Page 98 of The Bad Boy Prince in Love
Luke came over to their table with his usual confidence.
“This is City Luke,” Hallie said, mimicking his prideful declaration, “and City Luke always has the upper hand, except when he’s covered in coffee stains.”
“Yeah, I had that coming,” Luke said with a slight grin.
“Are you all right?”Hallie asked.“Hope that coffee wasn’t too hot.”
“Yeah,” Luke said, “it was just an accident.Clumsy commuters.”
Hallie guessed he might have tried to pick up a woman in a café as was his custom, but she was glad he didn’t say it in front of Rob since he was still supposed to be her boyfriend.
“Why don’t you go change?”she asked.
“I’m about to,” Luke said, “I’ve got spare clothing at the office, but I wanted to grab some food and coffee first.”
“Looks like you have enough coffee there,” Hallie pointed to his shirt.
“How are you doing, Rob?”Luke said in a casually friendly way.
Rob’s chair made an unpleasant scraping sound as he stood up from the table.
“What’s the matter?”Hallie said.
“I don’t know how long you plan on going out with him,” Rob said heatedly, pointing at Luke, “but I advise against it.Maybe you haven’t changed that much, Hallie.You’ve always seemed inclined to seek out bad company and sabotage yourself.You need to stay away from people like him!”
Rob marched out of the café before she could say anything.She stood there in shock for a moment, but once she had time to gather her thoughts, Hallie decided she would have said, ‘how dare you tell me what to do!’
“And so the green-eyed monster rears its ugly head,” Luke pronounced dramatically.
“Huh?”
“Jealousy.You really don’t know your Shakespeare at all, do you?”
“Maybe he’s guessed why you got coffee spilled on you,” Hallie said, targeting some of her irritation on him.“Were you trying to use your playboy charm on some unsuspecting young lady?”
Luke shrugged.“What can I say?Some people have no sense of humor.”He looked at Rob’s retreating back, and Hallie guessed Luke included him in that category.
“He’s being ridiculous,” she said.“He’s not normally like this; Terry must have gotten to him.”
“So you don’t think I’m a bad influence?”Luke asked with a roguish grin, “You’re not going to stay away from me?”
“I’ll think about it,” she said teasingly.
They stared at each other, trying to decide whether this was serious or a joke.Hallie wondered if he did worry about her taking Rob’s advice.There was a hint of doubt in his brilliant blue eyes.
It seemed all her friends agreed that Luke was bad news.Rob expressed it even more strongly than Jessica, but Hallie actually felt offended that they didn’t trust her judgment more.
She felt she could handle Luke, though it was certainly a challenge.
“You know, this isn’t the countryside,” Hallie said somewhat more seriously, “and if you run around trying to meet other women, I might not be able to track you down as easily as I could back home.”
“I have confidence in your ability,” he said warmly.
“In a big city like this, two million people?”
“Would you still like me if I was completely boring and tame?”he replied with a crooked smile.
