Avery wants to nail the man responsible for her sister's disappearance, CEO Carter Thebes, but the last thing she expects is to feel sorry for him, or worse, develop feelings. Can she unearth his secret before her emotions undo her efforts?
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Aver...
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"As rare as virga." I laugh, hoping I sound like an airy, no-worries-in-the-world gal instead of the squirming pile of asps in a pit. Something about the way he studies me makes me want to zip my skin tighter and rescind into my shell like a turtle. This won't do. This woman who wants to just let sleeping beasts lie. I know it in my bones that Carter Thebes is hiding something and if that something is to do with my sister's whereabouts, I'll do anything to dig, coax, or carve it out of him like I'm god damn Michelangelo chiseling David.
Hmm, David. I cast a look at his white shirt, oddly craving a glimpse of those chiseled abs. What am I doing? I have got to stay pro. I'm angry! I'm mad, I'm—I'm here for revenge if that's what I need to do...
"Viagra?" His tidy brows shoot up in amusement. I should have foreseen this.
"No." I smile. I know exactly what he heard. He probably heard the same thing we all heard when the professor said, 'Virga, ladies and gentlemen, is what we often call a dry storm...' but all we heard back then was viagra and dry in the same sentence, not to mention the other colourful words like 'shaft' and 'precipitation'. I can still recall the eruption of laughter in the lecture theatre when the rare weather phenomenon where rain or snow never touched the ground was introduced to us.
Virga. I want to say. Vir-ga! But the waiter comes by with our coffee and cakes and I stop myself. "I didn't ask for cake."
"It's here anyway." He seems utterly convinced that I love cakes.
I don't. My sis was the sweet tooth in the family. Not me.
I hold the plate up to the waiter. "Thank you, but I" I hate cakes. I'm... not a sweet tooth? I'm fasting? I'm... "still full from lunch." I turn to him and put on my most polite smile. "It was a sweet gesture though. Thank you."
He gives the waitress a curt nod. 'Take it away,' I imagine him saying.
"So, viagra?" He smiles, scooping a teaspoonful of cake into his mouth as if trying to convince me it's good.
Paired that with his sleek-backed, still-wet hair, and that semi-dry shirt, the move is entirely too sensual. For a moment I imagine I've walked into a men's cologne ad by accident. What's more ridiculous is that he pulls out the spoon, clean, delibrately slow, all the while pouring all his attention on me as if we're in the middle of foreplay and he's waiting for me to talk dirty to him.
Shit. I can see why Nina would often come home talking about him as if he were some hot-shot celebrity who'd just signed her boob!
I laugh. At the ridiculously filmy scene in front of me. At the ridiculous image in my head of ripping that damn shirt off him, while I say the filthiest things that come to mind. But mostly, at how well all this awkwardness is providing me a chance to nail my character as a carefree socialite. I am a goddamn heiress to a multimillion-dollar fashion house for all he knows.
