Page 19 of Acquiring Ainsley
“Nothing.” She laughed to herself. “But maybe I should vomit in it then, just to get back at you. You… you… you…”
“What?”
“Arro—” She hiccupped. “Arrogant bastard.”
I laughed. “You don’t mean that, Ainsley. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
She blew some air between her lips. “I’m not the first woman to call you arrogant… and I won’t… be…”
“The last?”
She waved a shaky finger at me. “Yep.”
“I’ll take it as a compliment.”
I stopped the car at the next red light. As we idled behind a Mercedes, I took the opportunity to observe her without her noticing. She was far too focused on the nearby beach homes and the balmy South Florida night.
And damn, she was so fucking gorgeous.
I knew that she knew this about herself. She had to—she’d been raised that way. Ainsley had the confident air of a woman who thought her privileged life would always be secured. Even the current state of her family’s business affairs hadn’t stripped that away overnight; that sort of quality stayed imbedded in her DNA. She had no hair out of place; her flawless makeup highlighted her flawless skin, toned body, and thin curves. She was perfect.
In fact, the truth was, no one I’d met in New York intrigued me as much as this woman. I sent up a silent thank you that Ross Publishing’s current state of disaster had given me one more chance to prove it to her.
“So, The Beachcomber Club,” I tried when the light changed from red to green. I pushed the accelerator with my foot and drove us through the rest of Palm Beach’s pristine main drag. “What an exciting night.”
“Don’t sound so bored.” She laughed, keeping her attention on the passing streets. From this traffic light, we had about three blocks to the Palm Beach Towers property. “You were there at the party, too, you know.” She looked at me, and our eyes met for a brief beat. “Why is that, by the way? You never told me. No one forced you to come.”
I refocused on driving. “I decided to come down here for a few days, and my assistant reminded me before I left that I had an open invitation to attend. I hadn’t even noticed it.”
“I don’t buy it. You—yougive money to a charity? Nope.”
I tsked. To get what I wanted from her, I still had a lot of work ahead of me, and the little digs she dished out regularly only served to remind me of that. “I’m more generous than you think, Ainsley.” The muscles in my back tensed. “And you must have forgotten about Margo.”
“Oh, god, I did.” She clicked her teeth. “Okay, that was a shitty thing to say.”
“You’re drunk. I won’t hold it against you.”
“I’mnotdrunk.”
I chuckled to myself. “Whatever you say, princess.”
“Don’t call me that,” she whispered. “I’m not a princess”
“Fine.” I stopped the car at another red light, the last one before I would turn the car into the Palm Beach Towers entrance. This night needed a reboot. Fast. “I’m sorry. I can be an asshole without even realizing it.” I regarded her. “But if I do say so myself, I’m getting pretty good at excusing your bad behavior and not taking any of it personally.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” She laughed to herself. “A great deal of it Iabsolutelyexpect you to take personally.” Our eyes met. “Just not that last comment.”
I decided at that moment to take a leap. “I owe you an apology, Ainsley. A big one. That night at the Whitney Museum—I was out of line. Way out of line. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Shouldn’t have done what? Make out with me? Or insult me?”
“Both,” I murmured. I didn’t add that I’d played that moment over and over in my mind a thousand times since then, always landing on how comfortable it had felt to do it, and how unusual it had been for me to lose control like that. “I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted,” she said.
We fell silent again, until I parked the car in the visitor spot just to the side of the condo complex entrance. A large fountain set off the white building, which stretched about five stories up and featured units with expansive views of the Intracoastal Waterway and West Palm Beach. I guessed by the midcentury architectural style that the building had been built in the 1950s.
“You know, one of these days, you won’t hate me so much,” I said. “It’s going to happen.”
