Page 26 of Accidentally Mine
I smiled.“Good as they come.”
He tutted and shook his head.“Somehow, I doubt it.”
I lifted a shoulder.“Doubt all you like.It’s true.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said, his eyes glinting confidently, which made my whole body alight with tingles.
I was sure I’d never responded to a guy this way.
“Maybe we will,” was out of my mouth before I could stop it.
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek.What was I doing?This could be bad.I’d chalked my blindness with Anthony up to being young and naïve and not knowing better.Since then, I thought I’d developed a better sense of intuition, and it’d kept me out of trouble.But now, my intuition was silent.All that I felt was this hunger, an urge in my center, pulling me toward him.
Now, he knew my pen name, which no one else knew.Opening myself up could only get me in trouble.I needed to shut the hell up.
“I’ll have to read it,” he said, pointing to the computer screen and apparently noting the title in his phone.The name slipped off his tongue like a dirty word.“Rebel.”
I ignored the flush of heat that started to climb up my chest.“Do you like zombies?”
He crossed solid arms over his broad chest, one sleeve lifting and revealing an expensive watch.It made me think of Anthony’s father, Malcolm, the leader of his crime family.The man collected millions of dollars’ worth of watches.I suppressed the memory.
“Not particularly.I prefer the living.You don’t strike me as the type of woman who writes horror.”
“Well, I also struck you as a not-so-good girl, so I guess your first impressions are not very accurate.”
A slow smile spread over kissable lips as he motioned to the waitress.I’d been trying to get her attention for the past hour, but she responded to him in an instant.People took notice of him.I understood why.
“Coffee, please.Black,” he said, also motioning toward my mug.Then his eyes fell right back on me.“Sometimes, I think that we become what other people make us.Not necessarily what we wish to be.”
“Oh?So you’re saying you know more about me than I know about myself?”
He nodded.“Perhaps.I know that I probably would have become an electrician if it weren’t for my father.He pushed me to go into electrical engineering.Turns out that it was the right thing for me.”
I studied him, my nerves zinging so loud they were almost audible, thinking that he may have been right.I’d been living in fear so long I’d forgotten who I was.Back when I was fearless, I’d taken creative writing classes and written mostly literary fiction.I’d wanted to be an architect, to help my father with his business.It was the fear Anthony had instilled in me when we started dating that had molded me into the person I was today.A girl who was afraid to have any fun, who gave up her architecture degree, and whose writing reflected the darkness and despair she felt inside.
“You’re an engineer?”
“Was.I own a company now.We’ve pioneered some successful medical technologies that have made it easier to detect certain anomalies in the body.”
“You sound important.”
He scoffed.“Not in the grand scheme of things.”
I stared at him.Anthony would’ve answered that with a yes.Originally, I’d thought the corporation he worked for was a legit shipping business, and he’d said he was second in command, under his father.He always wore a suit, with an air that he was better than everyone else.He exuded a type of cockiness that had hooked me like a fish.Back then, he’d treated everyone like shit except me, and I thought it just showed how special I really was to him.
Until he started treating me like shit too.
It turned out, a man who wasn’t cocky was even sexier.I tilted my head and studied him, having pretty much decided to see this conversation through, instead of bolting for the door like I should have done.“How did you get into the medical side of things?”
“I was always interested in brain trauma.My father died of a stroke from an undiagnosed brain embolism when I was eighteen, and my mother died of brain cancer shortly after I was born.I’ve always been a tinkerer, so I felt like there had to be a way to detect these things earlier, more easily and without radiation.Our product is widely available and testing can be done in any doctor’s office, providing immediate results.”
I could tell from the way he spoke that he felt passionate about it.“That sounds important.”
“Yeah.I believe our product is.”
My eyes tried to mist over with the way he spoke.He let the product shine.He didn’t saymyproduct.He saidourproduct, giving his company and employees credit.He didn’t make it a spotlight of his own magnificence, like Anthony would’ve done.
I looked away.Why was I letting this man in?I needed to stop this.And yet my butt stayed rooted to the seat.God himself couldn’t have budged me.
