What He Believes (10 page)

Everyone here was so busy and rushed.
 
Drinks or coffee seemed like a
reasonable suggestion.

I sighed and took another look around the restaurant/bar,
wondering if perhaps Nathan was here and I’d somehow missed him.
 
I searched for any guys who were sitting
alone or seemed like they might be looking for someone.

No one looked even remotely like the pictures
of Nathan I’d seen online.

Although the man in the corner booth
was
staring
at me.
 
I blushed, feeling the color rising on
my cheeks.
 
God he was
gorgeous.
 
Everything about him was
just so
dark
-- dark hair, dark eyes, dark stubble on his chin, dark
suit with a matching black button-down underneath.
 
The only thing light about him was his
eyes
– a piercing blue that stood out even all the way
over here.

The man was sipping something clear, and he was
all alone
, which made no sense.
 
Why was he sitting alone? He was the
most gorgeous man in here, all smoldering eyes and broad shoulders and messy
hair.
 
It wasn’t even a matter of
taste or debate.
 
Women should have
been throwing themselves at him.
 
My
pulse pounded and I my blushed deepened as he caught me staring.

A smirk played on his beautiful full lips.

Those lips.

I turned away, embarrassed.

I was sure he was making fun of me.

Suddenly, the lights in the restaurant dimmed,
and the music – a heavy rotation of 90s songs that had been remixed to
give them a pounding bass line – got louder as the time on my phone
screen switched over to 11 o’clock on the dot.

Something about the bar getting darker and
louder flipped a switch inside of me, and the social anxiety I’d struggled with
since I was teenager roared to life, threatening to take over.
 
I reached into my bag and pulled out an
Ativan, then changed my mind and put it back in its case.

Why waste a perfectly good Ativan on some
asshole from a dating app?

I stood up and grabbed my phone off the bar,
threw a twenty down to pay my tab (I’d had two diet cokes and a cranberry juice
while I’d been waiting) and headed for the exit.

I was almost to the door when I felt a pair of
strong hands slide around my waist.

“Where are you going?” a deep male voice
breathed into my ear, and I felt myself getting pulled back into a hard, broad
chest.

I turned around and fell
into
a pair deep blue eyes
.

It was
him
.
 

The man from the corner booth.

He moved so he was standing in front of me,
loosening his grip on me but keeping his hands on my hips, like he was afraid
if he let me go I was going to slip through his grasp and out into the New York
City night.

“Um, I’m leaving,” I said.
 

He was even more commanding up close – at
least six-foot-two, his suit impeccably cut, his hair fading perfectly into a
pair of short sideburns.
 
He smelled
like a yummy aftershave, something so male it made me dizzy.

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head.
 
“Are you… are you Nathan?”
  
He looked nothing like Nathan’s
picture, but perhaps Nathan was one of those catfishes I’d heard about who used
fake pictures stolen from someone else’s facebook profile.
 
But if you looked like the man standing
in front of me, I had no idea why you would bother to use a fake picture.
 
Nathan’s picture had been nice enough,
but it had nothing on the man standing in front of me.

“Never apologize,” the man admonished.
 
“It’s a sign of weakness.”

“What?” I asked, confused.
 
“I didn’t –”

He was still holding my hips, and his hands
snaked around to my lower back.
 
A delicious
warmth radiated through my muscles, instantly
relaxing me.

“Give me the drugs,” he demanded.

“What?”

“The drugs in your purse.”
  
He let go of me and held his hand
out.
 
There was no threat in his
voice, just the tone of a man who was used to ordering people around.

“I don’t have any drugs in my purse.”
 

“I saw you with drugs.”

“You saw me with drugs?”
 
I shook my head.
 
“That’s impossible.”

His eyes darkened, and I saw something burn
deep within the depths of his irises.
 
He didn’t like me contradicting him.

“Open your purse,” he commanded.

I started to tell him that was absurd and
ridiculous, but something about the look on his smug face made me want to prove
him wrong.
 
So I opened my purse and
showed him what was inside.
 

A couple of dollars.
 

My license and debit card.

A tube of red lipstick.

A newly purchased subway card.

And my tiny pink shell case.

He reached in and pulled the shell case out of
my purse, cracked it open and glanced at the tiny pills.

Then he flipped the case over and poured the
pills onto the ground, grinding them into a fine powder under the heel of his
expensive leather dress shoe.

He handed the case back to me and then began to
walk back into the bar.

My mouth dropped.

Had he really just dumped my Ativan all over
the floor then ruined them with his stupid expensive shoe?
 
Indignation bloomed in my chest, pushing
out any of the anxiety I’d been feeling a moment ago.

I followed the arrogant jerk back to his booth,
the red leather one that was situated in the corner of the club.
 
He sat down and calmly took a sip of his
drink, seltzer water with a fresh slice of lemon floating in it.

“Hey!” I said.
 
“Hey, those pills were mine, you
know.
 
