Who Wants to Marry A Billionaire?(13)
As Nina stood up and scanned the sidewalk, the paparazzi looked really confused—a completely unknown woman driving a GT? Maybe it was just a marketing stunt, but they continued to snap away. Nina saw Daniel on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, pecking at his phone, a bodyguard standing a discreet distance away. He looked, she thought, like a young titan of industry. He wore a light grey, double-breasted bespoke suit with a subtle plaid pattern of darker grey and light blue. His shirt was a robin’s egg blue and white pin stripe, and his tie had a dark red field with the tiniest blue and grey pattern sprinkled into it. A white silk handkerchief was neatly folded in the breast pocket. It was polished, the kind of combination that shouldn’t exactly work but in fact does, because too much matching is the hallmark of an amateur fashionista.
Nina tried calling to him, but her voice was still hoarse and he didn’t hear her over the Porsche’s engine as the valet eased it away from the curb. She croaked “Daniel,” but this time, it was the paparazzi that heard her, and they went wild. A mystery woman was arriving in a Carrera GT to meet Daniel DeVere? It was a feeding frenzy. Suddenly she was mobbed.
Hearing a commotion, Daniel glanced up from his phone as Nina waved at him helplessly from within the crowd of snapping photogs. Then they started pushing her around, and Nina felt trapped, and started to panic.
Daniel’s jaw nearly dropped when he saw her. He knew it was Nina, but this was no Nina that he’d ever seen. She looked incredible, and exotic, and…hopelessly overwhelmed. Stuffing the phone into a pocket, he felt upset with himself for never considering that Nina would fall prey to the pack of paparazzi that were always sniffing around him. She was being compensated for her troubles, Daniel reminded himself, but this was too much.
Before his bodyguard could stop him, Daniel grabbed one paparazzo by the jacket and pulled the photographer out of the way as he waded in to get Nina. Another one blinded him with a flash, and angry, Daniel pushed at the camera to get it out of his face. The photographer faked falling down, and started screaming that Daniel had assaulted him. Daniel glared at him as he grabbed Nina’s hand, put a protective arm around her shoulders, and quickly pushed back through the melee and into the restaurant as his bodyguard scrambled to open up a corridor for them.
Once inside, they were on private property and the photogs couldn’t follow. Nina felt a little stunned and didn’t know what to say. The aggressiveness of the photographers was more than she could ever have imagined. Daniel held her at arm’s length, a hand on each of her shoulders. “Are you okay? I’m really sorry, I should have seen that coming.” Nina bobbed her head up and down, still dazed. Daniel raised a finger in the air, and the ma?tre d’ immediately materialized. Without taking his eyes away from Nina, he simply said “private room.”
The private dining room was elegant and cozy; the table was positioned in the corner, with plush banquettes on two sides. There was a side table for serving adorned with beautiful cut flowers. A small waterfall tinkled away on the opposite wall. Daniel sat Nina on one banquette and slid in on the other. A waiter silently appeared, simply awaiting Daniel’s instructions.
Daniel felt attracted to Nina’s extravagant mane of hair. He pushed the hair back away from her face, marveling at its softness as he did. “Take a deep breath, it’s okay. Clearly I failed to instruct you in “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous 101. I’m sorry for that.” He smiled, a little sadly Nina thought, as she whispered, “It’s okay, it just…caught me by surprise.”
“Let’s have a drink while we figure out dinner. What’s your poison?”
Normally Nina would have had a glass of red wine, or maybe a beer, but she realized her hands were shaking. “Irish whiskey, make it a double, neat.”
Daniel looked at the waiter, “You heard the lady—Midleton single pot still, make it two doubles.” The waiter evaporated.
“Daniel…”
Daniel interrupted her. “Business can wait a minute. You just had a near death experience.” He smiled.
Nina found that she was relaxing, “Well, it wasn’t quite that bad.” She laughed a little.
The two drinks appeared on the table. Daniel took a sip, and then pushed his glass away. “Drink up Nina, I just had a really good idea.”
Chapter Ten
Driving up the coast with the salty wind in her hair felt like just the thing she needed. She had to admit that Daniel handled the Porsche much better than she did, and he lost the remainder of the paparazzi with a couple of tricky turns and then a burst of sheer speed once out on the interstate. Most of the photographers had followed his McLaren, which his bodyguard had driven in the opposite direction as a decoy before they even left the restaurant. Now they were off the highway and cruising leisurely down winding, coastal, side roads somewhere in the vicinity of Gloucester, but Daniel wouldn’t tell her exactly where they were going. The ocean seemed unusually calm, and a half moon and stars winked at them from above.
Glancing over to Nina, Daniel took a moment to assess her transformation. He’d always thought she was cute enough, but damn, she looked hot. Still, there was a wonderful unpretentiousness to her that he was learning to appreciate. Her hand dangled outside the car, catching the wind as she waved it about. She had recovered from her little experience outside the restaurant, the whiskey no doubt helping, but they hadn’t said a lot. Daniel realized that there was something to be said for a companionable silence.