Page 3 of Dirty Rich Cinderella Story

CHAPTER THREE

Lori

Tall, dark, and lethally good-looking with an air of power. That’s this man, who’s now set his sights on me. I watch him close the space between us, his stride long and calculated. A panther on the prowl, hunting and I’m the prey. I am not sure there is a woman on this planet that wouldn’t want this man’s attention, even if she felt obligated to decline, for whatever reason. Until this moment, here, now, somehow coming together with him two times in a span of twelve hours, I would have thought I was one of those women. But something has shifted in the air today. Something has changed in me, in my future. I feel it.

He stops at the table and he doesn’t ask if he can sit. He just does. He claims the chair across from me, and the heat in his eyes tells me he plans to claim me with it. “Cole,” he says, and his voice still rough, deep, masculine perfection. And if anything, the charge between us is more powerful than this morning.

“Lori,” I say.

“I thought you couldn’t do drinks tonight, Lori?”

“Maybe I just didn’t want to do drinks with you.”

His lips, which are full, beautiful lips that I shouldn’t be looking at, quirk at the sides. “Is that how it is?” he asks, amusement in his blue eyes.

“I haven’t decided,” I say, because he’s a man who consumes a woman, and I can’t afford to be consumed.

“Then I consider that a win.”

“How is that?” I query.

“This morning you said no,” he points out. “Now you’re not sure.”

“How are you even here?” I ask. “People don’t run into each other two times in a day. Are you stalking me?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“That’s not an answer,” I point out.

“I have business in the area, and my days tend to turn into nights.”

“What type of law do you practice?” I ask.

“Am I that readable or do you just know the area of town and assume I’m a lawyer?”

“Both.”

He arches a dark brow. “Really? I’m that readable.”

“Really.”

“Then tell me what you see,” he orders, lifting my glass and drinking before offering it back to me.

The question, and the offer of my own drink, that he’s intimately taken it upon himself to share, represents his challenges to me: 1) Am I really as good at reading him, and people, as I’ve indicated, and 2) Am I willing to entertain where this might be leading?

And the thing about a challenge is I like it. I miss it. I haven’t felt it, beyond the drive to just survive, since leaving Stanford. I haven’t let myself feel a lot of things in a very long time. Reading people really is my thing. I take my glass from him, our fingers brushing, heat sparking between us so sharp it’s like a bittersweet blade that cuts, and you somehow want it to keep cutting.

I lean back and drink, assessing him like I would an opponent in a courtroom, like he does his opponents in a courtroom. He settles against the leather back of his chair, waiting, his expression is unreadable. “You’re thirty-five,” I say, setting my glass down. “Criminal lawyer. Ivy League school. Trial experience with a high win ratio. Mid-size firm. Partner. Successful.”

He leans forward. “Do you know who I am?”

“Should I?”

“You tell me,” he presses, a sharpness to him that wasn’t there seconds before.

“Let’s revisit that list of what I know of you. I’ve now decided that you’re more successful than I thought and arrogant enough about that success to believe that everyone, including a random stranger, knows about that success. I don’t know you. I don’t know who you are. I didn’t come here for you.”

“But you’re staying for me?”

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