Sweet As Sin

17

1023 words

Thank you, Chloe. Who needs enemies with friends like you?

Looking at me, Nico’s grin faded. His expression became distinctly hungry. I looked away and cleared my throat, squirming.

With a loud, aggravated sigh, Grace reached for the chips and salsa. “I can hardly wait to hear the rest.” She bit down on a chip, crunching violently.

I sent her a warning look. Don’t be so harsh, Grandma, he’s trying to be nice!

She narrowed her eyes. We’ll see.

“Turns out our girl Kat can act.”

Our girl?

I still didn’t look at him. Not even when I felt his thumb brush my shoulder. He began to sweep it slowly back and forth across the space between my shoulder blades. As I was still wearing the little black camisole, this meant his fingers were on my bare skin.

I tried to pretend I felt nothing. Which was like trying to pretend I wasn’t being electrocuted. I started to breathe shallowly. I could smell him, sitting so close. Leather and cigarettes and manly musk. Did he smoke? I didn’t care. I wanted to kiss him again. And again.

And again.

“So she was good!”

Chloe sounded proud of me. Of course she would be. If I decided to be a serial killer and went on a murderous rampage with a kitchen knife, she’d find some way to be supportive. She’d probably buy me a set of monogrammed cleavers.

“She’s very natural in front of a camera,” said Nico. “Obi wants her to star in the next video, too.”

“I think I’d rather have all my teeth pulled out with pliers. Without anesthesia.”

Nico’s gaze flashed to mine. “Thanks.”

I admit I felt happy he seemed so taken aback by my comment. It felt like it put us on more of an equal footing. He was so self-confident, and I was so off-kilter. But I backtracked a little, anyway.

“It’s just . . . all those people. Watching. Judging. It’s weird. I couldn’t deal with that on a regular basis. Once was more than enough for me.”

Fleeting and dark, a look passed over Nico’s face. “Yeah. Livin’ in a fishbowl has its drawbacks.”

There was so much behind that simple comment, it even made Grace pause. She c****d an ear in her “I’m a good listener” therapist way, looking at him a little closer.

As if on cue, the waiter arrived.

He was visibly shaken. He obviously knew what shining star had joined our table. I wondered if he might curtsy. Or vomit. Across the restaurant, peeking around the corner of the hallway to the kitchen, a group of workers had clustered together, staring.

And was that a crowd gathering on the sidewalk outside?

“Ladies, uh, sir, can I get you anything?”

Nico looked at me. “What’re you drinkin’?”

“Margarita. Rocks.”

“Patron Silver?”

Yes, it was now official. This was my dream man. I nodded.

Nico ordered another for me and asked the girls what they wanted.

“Nothing for us, thanks. We have to get going, anyway. You know, work in the morning. Regular people stuff.”

Grace sent him a pointed look, but it wasn’t as frosty as before. That fishbowl comment might have made her begin to thaw toward him. Grace was very sensitive about the burdens people carried. Probably because she carried so many herself.

Nico ordered a whiskey for himself and sent the waiter away, which was when I noticed the restaurant manager herding a cluster of squealing teenage girls away from the front door. I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable with all the attention we were getting.

He was getting.

Yet he sat there as if no one else existed but the four of us. It was like a super power, the way he could ignore how people stared at him. One busty blond waitress had made four salivating passes by our table already, and we weren’t even in her section. But he never even glanced in her direction.

He was, however, regularly stealing glances at me. God, those eyes were blue.

“If you go now, you’ll miss all the good stuff. Kat and I were just about to have an interestin’ discussion. A debate, I think you called it?”

He slid me a heavy-lidded look. A smile quirked his lips.

“Oh? About what?” Grace perked up.

Damn those sharp ears of hers. She could tell he was up to something.

“Well, she’s already said she’s not gonna sleep with me.”

Chloe’s eyes looked as if they might pop out of her head. Grace merely pursed her lips, unimpressed. She was a much harder nut to crack.

“And she’s also said she’s not gonna date me. So that only leaves us at friends.” His smile now gone, he looked back and forth between Grace and Chloe. “And I don’t wanna be just friends.”

Hands down, most bizarre moment of my life. As hiding seemed like a reasonable response to the situation, I dropped my face into my hands.

“There doesn’t seem to be a need for a debate if she’s already told you what she wants.”

As always, Grace’s logic was impeccable.

Bitch.

“That’s just it. She hasn’t told me what she wants, she’s told me what she doesn’t want. So I think since you’re her two best friends . . . ” When Nico paused, I peeked at him through my fingers. “They are your two best friends, right?”

I nodded. He turned back to them.

“So since you’re her two best friends, and she’s not tellin’ me what she wants, I think we should all figure this out together.” His voice lowered. “Because I wanna get to know her. Because I think she’s beautiful, interestin’, and sexy as f**k, and that laugh of hers knocks me on my ass. And I think she wants me, too, only she’s afraid.”