Page 26 of With This Kiss
“Really? What would you call that, then?” she asked, waving her hand in front of me.
I pointed at myself. “This is just my face. I can’t help it if other women find me sexy.”
She rolled her eyes so hard, I was surprised her eyeballs didn’t stay lodged in the back of her head.
“You’re full of it, aren’t you?”
“I want you to be full of me,” I said without missing a beat.
Outrage instantly filled her face. Fuck, how fascinating. Before she could say anything to that, the server came up.
“Welcome, folks. Have you been in before?” he asked, his eyes lingering a little too long on Jamie for my liking.
Jamie nodded.
“Perfect,” he said. “Are we ready to order, or would you like more time to look at the menu?”
“We’re ready,” Jamie said without looking at me. My smile widened. Luckily, I wasn’t picky.
I glanced down at the menu and picked the first thing I saw. “Give me a New York strip. Rare. And the bottle of your best red wine.”
“I’ll have the salmon,” Jamie said. “With a side of brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes. No gravy. Thank you.”
I watched as the fucker looked at Jamie one last time before walking away.
Jamie looked off to the side, shifting a little in her seat as soon as it was just the two of us. I watched her.
I knew she could feel my eyes on her, but she pretended not to notice, and I let her have that time to gather her thoughts. She seemed almost… awkward about the whole thing. Had she not been on many dates before?
That would make sense, given who her father and brother were, but I didn’t think it was because she wasn’t allowed to date.
While Davide Caparelli had a reputation for being a cold and heartless monster, it was no secret that he treated his children well. As well as acapo dei capiof one of the most powerful crime families could treat their offspring, I supposed.
She would have had as normal a childhood as her family could allow. It would have been nothing like the kind of environment Kingston and I grew up in.
She turned to me suddenly, as if she had just thought of something, and blurted out, “Tell me something about you.”
I raised one eyebrow at the awkward outburst, and her skin took on a slight red hue. “What do you want to know?”
She shrugged. “Anything. Your family. Your childhood.”
“And you’ll tell me about yours?”
She hesitated. Did she think this date would just consist of me telling her everything about myself while she gave nothing away?
She nodded.
I smiled. “I am the youngest. I have an older brother. My father is an angry bastard, and my mother is a doormat.”
She blinked in surprise, obviously not expecting me to say that.
“Oh… Are you and your brother close?”
“Nope. Maybe because there’s a big age gap between us, and he got sent away to boarding school when I was young.” Not because Kingston was a fucking psychopath.
“I’m not really close to my brother either.”
I nodded. I didn’t know much about the ins and outs of the Caparelli family, but I imagined he wasn’t close to his sister because he didn’t want anyone to know she was his weakness. Or perhaps she really wasn’t. It didn’t matter. The fact that she was even on this date with me in the first place would be enough to give the fucker an aneurysm. I smiled a little at the thought, tempted to take a picture and send it over.
