know.”

We’d ended the conversation soon after, and for a while I considered taking Joe’s advice. But then I thought about my limitations as a girlfriend, and about Henry and how much I wanted to scratch that itch.

Then again, I might have been getting a little ahead of myself. Henry, when he wasn’t being a villain, was naturally flirtatious and charming. That didn’t mean he was attracted to me. This lunch could merely be an attempt to make amends and assuage his guilt over the way he’d treated me.