Her smile wobbled. That had been exactly why she hadn’t applied for a scholarship.
“Speaking of that third job,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to ask is there anything else you want me to do on the accounting side of things.”
He steepled his hands over his plate. “Anything else like what?” His onyx eyes met hers and it sent a small shiver down her spine.
“Tony calls it ‘creative accounting,’” she said, trying to keep the shakiness she felt out of her voice. “If I have to explain it, then you probably don’t need it. It just that you make enough to buy Tony’s business and pay for Sparkle’s tuition without blinking and I thought that might mean you were involved in something more than high-end security.”
His gaze kept her pinned. “If I was, would you think less of me?”
“I—I don’t know,” she said. “I guess it would depend on what exactly you do besides high-end security.”
He regarded her for a few seconds before saying, “You’re right, what I do isn’t as simple as high-end security. It’s highly specialized and very few other men in the world do it as well as I do, that’s why I’m able to live as comfortably as I do. Also, I inherited a substantial amount of money from my mother.”
“So your mom’s dead?” she asked, her heart going out to him because she hadn’t known they had this in common.
The same sadness that she’d seen in Montana flickered across his face then. “Yes. Less than fifteen years into their marriage, my father decided he’d made a mistake in marrying my mother for love and started divorce proceedings. You see, she is Chinese, and though her family was very well off in her country, my father’s family never approved of their marriage. Her answer to this insult was to take her own life, making him a widow, before he could throw her away. Technically the money should have gone to him, but my father held it in trust for me and gifted it to me on my wedding day.”
“That was nice of him,” she said, thinking of her own father, who had always put her best interests ahead of his own.
“No,” he said, placing his napkin on the table. “It was a manipulation, a gift for marrying the woman he had chosen for me and for assuming the role he designated for me in the family business. If he could have found away to take the money back upon our divorce, he would have done so.”
“So you and your father don’t get along?” she asked.
“No, but I remain grateful for his presence in my early life.” He gave her an up and down look that made goose bumps raise on her arms. “He taught me to be ruthless, and that quality has served me well over the years.”
The subject, she could sense, had changed. When he talked about his inherited ruthlessness, he wasn’t really talking about his father or even his current job. Something pulsed in the air between them like a tiger ready to pounce.
“Wow, would you look at the time?” she said, making a big show of checking her watch. “I took the El, so I should probably be heading out before it gets too late.”
He stood up and picked up his dish. “I don’t like leaving dirty dishes for room service. Will you help me rinse these off?”
“Sure. I guess so,” Lacey answered, feeling flustered but obligated to at least rinse a few dishes after he’d provided her with such a scrumptious dinner.
So she stood beside him, stiff and unable to provide her usual ramble, because though he had yet to touch her or even look at her in an amorous way, she could feel the sexual tension, thick as a cloud in the room.
He handed her a dish and asked, “What kind of girl are you?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“In Montana, you said you weren’t the kind of girl who had sex with a man because he bought her dinner. So now I’m wondering what kind of girl you are.”
A weird fear caught her heart in a tight lasso. “I still don’t understand,” she said.
He turned off the water and turned to face her. “You’re making it obvious you don’t wish to have sex with me tonight. You wore what looks like your workout clothes and you keep trying to leave. Why?”
She swallowed the hard lump of fear lodged in her throat and decided to just give it to him straight. “Because you scare me. Because I still don’t know why you paid Sparkle’s tuition, or bought my club, or why you’re here. But mostly because you scare me. I read guys for a living, and I can’t read you, and that makes me nervous.”
“Nervous,” he repeated. If she’d offended him, he didn’t let it show. Instead his eyes drifted down to her outfit. “Choosing to wear these clothes was a mistake.”
“Because you wanted me to wear something sexier?” she asked, her back going straight.
“No, because though I’ve lived in the States since college, I’m still very Japanese.”
She shook her head, confused. “What does that mean?”
“Have you ever seen Japanese porn?” he asked her.
She felt her cheeks heat. “Um, no. We get a lot Japanese clients coming through the club, but I haven’t explored the country beyond that.”
He began unbuttoning his shirt, “If you had ever spent any time in my home country, you would know the Japanese have a somewhat peculiar talent that your own country does not.”
It felt like her heart had moved from her chest and set up permanent residence in her stomach, but she couldn’t keep herself from asking, “What kind of talent?”
“Tentacles, baths, even simple conversation—we can make anything sexy. So while you were sitting across from me at the table, thinking I’d surely be turned off by your clothing, I was thinking what it would be like reach up under your shirt and take off your bra.”
To her surprise, his arms came around her waist, and he distracted her with a hot kiss as his hands snaked under the back of her t-shirt.
“And if you hadn’t worn such a simple bra, I wouldn’t have been able to do this…”
Before she knew it, he’d unclasped her bra and was pulling it off, taking the admittedly easy-to-maneuver straps down both her arms and stripping the bra off through one armhole.
She’d thought he’d strip her out of her t-shirt next, but instead his mouth closed over one of her nipples, lathing her breast through the worn material. Hot pleasure trickled from her chest straight into her womanhood. And she could feel her nipple puckering inside his mouth as her breasts swelled with instantaneous need.