Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 154728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Yet here I was, having heart palpitations because a hot guy said hi to me.
Pathetic.
I’d been around plenty of good-looking people, plenty of men with attitude and charisma that made them more attractive than they should’ve been. The restaurant world was driven by men like that, ones who had power, were used to women falling at their feet and saw women who didn’t as people to be conquered.
Once... Once I’d let a man like that conquer me, and I’d promised myself I would never let that shit happen again. I’d never be charmed by talent and power and wealth.
That reminder hardened me ever so slightly.
“I’m Kane.” His eyes twinkled, that smirk still in place on his face.
“I’ve heard,” I replied, my voice somewhat cooler now. I’d found my trademark calm. A couple of seconds too late, but better late than never.
He raised his brow playfully. “You’ve heard?” His eyes were electric blue. The tattoo on his neck was a delicate sparrow, juxtaposed by hard cords of muscle.
There was no way to catalog the rest of the tattoos—of which there were many—without it looking like I was gawking.
I nodded, taking a small sip of the champagne in my hand. Not because I was thirsty, but because I needed something else to do other than just stand there and look at him. I forced myself to make the sip slow, almost lazy. “About ten seconds ago.”
His brow stayed raised, and his smirk stretched into a full-on grin. “You’ve known who I am for ten seconds?”
I shrugged. “Give or take.”
He ran his hand through his dark hair. Now that I was up closer, I could see it had a wild curl to it. There didn’t seem to be any product taming it. His tan skin was smooth but also weathered in a way that communicated he didn’t slather expensive products on his face. And the lines around his eyes and forehead said he didn’t inject Botox like many of the men at parties like this did. There were thin streaks of silver in that inky hair, barely noticeable to the naked eye, but I was making it my business to catalog every inch of him.
His left hand had a tattoo on it, a vintage looking compass with script around it I couldn’t read. The tattoos on his arms weren’t a cohesive sleeve; they were unevenly spaced, and although I couldn’t peer closely at them, I could see they varied in intricacy and style.
I pegged him to be my age, maybe a little older than my thirty-five years.
“Well, you seem to have me at a disadvantage since you’ve known who I am for about…” he looked to his wrist where an expensive looking watch sat. “Twenty seconds … give or take, and I still don’t know who you are.”
He was flirting. That much was obvious. Just because I hadn’t been laid in a while didn’t mean I was naïve. I watched the mating dance at the restaurant every single night. People were always screwing each other… Front of house, back of house—everyone dipped their pen in the company ink.
Except me and a handful of others who had learned our lesson the hard way and kept our work life and sex life separate. Which, in a job like mine, meant that you didn’t have a sex life because you dedicated your life to your job.
It hadn’t bothered me. I wasn’t a sexual person.
Or at least I’d thought I wasn’t.
Feelings and hunger were waking up in places I didn’t even know I had inside me from just this man’s proximity and his playful, charged gaze.
“I’m not known for bringing new meaning to the term ‘daredevil,’ so it makes sense you wouldn’t know who I am,” I replied, a hint of teasing in my tone. A very slight hint. I had somewhat of a dry, cold sense of humor that a lot of guys—most guys—did not understand or like.
They thought I was mocking them, and their fragile egos did not react well.
Kane, on the other hand, seemed absolutely delighted. He chuckled. Low and throaty, a sound that … did things to me. I squeezed the stem of my champagne glass.
“Seems you’ve learned a lot about me in a short amount of time.” He met my dry teasing tone with one of his own. “I’m impressed.”
I shrugged in response.
I got the impression he had a lot of women falling over themselves or throwing themselves at him. Not that it wasn’t tempting. But again, I’d been around too many men like that, and I hadn’t so much as blinked at them in years.
Kane, on paper, should’ve been just like the rest. Handsome, rich, flirty, charismatic. I was inoculated to all of that. Or I’d thought I was.
It turned out he was a different strain of man entirely.
“If you know even a little about me, you may know that I’m not left at a disadvantage for long,” he murmured, reaching forward to take my champagne from my hand—our fingers brushing in the process and my body jerking at the contact—before lifting it to his lips, right over top of the imprint of my bright red lipstick, and taking a long sip.