“Nice to meet you, Pam,” he says with a radiant smile that makes her flutter her eyelashes and wave goodbye.
And then we’re stepping out into the twilight night, leaving behind a curious mother, a bemused bestie, and a plastic grocery bag full of what used to be my favorite thing to do on date night.
Chapter Thirteen
The limo takes up half my driveway and between it and the Tesla, my Turdmobile looks even more ridiculous. I see it’s Lance who is driving tonight, and he’s pulled up next to my pile of steel excrement. I know from Shannon that Lance and Gerald are the two drivers who transport Declan and Andrew the most, and that they’ve been with Anterdec for a long time, largely because of their ability to remain stoic in damn near any situation.
Which is why Lance’s expression of unmitigated disgust is all the more alarming as he pokes his head out the limo’s driver’s window and openly examines my, um—
I realize #poopwatch could have another meaning.
“Nice car,” I say to Andrew as he guides me to the back door, his hand hovering over my shoulder. Curiously, he doesn’t touch me, keeping his palm an inch or so above my back. How do I know? I can sense it, the heat of attraction like the pull of gravity.
“Wish I could say the same.”
Lance snorts. Andrew startles, giving him a curious look. Lance’s face goes shockingly blank in a way that makes it clear he’s fighting hard to look impassive.
“I make an extra $200 a month to drive that all over Boston,” I say as I get in the limo. “Plus expenses.”
“I would pay $200 a month not to have to drive it,” Andrew says.
My laughter fills the night and he joins in, the sound so different from our tight conversations, our tense volleys and verbal jabs that walk a tightrope.
“We can’t all be CEOs,” I answer as I step into the limo. The cool leather seats feel like I’m sliding into a spa chair.
“No, we can’t. Declan just learned that the hard way today,” he says as he shuts my door. Within seconds, he’s opened his and is climbing in. The limo is so wide we have more than enough room to share the back without touching.
Which is a shame.
“Funny. Shannon didn’t say a word about that. You told him?”
“Dad and I did. I’m not sure whether she knows yet. Thank you for not telling him—or her. It was important that he hear it from me and Dad. No one likes to hear bad news secondhand. I worked very hard to keep this information under a tight level of secrecy.”
“Of course. How did he take it?”
“Relatively well. I don’t have a shiner like yours.”
“Muffin didn’t like being told I was going to be CEO, either.”
Andrew doesn’t laugh, but he turns to me and crosses his legs, one ankle to knee, his body open to me. I turn and face him as well, matching his body language, though I cross my legs at the ankles, because if I imitated him perfectly this wouldn’t be a date. It would be a peep show.
“Why are you here?” he asks softly.
The limo pulls away and into the night. My mind floats off, as if it were clinging to the back of the vehicle by its fingernails, carried aloft by speed like a stowaway on an airplane.
“What?” There goes my brain’s Vitamix again.
“Why did you agree to dinner?”
“Why did you ask?”
“Because it was about time.”
“Yes.”
“And because I’ve been stupid.”
“Oh, definitely yes.”
“And because you’re loyal.”
Say what?
“You mean, like a dog?”
“No. Like a good friend.”
“Why did you kiss me the first time? That day when I barged into your office?”
Hey, if we’re being blunt, I might as well go for the brass ring.
He nods, eyes looking at everything and nothing, finally settling on my face. “Because you were so passionate about protecting Shannon. You were adorable and irate and you had this energy I wanted to taste.”
I’m holding my breath. I thought we would spend this first date doing the awkward getting-to-know you dance. Andrew’s gone right to the point. Laser focus.
Just like a CEO.
“Taste?”
“Yes. I know what I want. I don’t equivocate. I decide and act. I compartmentalize. I issue orders and execute strategy. You came in that day and started ordering me around and it was cute and exciting and inspiring. Oddly sensual. And when you kissed me—”
“You kissed me!”
“And when we kissed,” he says, eyebrows raised, as if settling this point once and for all, “I got something far more forbidden than I realized I was getting when I went for that simple taste of you.”
Forbidden?
“What’s that?”
He studies me, as if sizing me up, trying to determine whether he should tell me what’s next. Or not. Finally, his face changes through a series of three or four emotions, most of them involving some variation of deliberation.
And then:
“You didn’t fit in a box.”
“I fit in a closet.”
He doesn’t laugh.
“You intrigued me.”
“Not enough to call me after that kiss, though.”
He shakes his head. My heart plummets.
“No, Amanda. The opposite. You intrigued me too much.”
I get the sense that the word ‘intrigued’ means something else.
“You mean I scared you.”
His eyes flash with emotion I can’t read.
“Yes.”