The Kiss Quotient(73)

“I’m glad you like the dress,” Michael said with a softening expression. “I’m looking forward to seeing you wear it tomorrow.”



* * *



? ? ?

After a lunch of catfish soup with pineapple and celery over rice, Stella rushed back to the office. She wanted to look at the data again.

Philip lifted a hand at her when she passed by, but she didn’t have time to deal with him. She strode past his office, tossed her purse in her desk drawer, and sat down, clicking through screens on her monitors until she came to the function she’d formulated to model men’s purchasing behavior with regard to high-end boxer shorts. It was an elegant equation with five key variables that included things like age and income bracket and several minor variables.

She’d boiled the termination of male purchasing of boxers down to a single binary variable, β, and had found markers that led to its activation, things like increased spending on fine dining and luxury gifts. It seemed counterintuitive to Stella that in a time of decreased price sensitivity, men suddenly quit buying their underwear. Even luxury boxers weren’t that expensive.

Now, as she looked at the math and the numbers, Michael’s words trickled through her brain. Women like to take care of the people they love. Somehow, some way, Stella had used market data, math, and statistics, to quantify love into a single variable.

β was love.

β was a zero or a one. A yes or a no.

And it was overwhelmingly linked to the time when men quit purchasing their own underwear. It wasn’t an absolute, of course. People were people, and they hated to be entirely predictable. But it was a visible trend. You could gamble with this data and win more than you lost.

If a woman purchased underclothes for a man, it meant she loved him.

Stella was fully capable of purchasing underclothes.

She left work early that day to go shopping. When she returned home with her find, she wrapped it in a red bow and hid it at the bottom of the drawer Michael had appropriated for his underclothes. If he stopped buying boxers now, it meant he loved her back.

If he loved her, her labels wouldn’t matter. She’d tell him everything.





{ CHAP+ER }





23



Michael raked a hand through his hair as he stared at the suits hanging in Stella’s closet, trying to pick out the one he’d wear to the benefit tonight. He was going to meet her parents. Every nerve in his body told him it was going to go terribly, but he would still drag himself there.

Stella had asked him to come.

She peeked into the doorway, grinning. “Can’t decide which one?”

“You pick.”

Shyly, she stepped into the closet. She was holding the dress he’d made to her chest. “Zip me first?”

Because he couldn’t resist, he kissed her neck, sucking on the sweet skin as he searched underneath the loose bodice and palmed her tits. When he pinched her nipples, her breath hitched in the sexiest way.

“We’re going to be late if you keep that up.”

“Everyone’s late to these kinds of things.” He bit her nape as he stroked a hand over her belly and prepared to slip into her panties. He loved touching her there, loved the way she responded.

“My parents are never late. They want to meet you.”

His hand froze in mid-descent. Because he couldn’t bring himself to say he wanted to meet them—why would he want to meet people who were bound to disapprove of him?—he said, “It should be interesting.”

“Thank you for coming with me. I know you’d rather do other things.”

He’d rather do prom fittings, but he didn’t say that. “You know how I like to wear suits.” That, at least, was true. He withdrew his hand from her dress and pulled the zipper up.

“A three-piece. I love you in three-piece suits.”

“The black one, then. It’ll look good with your dress.”

She grinned as she turned to face him. “Everything looks good with my dress. People are going to ask where I got it. Can I tell them it’s a Michael Larsen original?”

He hesitated as he heard his full name on her lips. “You know my real name.”

Her eyelashes swept downward. “It was on your electric bill and the uniform in your picture. Are you mad?”

“Are you?” Had she Googled him or his family? There were articles in the local papers that outlined in detail all the shit his dad had done. Had she read them? No, she couldn’t have. She wasn’t looking at him with veiled suspicion. It was only a matter of time though.

His heart crashed, and his skin went hot. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. But the clock wasn’t ticking down to the time when he exploded and hurt everyone. Now, it was ticking down to the time when she learned everything and it was over between them.

She lifted a shoulder, but she didn’t look at him, and she didn’t speak.

“You are mad,” he said in realization.

“Mad isn’t the right word.”

“What is the right word?”

“I don’t know. I felt like you didn’t trust me.” She hugged her arms around her middle. “Like you were making sure I won’t be able to find you when things end between us.”

“No, I trust you. I was just . . .” Afraid of losing her. “I hate my last name.” That, too.