Page 58 of Virgin's Stolen Nights with the Boss

‘She told me if I was worried that a man would never propose.’

‘Well, you should have known you were being ripped off right away.’

‘I know.’ Carmen gave a half-laugh. ‘I told her no, and I walked off, but then she called out that I was a Taurus.’

‘If you tell me everything that was said, I can tell you how she knew.’

‘How?’

‘That’s what I do at work,’ he said. ‘I look at all the things that will work, and all the things that won’t work, and then again at the things that might... It’s risk assessment.’

‘It’s hardly the same thing.’ Carmen shook her head, refusing to believe him. ‘You crunch numbers.’

‘I do,’ he agreed.

‘It’s not the same as seeing into a heart,’ Carmen said.

‘It’s exactly the same,’ Elias told her. ‘I get lied to for a living. I get told what’s going to be the next best thing, a sure thing, and I get told what doesn’t have a hope. And then, if something gets far enough to land on my desk, I get to look at it from every angle. And I’m very good at what I do,’ he informed her as their pancakes were served.

‘Well, I don’t need someassessmentto know how she did it,’ Carmen told him, as she dived in to the most perfect, fluffy, syrupy pancakes. ‘These are so good,’ she told him.

But Elias ignored the plate in front of him and sipped black coffee.

‘I know she was making it up,’ she said, embarrassed to admit it. ‘She just took a lucky guess with my horoscope sign—a one in twelve chance.’

‘She’d be laughed off the pier in five minutes if she tried to con everyone with a guess. It wasn’t some lucky guess,’ he told her. ‘You try it. What’s my star sign?’

‘Scorpio,’ Carmen declared, because his words stung a little, but he simply stared back at her. ‘Gemini,’ she attempted, and then flushed, because wasn’t that the sign of the twins? ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to—’

‘Ten more to go.’

‘You wouldn’t tell me even if I was right,’ Carmen huffed.

‘Exactly. And that’s why your friend on the pier wouldn’t bother to try her luck with me.’

‘Okay, Mr Logical, tell me how she knew.’

And Carmen told him everything—about how she’d been jostled by the jogging woman, how she’d tried to assert herself by pointing out her hair and scoffing at the idea of a proposal from a gentleman.

Elias said nothing all the way through—just listened. He didn’t eat his pancakes. He just drank coffee as she gave her account.

‘She called me sassy,’ she said.

‘Then what?’

‘She said something about my mother.’ Carmen took a breath. ‘But I was already walking out by then.’

Carmen looked at the black linen shirt that had provided the nicest refuge, and then looked up to his chocolate eyes.

‘Was the jogger a part of it?’

‘I doubt it.’ He put down his cup.

‘So you don’t know?’

‘She knew you were Spanish, yes?’

‘Not necessarily,’ Carmen refuted. ‘A lot of people here think I’m Mexican.’

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