Page 33 of The Holiday Hate-Off
Enzo Cafiero just offered to take my virginity as if he were taking one for the team.
CHAPTER 8
ENZO
Ididn’t mean to say that. The words came spilling out of my mouth, and only once they’d been said did I realize what I’m really doing here tonight. I don’t want Lucy to hook up with some other guy becauseIwant her.
I might not like this woman, I definitely don’t want to date her, but Iwanther, and the thought of anyone else getting to be the first man who sinks into her is driving me around-the-bend crazy.
Lucy reaches out, and for half a second, I’m convinced she’s going to pull me in for a kiss. My entire body clenches with anticipation as I prepare to kiss her back.
She leans in close, so close, but then drills her pointer finger into my chest before snatching it away as if the contact had burned her.
It definitely burned me.
“How.Dare. You.”
I throw up my palms and step back from her. She probably wouldn’t believe it, but the last thing I want to do is make a woman uncomfortable. Ever. “It’s an honest offer. You said you want it to be a random guy, someone who means nothing toyou. What would mean less than sleeping with a man you hate?”
I barely even know what I’m saying. None of this is coming out right, it’s just…
She smells so impossibly good—like the cinnamon candy we used to get in our stockings back when I actually enjoyed Christmas—and she’s so pretty with her head tipped up slightly to look at me, that long hair curling down past the swell of her breasts. Standing here with her, even though she’s insulted everything about me, from my manhood to my character, it’s obvious what I want.
It seems like she might actually be considering my logic, but then she gasps, a new fire entering her gaze. “You’re only offering because I said you were a bad lover.”
“So you’re admitting you said that,” I comment, probably hammering a few nails into my own coffin.
“Do you seriously think I’m going to sleep with you just so you can prove your point?”
“I’m glad you think I can prove my point, because I am a good lover. Agenerouslover, I’ve been told. But no, that’s not why I made the offer.” I can tell I’m not forming a strong case for myself. I’ve been told I have a silver tongue and the ability to turn anything to gold just by touching it, but this woman isn’t impressed with me and never has been.
“So why did you?” she asks, planting a hand on her perfectly rounded hip, pulling the fabric of her sweater taut.
I swallow against a dry throat, knowing already that I’m not going to get what I want, at least not tonight.
“I’m going to be in town for a while, at least until the shop is doing better. I know what dating is like around here. Everyone knows your business. It’s a nightmare. But I also don’t want to be celibate for months. If everyone thinks we hate each other, they’d never?—”
“Know,” she corrects firmly. “If theyknowwe hate each other.”
I tip my head in acknowledgment. “Yes. And I’m also trying to protect you from other men who wouldn’t keep their mouths shut. I would never say a word about you. The last thing I want is to end up in that gossip column again.”
“No one wants to end up in that column,” she says pointedly.
I shake my head. “Not true. Some people consider it a badge of honor.”
People like Brandon Wright.
I won’t let her go home with that kind of guy, a known smooth talker who would broadcast everything that happened between them to the entire town. Maybe that makes me an overbearing asshole—hell, it certainly does—but there it is. I feel an insistent need to make sure she doesn’t trust the wrong man.
“I’m trying to be a gent?—”
“A gentleman?” she challenges, lifting her eyebrows and leaning in slightly, an antagonistic move that still gives me a whiff of her cinnamon scent. “Like I said, whoever tried to teach you failed. Your mother should have put you in finishing school.”
This again. I could tell her what happened with my mother, but I don’t. She’ll find out soon enough, given that everyone in this place knows everyone else. I don’t need pity.
“They refused to enroll me, sorry.”
“Of course they did,” she says, shaking her head, her hair moving with the motion. It’s mesmerizing to watch, but I snap my gaze away to prove my self-control isn’t completely nonexistent.
