Page 51 of The Refusal

I take another deep breath. The rest of it is going to sound even worse.

“It’s all arranged,” I blurt out.

“Arranged?” Her eyes are like saucers.

“Yeah. My PA, Maddie—the one you met when you came to the office today—has a friend who’s an agent, and she coordinates invites to red-carpet events for me.”

She gawps at me. “Are you serious?”

Her head turns sideways, a muscle ticking in her jaw, and my heart sinks. Fuck. Not good.

“I’m going to the men’s room; I feel like the biggest jerk right now.”

But she shakes her head and laughs, stopping me when I’m half out of my seat with a hand on my arm. She bites her lip, leaning forward with a half smile.

“Do you get lots of invites?”

I’m flattered she thinks this, but I’m not going to lie to her. I want her to understand.

Sinking back into the leather seat, I say, “At first, I was flattered, you know. You can’t help it and it sounds amazing, right? Thrilling, even. But in all honesty … while occasionally I do have a nice evening, mostly it is”—I hesitate, run my hand through my hair—“just awful. Some of these women are”—I wonder how to put this nicely and come up blank—“quite self-obsessed.”

Some of them expect you to be so thrilled in their presence that all you want to hear about is them. One woman talked about herself for three solid hours.

“Only twice did any of these women ask me about the business,” I say. I can’t recall who, but I remember this clear as day.

“You’re kidding, right?”

I shake my head. To my surprise, Jo’s hesitancy has all but disappeared, and she makes a sympathetic face.

“That sounds like a whole lot of disappointing, like going out with Ryan Gosling and finding out he’s an insufferable bore.”

“You like him?” My blood fires up.

She laughs. “God no, not my type.”

“What is your type?”

We’re skating on thin ice now. All I want her to say isme, me, me, while also knowing she won’t say anything of the sort.

She taps her lip with her empty glass, and the champagne I’ve consumed makes recklessness climb up my throat.

“Dark-haired, gorgeous, works in tech?” I say. I have thrown myself right off the cliff now. I described myself as “gorgeous.” No. Just no.

But she just laughs again and picks up the gauntlet I threw on the floor. “Sounds amazing actually. Where do you think I could find someone like that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, work is always a good place to start,” I say. The ever-present pink is unusually absent from her face. I look at her lips.

Her eyes meet mine and she raises a quizzical eyebrow. “Are you flirting with me, Janus?”

I smile down at my hands, shaking my head. “Yes, definitely.”

32

Jo

The effect of several glasses of champagne and Janus Phillips with his floppy turmoil of hair and smirky smile catches up with me in my suite. Oh, my God, the conversation on the plane and the flirting. Sitting so close to him, every time his gaze rested on my lips—I don’t think he realizes he does it—it made my body hum. Those chocolate-brown eyes, the thick lashes. I hardly registered a thing he said.

We talked about tech, too. Damn. The memory of his hands as he explained something to me: forever-long fingers, neat nails, the dark hairs on his forearms. I’m tired of pretending. I’ve had enough of looking at his no doubt gorgeous body in tight shirts and fitted T-shirts and not knowing what’s underneath. I’m sick of acting as if I don’t want to rub myself all over him whenever I see him like a cat in heat. We have four days here and something wild and careless in me wants what he’s so clearly offering. I’m not sure if I believe all the things he told me about his past hookups, the red-carpet events, but, dammit, I like him.

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