“We’re going to figure this out,” he said, the conviction he’d had since the moment he’d found out about her pregnancy...well, after he’d determined that he must be the father.
“That’s all I want,” she admitted. “I want to get this sorted out before I have to return to New York and start filming my show again.”
“When is that?” he asked.
“About three months’ time,” she said. “I can put them off for a few weeks, but everything hinges on my show. I see increased sales in merchandise when it airs. My company employs about twenty-five people so I can’t flake on them.”
“No problem. I’m hoping this week will give us both the answers we want. I know I want to get to know you better and I hope you’ll see that I’m not as craven as I might have seemed at first when I lied about who I was.”
“I’m already seeing it,” she said. No use hiding the truth from him. Billie always said she had no filter, which also meant she had no walls up to protect herself. But honestly she couldn’t stand fake emotion in her real life. She spent so muchtime projecting an image to the world via her media channels that when she had downtime she had to be real.
“Good,” he said. “I am, too. I had no idea how honest you would be about everything. I sort of expected you to think about how it would affect your follows and stuff like that.”
She shook her head and shifted away from him. “I’m not like that. I mean I do have to be aware of how I look and the image I present but I’m not shallow.”
“I know. That’s what I was trying to say. I’m really good at putting my foot in it and saying the wrong things, but believe me, my intent is never to be an ass.”
She had to smile at that. She noticed he used self-deprecation a lot to divert tension. She wasn’t sure if it was sincere or if that was his way of pushing any blame away from himself. For now, she was going to take it at face value but it was something for her to watch.
“Fair enough,” she said. “So what do you usually do during the flight?”
“Work,” he said.
“Work?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Or work out. I have a treadmill in the bedroom.”
She shook her head. He was surprising. She hadn’t pegged him for a workaholic but as she looked around the aircraft she could see it was set up as an office. She also noticed a client entertainment area.
“Well... What are we going to do?”
“Whatever you want,” he said.
Whatever she wanted... Now that was dangerous invitation.
He hadn’t expectedto find himself sitting across his conference table from her with a deck of cardsbetween them. But then everything about Scarlet was unexpected so maybe he should stop trying to anticipate what she’d do.
He, his brothers and their friends had a monthly poker game in Cole’s Hill and he was pretty good at reading them. They’d played together since high school when they’d thought they were cooler than they actually had been. But Scarlet was completely different. It was harder for him to find her tells. And not just because she had a pretty good poker face, but because she distracted him.
She’d braided her long blond hair, but tendrils had escaped, with one of them brushing against the side of her face. She kept reaching up and tucking the strand behind her ear, which fascinated him. He’d seen his sister, Bianca, do the same thing, but it had never seemed as interesting as when Scarlet did it.
“I’ll raise you a protein bar and two Hershey’s Kisses,” she said, pushing the snacks toward the middle of the table.
He arched one eyebrow at her. “That’s a pretty steep bet.”
“It is... Though I have heard that you should never wager anything you don’t want to lose, so if you really want to keep your protein bar you should fold.”
He shook his head. “No way. I’m sort of an all-in kind of guy.”
“Are you?” she asked. “You seem like an I-don’t-place-a-bet-unless-I’m-going-to-win kind of guy.”
“Possibly,” he said with a shrug. “In life, definitely, but when it comes to cards I have a different set of rules.”
She nodded. “You’re all about the rules, aren’t you?”
He didn’t think she meant that as a good thing and thought maybe he should hedge his answer. But when she’d been brutally honest about her family, he’d decided to do the same with her. Keep it real instead of trying to protect himself from letting her see too much of who he was. “I know it makesme sound like an old fart, but I am about the rules. Life is just so much easier when we all know what to expect.”
“Why break them the night of the gala, then? And who called you an old fart?” she asked, laughing. “I mean I haven’t exactly seen that side of you. At the gala you were definitely not acting like a stick-in-the-mud.”