To Have and to Hold (The Wedding Belles #1)(28)

“Do you want—” Brooke licked her lips and tried again. “Do you want to have another drink with me?”

His eyebrows lifted. “Here? Now?”

She nodded.

Seth studied her in that cool, assessing way he had so perfected. Then he stood, and Brooke’s heart sank—both from the disappointment of having taken a risk that hadn’t paid off and from the strange pang she had at the thought of watching him walk away.

But he didn’t walk away.

Without so much as a hesitation, he rounded the small cocktail table to sit beside her, settling into the seat Grant had vacated just a few minutes earlier.

His distance was perfectly respectable. He didn’t crowd her, didn’t touch her, and yet somehow he seemed so much closer than Grant had been.

“This okay?” he asked quietly, suddenly looking adorably unsure of himself.

Brooke smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, this is just fine.”

Seth held her gaze until the arrival of the waitress ended the moment.

“Martini?” he asked, jerking his chin at her empty glass.

“Yes, same thing, please,” Brooke said, smiling up at the waitress. “Belvedere, slightly dirty.”

“I’ll take another Manhattan,” Seth said.

When Brooke turned back to him, he looked amused.

“What?” she asked.

“A dirty vodka martini . . . somehow that seems to be exactly the perfect drink for you.”

Brooke tilted her head. “Do you always mean for things to sound the way they do when they come out of your mouth?”

“How’s that?”

“Provocative.”

“What’s provocative about repeating your drink order?”

“The dirty part,” she muttered, looking away.

His laugh was low and sexy. “Ms. Baldwin, I assure you that I didn’t mean it inappropriately, but I’m intrigued that you took it as such.”

She ignored this, deciding that if she was going to survive this—whatever “this” was—she’d need to get the upper hand.

“So tell me about this woman,” she said, keeping her voice light. “For someone who’s so anti-wedding, it sounds like you came rather close. Grant seemed to agree.”

“Grant’s delusional. Although, I never said I was anti-wedding.”

She snorted. “You don’t have to. You wear your skepticism like a scarf.”

His expression turned considering. “I think marriages can work, absolutely. I just don’t think they work for the lovey-dovey reason you see in the movies.”

“Lovey-dovey? Really?” Brooke asked. “Also, could you be any more cliché right now?”

He gave a little laugh. “You get that a lot, huh?”

“Let’s just say the whole ‘true love is a fantasy’ routine is a bit tired.”

“And what would you have us all subscribing to?” he asked as the server approached with their two cocktails balanced perfectly on a tray. “That we’re all just waiting to be tamed by the right woman?”

Brooke waited until the server had placed their drinks down and moved away, buying herself some time.

“Not tamed,” she responded finally. “We women just want—we hope . . .”

Brooke trailed off, and Seth shifted his body to face her more fully, his expression turning earnest. “What? What do you hope?”

“That someone good will love us,” she said quietly.

He blinked in surprise, and she gave a little sigh as she picked up her drink. “I know. It’s sad, really, how simple it is. But the truth is, I don’t think any of us women really want or need the roses and the fancy dinners or even the poetry so much as we just want the love.”

Seth said nothing as he watched her take a sip of her martini. She should watch herself. Martinis packed a punch, and the glasses at this bar were large. And yet, while she certainly felt the buzz from her last one, she also wasn’t entirely sure that it was just the alcohol at work.

She was pretty sure the man next to her was every bit as intoxicating as the vodka. Maybe more so.

“Okay, so what’s your take on it?” she said, embarrassed by how vulnerable she felt after her overshare. “You said that marriages could work, but not for the ‘lovey-dovey’ reasons. Why do you think some of them last, then?”

“For the same reason any merger works. When both parties stand to benefit equally, there’s no reason it shouldn’t work.”

Brooke stared at him. “That’s . . . that’s . . . hideous.”

“How so? Everybody wants something, Ms. Baldwin. It’s just a matter of ensuring each side can offer the other what they want.”

“All right,” Brooke said, turning toward him and matching his posture. “I’ll play along. What is it that your ex wanted that you couldn’t offer?”

His head snapped back a little, and Brooke gave him a victory smile. He hadn’t seen that one coming, and that was exactly her point. It drove her crazy when people talked about relationships in that cool, emotionless tone right up until the point you talked about their relationship.

“Nadia . . .” His gaze drifted to somewhere over her shoulder as he considered. “I don’t know what Nadia wanted. I’m not sure that Nadia knew what Nadia wanted. Maybe that was the problem.”