asked to speak to her? Definitely by the time she’d cut him down to size with a few swings of her rapier tongue, he’d been curious. Everyone loved him. Instantly and thoroughly. Even his family only acted irritated as they made every effort to draw him further inside the fold. Hell, women he slept with and left within hours remained affectionate and syrupy when he crossed paths with them later.
But not Natalie. He didn’t think it was an act, either. She’d been furious and insulted by his accusations today, then mistrustful and apprehensive of his invitation to dinner. When she hadn’t answered her door, he’d been stunned. No one rejected him, no matter what he did. And he searched for the line at every opportunity.
Finding her at the front of the hotel had been entirely too much of a relief for his comfort. Then she’d demonstrated that she was perfectly ready to leave him in the dust for being thoughtless. The warning lights were still flashing. Off her and inside him.
Only dinner, she’d claimed.
Take heed, he told himself. He avoided women with standards, being genetically incapable of living up to anything but the basest expectations of him.
Her honesty and playfulness were incredibly refreshing, however. And she was beautiful, with that skin like creamed honey and her eyes reflecting the sparkling lights from beyond the window.
“Tell me about yourself, Natalie,” he commanded softly.
Something like indecision passed over her face before she brought her gaze around to his. Her expression smoothed to an aloof facade, as though she’d mentally tucked away everything personal and only left the basics.
“There’s not much to say. I grew up outside of Montreal with my mother and brother. I divorced pretty much as soon as I married and worked on contract with Makricosta for two years before I was hired for a permanent position with the Canadian branch. Sometimes I go on-site across the country, but most of what I do is handled over the phone and through screen-share from my home office.”
“Turn it off and turn it on again?” he guessed.
“Exactly. Along with some talking off the ledge when files are corrupted or a job change demands a revision of an email signature and they can’t find where to update it. The excitement in tech support never stops, let me tell you. I couldn’t figure out why my ear felt weird the first few days I was in France and finally realized it’s because I wasn’t wearing my Bluetooth.”
There was more, he suspected, but before he could dig, she turned his inquiry around. “You?”
“Why don’t you tell me what you know? Through your carefully vetted research,” he drawled, and liked the way her full lips pursed in compunction. He wasn’t bothered. Of course the employees gossiped about him. He made about as much effort to be discreet as he did toward curbing misbehavior overall. The whole point was to let his escapades be known in order to reach maximum exasperation factor.
Which was juvenile, he realized, reflecting on it under Natalie’s regard and feeling the first traces of shame, but he had his reasons for making himself the target of attention.
“I don’t actually know that much,” Natalie said. “Your family keeps a low profile. Your brother turning up with a baby with the chambermaid was a hot topic for a while, but since I don’t work directly in the hotels, I don’t have close friendships with anyone at work and only get the odd bits of gossip fed back to me. There are some people I talk to all the time, and when I’m solving a crisis I’m very popular, but mostly I’m regarded as a necessary evil. Right now, making all these changes to the main system? It’s a good thing I have a thick skin because I’m not anyone’s friend. Which sounds like I’m talking about myself again. What a bore I am!”
“I’m interested,” he assured her, surprised by how true the comment was. “How old were you when you married?”
“Not old enough,” she said with a circumspect lift of her lashes. “Nineteen. Have you ever been married?”
“Hell, no.”
“Wish I’d had your sense.” The wry curl at the corner of her mouth and couched bitterness behind her eyes suggested she was being completely forthright.
A woman after my own heart, he thought ironically.
“What happened to cut your marriage short? Infidelity?” Hell, at that age he had broken up his brother’s impending marriage, coldly and deliberately.
Natalie didn’t answer right away. Her lips pursed in old disappointment as she stared out the window. “The short answer is he didn’t come to my mother’s funeral,” she finally allowed.
When she swung her face back to him, it was as if she was saying, There. I did it. As if her telling him without showing too much emotion had been very hard.
A weird, answering pain lurched in his chest.
He was a student of human behavior. People thought he was superficial and lacking in empathy. He was fine with the misconception. Deep thoughts really didn’t interest him, but he was very good at reading people. Years of living in a house where emotions were so deeply hidden you needed a pickax to find them had honed his skills. The side benefit was that it made him good at his job. Good with women.
Natalie didn’t want his sympathy, however. The keep-away vibes rolling off her were obvious and troubling. Especially because, for once, he knew exactly how she felt.
“I couldn’t face my mother’s funeral alone. I brought a date. How twisted is that?” he confided.
“Adara and Theo weren’t there?”
“No, they were.” And Nic, the older brother Demitri hadn’t known about. He averted his mind from how disturbing it had been to have a stranger enter their inner circle, as though a member of the audience had walked on stage and begun acting with the players, throwing off his lines. “We’re not close in a way that would have made something like that easier.” He’d barely spoken to them at all, too stunned and filled with questions he refused to ask.
“But you said you grew up with your mother and brother, so he must have been at the funeral with you?”
She flinched and sat back, distancing herself even more. She straightened her silverware and looked quite pale despite the golden glow of candlelight on her skin.
“He died the year before. Can we not talk about this please?”
“I’m sorry.” When had he ever been so aghast at stepping on someone’s feelings? Or apologized so sincerely to a woman? But his hand was over hers before he knew he was going to reach out to make a connection. “Really. Theo drives me bat-guano-crazy, but I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
She laughed. It was more of a sniff, and she brushed at her cheek, eyes wet and glowing when she lifted them. “Thank you. It was six years ago, but I still miss him and think about him every day.”
The waiter arrived to distract them. By the time they were alone again, Natalie had her bravest smile back in place. “Tell me why your brother drives you crazy.”
He shook his head. “You’ll have me in tears,” he dismissed.
“Your job, then. Will you talk about that?”
“You