You can’t just go around
destroying people’s things.
 
It’s
against the law.”

“So call the police.”

“What?”

“If you’re so concerned about laws and who’s
breaking them, then call the police.”
 
He took another sip of his drink,
then
glanced
at his watch, an expensive black and silver Rolex.
 
A thoughtful look passed over his face,
almost like he was trying to decide how much of his precious time he was
willing to devote to this conversation.
 

“No, I don’t…” I took a deep breath.
 
Something about him was flustering
me.
 
Probably because he was so
god damn
good looking. “That’s not the point.”

“What isn’t?”

“The point isn’t that I want to call the
police.
 
The point is that you can’t
just go around wrecking people’s things.”

“Trust me, sweetheart, I did you a favor.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart.”

“Then what should I call you?”

“What?”

He sighed in exasperation, like he couldn’t
believe he had to deal with the likes of me.
 
“What.
 
Is.
 
Your.
 
Name?”

“Oh.”
 
I was thrown, not expecting that.
 
“Um, it’s Adriana.”
 

“Adriana,” he said, looking me in the eye for
the first time since he’d sat down.
 
I liked the way he said my name, slow, like he was turning over every
syllable, trying to figure out what they all meant.
 
Something flashed in the depths of his
irises, something intoxicating and unfamiliar, skepticism mixed with
trepidation mixed with surprise mixed with desire.

“What’s
your
name?” I demanded, wanting
him to know that he wasn’t the only one who could ask questions and needing
something to distract myself from the rush of attraction that was pounding
through my body.

“Callum.”

“Callum?”

“Yes.”

I shook my head.
 
“That’s a made up name.”
 

“I’m hurt that you don’t trust me,” he said
sarcastically, like he actually couldn’t give a shit.
 
He reached for his drink and took
another long sip, the sleeve of his shirt slipping up to reveal a tan, muscular
forearm.

“Trust needs to be earned,” I informed him.

He laughed, like he couldn’t believe how naïve
I was.
 
Then he reached into his
pocket, pulled out a leather wallet with some expensive-looking designer logo
stamped on the front and slid out a crisp white business card.
 

He held it out to me, and I took it, my face
burning as our fingers brushed. I’d always been prone to blushing, and with my
fair complexion, it was almost impossible to hide.
  
I hoped he wouldn’t notice, but
his eyes were on my face, watching me carefully.

CALLUM WILDER was printed on the card in a
simple black font. So what, I thought.
 
So he had a card with the name Callum Wilder on it.
 
He probably printed them up and brought
them here so that he could seem suave and cool.
 
And what was with the all caps?
 
Talk about being self-important.

Callum Wilder.

It was just the kind of name a man would make
up in an effort to get women to sleep with him.
 

Of course, that didn’t explain the fact that he
was wearing very expensive clothes.
 
Even someone like me, whose idea of high fashion was Banana Republic,
could tell the suit had had on was expensive.

My eyes ran down the card to the next line.

CEO and Founder, Wilder Holdings, LLC

Wilder Holdings.

I knew that company.
 

Everyone knew that company.
 
They were famous for swooping in and
taking over smaller, failing companies, infusing them with cash and turning
them around before selling them off for a profit.
 

He must have been a billionaire.

I swallowed.

So not only was he extremely good-looking, he
was also rich.

I hated him.

 
“I
believe you,” I said haughtily, handing the card back to him.
 
“You don’t have to prove yourself to
me.”

“I don’t prove myself to anyone.”

“Then why did you feel the need to show me your
business card?”

He shrugged, like it was inconsequential.

His disinterest infuriated me.

His eyes flicked back to mine and he ran them
down over my body, not even trying to hide the fact that he was checking me
out.
 
I felt my nipples harden under
the cool air of the club, and I cursed myself for wearing such a sheer
t-shirt.
 

“Anyway,” I said, trying to get back to the
task at hand. “You owe me fifty dollars.
 
That’s how much my Ativan prescription cost.”

“Would you like to sit down and discuss this?”

“No, I would not like to sit down and discuss
this,” I fumed.
 
“You owe me fifty
dollars.
 
There’s nothing to
discuss.”

“I am not going to pay for your drugs,
Adriana.”

“Those are not drugs,” I said.
 
“Those are prescription pills, the kind
of pills that people take because they need them.
 
The kind of drugs people pay good money
for.
 
Not that I would expect
someone like you to understand that.”

“Someone like me?”
 
He cocked his head, interested.
 
“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you probably don’t have to worry about
stupid things like, oh, I don’t know, healthcare costs, that you probably
enough money not to have to freak out when your premiums go up or worry about
whether or not
Obamacare
is going to be deemed
unconstitutional.”

“The Affordable Care Act already stood up to
the challenges it faced in the Supreme Court.”

“I know,” I said, frustrated, feeling my hands
ball into fists at my side.
 
“That’s
not the point.”