Page 66 of Purchase Power
She announced that the moment the pasta arrived, complete with a nightshade-based sauce. Noah stared at it with distrust for a second, struggling to remember his own food allergies.Am I allergic to nightshades? What do nightshades do to a person, again?“Tear up the stomach” did not sound pleasant, but there Lucy went, biting into her pasta and giving a thumbs up at the chef’s abilities in the kitchen.
As long as they steered clear of current events and questions too personal for Noah to bear, it was certainly a romantic evening.Romantic… with her.Noah couldn’t remember the last time he enjoyed a night as simple as this one – yet stillromantic.Had he ever remembered what that was like? When was the last time he enjoyed a “romantic” relationship with a woman? Usually, even with the ones he tried to genuinely like, he was in it for the sex. The reassurance that he was normal, because what man of his standingdidn’thave a relationship of some kind? Even David had a girlfriend every twelve seconds. Talk about a man who fell in love easily, as opposed to Noah, who needed a list of reasons presented to him.
Lucy launched into a long, animated spiel about her family, from her little sister whose name was much like Stacey’s, to a mother who worked hard to care for both of her children alone. Noah couldn’t relate to scrimping for pennies or worrying about paying for school clothes, but he knew what it was like for a father to abandon the family and leave the mother fighting for her place. Lucy’s mother, however, never remarried. Not like Tonya, who had married the first man who showed interest in her and the two young children in Gabriel Manor.
Ronald Gray.The name still made him shake in anger. From the day Ronald first showed up to Gabriel Manor, arm around Tonya’s and a big grin on his face, Noah hadn’t trusted him. The therapists and his own mother said it was jealousy. Noah had been at a vulnerable time in his childhood when his parents divorced and his father skipped the continent to go bang the nanny into oblivion. He supposed it could have been jealousy and anger at first, but Noah was also a great judge of character. He knew evil when it walked into the room.
Tonya claimed to have been in love. Maybe she was. Scorned by her husband for a younger woman and only allowed to live in this house as a “favor to the mother of my children,” it didn’t anger Noah to know that his mother might have simply been grateful that a “nice” man gave her so much attention a mere two years after her divorce. Throw on the fact that he already had his own decent sum of money, and Tonya might have assumed he wasn’t in this relationship for hers. Or her children’s.
No, he only wanted something else…
“Heeeey.” Lucy snapped her fingers before his face. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Noah snapped out of his strange memories. “Like what?”
“Like you’re either gonna eat me… or throw me down on the table and fuck me.” Lucy leaned against her hand and batted her eyelashes. “I mean, that could be hot, but it would end with my tits in the pasta and half your staff seeing us, probably. I can’t remember… was that allowed in the contract?”
“Lucy.” Saying her name still took some getting used to, unfortunately. “If I’m enjoying our time together, I prefer to do it away from prying eyes. While I’m sure that my staff has a good idea what we’re getting up to in the privacy of our own rooms, they know better than to steal a peek. I’m also not inclined to give them such opportunities.”
“If that’s your fancy way of saying you want the look of my pussy all to yourself, Mr. Gabriel,” Lucy said with such smug satisfaction that he almost choked, “then I like it.”
“Do you.” A purr laced his voice.I don’t… purr. What in the hell?“I thought I told you that you can call me Noah.”
Her smug countenance blossomed into a full smile. “I know. I really wanted to sayMr. Gabriel,though.”
Noah didn’t know why he was grinning back at her like that. Since when did he take the time togrin?To flirt? To entice the woman he had been fucking nonstop for two weeks to come get some more? One of the biggest complaints his ex-girlfriends had about his personality was the complete lack of flirting. Orcourtship,as some of them called it. Perhaps… he had merely been with the wrong women.
“I wasn’t aware I was looking at you in any particular way.” That was his story, and he was inclined to stick to it. “But you are very lovely tonight, Lucy. Even with a bit of nightshade on your lip.”
She lifted her hand – then her napkin – to her mouth. Lucy missed the red blemish coloring her already pink lips. Noah reached across their small table, his own napkin touching her cheek and wiping away the tomato sauce.
He hated to admit it, but that might have been the most romantic gesture he had ever done for a woman.
Noah better come up with a way to get unromantic very, very quickly. His reputation was on the damn line. So was his sanity.
His blasted, blessed sanity – a sanity he didn’t even know he still had.
