Hard Sell (21 Wall Street #2)(19)

I purse my lips and consider. “Okay.”

His eyes narrow. “That’s perhaps the scariest word you’ve ever said.”

“How do you figure?” I say, taking a sip of the water the bartender’s just set in front of me.

Matt leans in a bit farther. “How easily you forget that I know you. And I know that any time you easily agree to something, hell is sure to follow.”

I hide my smile, because damn it . . . he does know me. Readily agreeing to something and playing the part of perfect acquiescence has long been key to my strategy of staying one step ahead of anyone and everything that comes my way.

See, the trick to being in control is letting other people think that they are. No one lets their guard down faster than a man or woman who thinks he or she is driving the ship.

Truth be told, though, right now, my “okay” really is just that—an okay.

Matt’s not the only one who’s tired. Sure, we’ve been together all of a couple of hours, most of it spent drinking champagne and shopping.

Not exactly a hard day’s work.

And yet, it’s Matt and me. Which means there’s no such thing as easy. I’ve spent every minute far too aware of him, and don’t even get me started on whatever that was in the dressing room.

I refuse to admit, even in my own head, just how close I came to letting that kiss turn into something more. To letting him back me against the wall. To having a quickie in a dressing room, for crying out loud.

It’s everything rash and crass that I’ve spent my adult life trying to avoid. I’ve gotten to where I am not so much from smarts, or even hard work, but from impulse control. I stay in control, always.

Well, almost always. The man sitting next to me is the one exception.

“Something besides water?” the blonde bartender asks with a friendly smile.

Matt nods to me to order first.

“Belvedere martini. Three olives,” I say.

“Same,” Matt echoes. “But with a twist.”

“You got it.” The bartender moves away to fetch the vodka.

“Belvedere, huh? Thought you were a Goose girl.”

“I’m a vodka girl,” I clarify, picking up the menu. “Equal opportunity.”

“And here I thought we had nothing in common.”

“Having nothing in common’s never been our problem,” I say as I peruse the salad options. Seared ahi or chicken? Decisions, decisions.

“Yeah? What is our problem?” he asks, turning toward me.

I set the menu back on the bar and fold my hands. “Well. Off the top of my head, I’d say it starts with the fact that you’re a presumptuous ass, and I’m—”

“A grudge-holding shrew?”

“It’s not like I’m holding some imagined slight,” I say through gritted teeth.

“No. But you are holding on to something that happened four years ago. That I apologized for about a hundred times.”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“See, that’s our problem,” he says, raising his voice slightly. “You never want to talk about it, so here we are, years later, still hating each other’s guts.”

“Are you forgetting who’s currently helping you save your job?”

“Are you forgetting how much fucking money I’m spending to get you to do that?” he snaps back. “You hardly volunteered out of the goodness of your heart.”

“I don’t have a heart. Weren’t you the one who told me that?”

“Jesus,” he mutters, dragging his hands over his face. “It never stops with us, does it?”

I don’t answer.

The bartender appears with two blissfully large cocktails. “Any food today, or just the drinks?”

Screw the salad. Lettuce isn’t going to cut it if I have to fuel up for dealing with this guy. “I’ll have the French Dip sandwich,” I say. “With fries.”

Matt gives me a surprised look. “I’ll take the same. Extra horseradish.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask when the bartender takes our menus and leaves.

“Sort of had you pegged for a salad, dressing on the side order.”

“Yeah, well, fighting with you works up an appetite.”

He grins. “You know what else works up an appetite?”

I laugh a little, because his expression is so classically horny dude. “We’re not doing that. Have you already forgotten our plan to move away from the fight-and-hookup thing?”

“Your plan,” he mutters. “I was just fine with how things were.”

I sip my drink. “Do you ever think that maybe the reason we are the way we are is because we hooked up too soon?”

“You mean, do I regret sleeping with you the first night I met you? Absolutely not.”

“Bet you regret the morning after,” I say, giving him a bland look out of the corner of my eye.

He looks back at me. “You already know that I do.”

I take another sip of my drink. He’s right. I do know that. To give credit where it’s due, he did apologize for what he said that morning. And a dozen times after that, too.

Hell, I don’t even doubt that he meant the apologies a hell of a lot more than the off-the-cuff insult that landed us in our roles of adversaries in the first place.