Page 60 of Almost Perfect
I squinted to stay my smile. I liked this woman too much considering there was absolutely nowhere for this to go. She was out of my league in about ten different directions, and even asking her here tonight had been stupid. And yet… I hadn’t been able to convince myself not to ask her. After the talk with Mom, it’d almost seemed inevitable.
“We are,” I agreed.
“And I’m fairly different than your usual kind of woman.” She raised one brow for emphasis, or maybe in challenge.
I chuckled and nodded in agreement to cover what almost came out as a guffaw and something real country like “Ayup.”
“You are that. I admit I’ve never taken an internationally acclaimed popstar on a date.”
Nor had I sat across from someone that made me feel a little bit like my chair was broken, and I was falling to the ground but not hitting it.
She chewed a bit of food, and her eyes didn’t meet mine. I took the opportunity to dive into my meal and savored every bite. I didn’t come to Basta nearly often enough.
As we ate in the silence, I wondered if my answer had bothered her. Maybe being reduced to that status made it seem like that was the only difference. I sought to clarify.
“Other than your vocation, I’d say there’s a fair number of other things that are different.”
The brow raised again since her mouth was full of another bite.
“You don’t live here, so that’s one. And you maybe don’t even want a relationship, which is fairly different from most women I meet up with on the app, since it’s specifically not for hookups. And you’re also, uh, a bit more outgoing.”
The tips of my ears burned, but I kept my head ducked, hoping she wouldn’t be able to see the matching singe on my cheeks.
“I’m outgoing?”
The tone told me very clearly that she didn’t view herself that way. And fair enough, she wasn’t what I’d call an extrovert. Certainly not like Warrick. Plus, I hadn’t really meant socially outgoing.
“Maybe not like you’re an extrovert. I guess you’re just… I wouldn’t say you’re simple.”
She chuckled low. “I’m definitely not that, no.”
“And you’ve got a different style and such.”Oh hell, this was going nowhere good.
“Style? Like my dress?”
Those brown eyes speared me in my seat. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I looked down to see myself taped to the chair—her gaze held me so tight.
I swallowed and nodded.
Her demeanor intensified in some way, but I couldn’t have said how. It was like she suddenly sat closer than she really did.
Was this some kind of popstar charisma voodoo or something? My heart beat wildly in my chest, and I felt faint.
No, really, I felt like I might be moments away from fuzzy vision and then graying out.
“You don’t like my dress?”
She glanced down at one of the elbow-length sleeves. It left her forearms and hands bare, but everything else from knee to just above her collarbone was covered. She eyed it as though the sleeve was emblematic of the whole thing and not a fake out.
“I didn’t say that.” My voice was a little low, because naturally, now I was thinking about the dress. About what the dress did and didn’t show. About the body inside the dress and the extremely intriguing person inside the body.
“So in this case, different might not be so very bad?”
Just as I was about to confess hownot so very badher brand of different was, even though I didn’t fully understand why considering it seemed so completely opposite than what I’d always thought I wanted, good ol’ Josh showed up again.
“How we doing, folks?” His placid smile didn’t waver as he looked between us.
I had to give it to him—he didn’t appear to be affected by Calla’s presence at all. And at this point, he had to know who she was. But maybe with Jamie and a handful of other celebrities in the area more often now, it really didn’t faze him.
