The Kiss

Chapter 11

Lisa was reserved as they walked the few blocks back to her white Model S. Several times, Taehyung caught her massaging her temples, but when he asked if she had a headache, her response was an unintelligible mumble. He would have thought she was doing the silent martyr act in retribution for his supposed cheating, but that didn't seem her style.

No, her style was leaving him without a single word. When Taeyang had told him she wanted to abandon him at the club, it'd sucker-punched Taehyung in the gut. The last person to leave him had been his dad. But where Taehyung's dad had left him with an enormous mess to clean up, Lisa had planned to leave him with her car and her credit card. Who did that?

Even worse, he hadn't deserved it. Either time.

Tonight, he'd been busy preventing his crazy ex-client from making an enormous scene in front of Lisa. Jessi was a true diva and loved drama in all forms. Now that she'd finally succeeded in divorcing her millionaire husband—and taking half of his net worth—she wanted Taehyung back. She was willing to pay whatever it took.

She refused to accept that Taehyung would rather fuck his way through splintered driftwood than return to her bed. She'd detained him for long minutes, tossing extravagant numbers at him before plastering her mouth to his.

He would forever associate the taste of cinnamon gum, cigarettes, and whiskey with Jessi.

So different from Lisa, who tasted like . . . mint chocolate chip ice cream.

They piled into her car, and she activated the seat warmer, sank against the backrest, and stared out the window, absently tapping her fingers on her knees. He turned the radio on to break the silence, but she promptly turned it back off. Her fingers resumed their tapping. It was hypnotic but a little annoying.

He sent her a pointed look, but she didn't notice.

After he took them out of the city and merged into the light traffic on 10-lane main road, he broke down and said, "When you do that finger tapping, are you playing a song? Like on the piano?"

She stopped tapping her fingers and sat on her hands. "It's Debussy's Arabesque. I really like the combination of triplets and eighth notes."

"So you play?" When he'd picked her up from her downtown Seocho-gu house, it had been impossible to miss the black grand piano dominating her otherwise empty living room. If she was artistically talented on top of being smart, successful, and gorgeous, she was officially his dream woman in the flesh. And so far out of his league as to be laughable.

Even if he didn't have all the shit associated with his dad dangling between them, he had almost nothing a girl like her could want. There was his face and his body, but anyone could have that if they paid enough. Maybe she would have been attracted to the old him, the man who had been free to pursue his passions. There'd been a lot going for that guy. Taehyung barely knew him anymore.

"I do," Lisa said. "I started playing before I could speak."

He arched his eyebrows. Apparently, in addition to being his dream woman, she was also Mozart.

"That's not as impressive as it sounds," she said with a wry lift of her lips. "I was a late speaker."

"I have a hard time picturing that. You seem so perfect to me."

She bowed her head and released a heavy breath, but when he began to ask her what was wrong, the slow minivan in front of him caught his attention. He switched lanes and accelerated soundlessly past it. Smooth as buttah. He loved fast cars.

But thinking about cars always reminded him of his current car, a shiny black BMW M3, and how he'd gotten it.

"She's my crazy ex-client," he said.