Her gray-blue eyes lock onto mine for a few moments before she slowly shakes her head no.
"I don't think so," she says. "But it does make me wonder: do you see women as ingredients?"
She narrows her eyes and fixates her attention on me, holding me in a place with a gaze that would be intimidating, if I lacked confidence in my words.
"You focus on the wrong things," I tell her. "You focus on words, not the meaning behind them."
The frown on her face grows bigger. "Would you care to elaborate?"
I nod.
"When you first meet a person, all you see is potential. You don't know all about who they are or who they can be, but you can tell by the way they speak or react, by the way they move, and by the way they articulate their thoughts what they have the potential to become."
Ann shrugs. "That's all very vague."
Vague. That seems to be her favorite word. She's a very straightforward, no bullshit-type of person, and not much of a theorist, it appears.
"You, for example," I say, raising my voice and enjoying the way her head tilts up when she realizes I'm about to talk about her. "You're very concerned about what other people - me, for example - think about you. That strikes me as odd, considering you're obviously a very strong-willed and independent person otherwise."
It's hard to tell whether she's flattered by my words, or not. She looks at me with an apathetic expression, not a single muscle on her face moving.
"But it also tells me one very important thing about you," I continue, noticing that her ears move upward in attention, like a little bunny. Fuck, she needs to stop with that damn cuteness.
"It tells me that you like to please."
The frown is back on her pretty face. I'm sure I'll see a lot of it, if I decide to take her in. I'm also sure that I'll be able to keep that face of hers in check, eventually.
"I like to please?" she repeats. "I hardly think so."
I smile at her as she scoffs. "I wouldn't expect you to agree. I'm just saying there's more to a person than you can see on first impression - that goes for you, and for me, too."
"You like to scatter a lot of intellectual fairy dust on all of this, don't you?"
Her question catches me off guard, something that doesn't happen very often.
"When do we get to the real stuff?" she adds. "The terms of this deal? When do we talk about that? I thought that's what we're here for."
I signal for the waiter to bring us the next course of food. A simple hand gesture suffices for them to know what I want. I've been here many times before, and I usually order the same array of dishes.
Just moments later, two servers appear at our table, one of them clearing the empty plates, while the other exchanges them for a new dish, a selection of antipasti.
Ann sits up straight, tense and impatient with her eyes glued to the table. As soon as we're alone again, her eyes dart up to mine, her eyebrows arching in an expectant expression.
I straighten up, too, gesturing toward the food in front of us.
"We'll eat," I inform her. "And then we'll talk business."