I can’t suppress an unladylike snort of disbelief. “Attica? Oh sure, every day. Unless this car is Marty McFly’s time-traveling DeLorean and you’re going to book a reservation six months ago, good luck.”
“I have a standing reservation during the grand prix weekend,” he says with amusement. “My assistant likelydidmake it six months ago.”
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry. A fancy dinner would be wasted on me.”
“Nothing could ever be wasted on you, kleine Hexe.”
I hide the shiver that goes through me at the sound of the pet name I haven’t heard out loud since we were naked. I clear my throat and turn forward, examining the motionless, precisely groomed back of a male head—the driver.
“We could go for a walk, I guess,” I tell Klaus.
If we’re walking, I won’t have to look at him.
The thought of being across a table from this man, staring at his tumble of soft, silver-touched wavy hair, his shapely lips, his flashing eyes… I don’t think I could take it.
“A stroll it is. Perhaps the beach?”
I’m about to agree—I was raised to be reflexively accommodating—when I decide to just be myself. “You know where I like to walk most? Neighborhoods with houses, so I can see in the windows. It’s like… dozens of miniature reality TV shows. People are interesting.”
His dark eyebrows dart up. “I’d enjoy that very much, watching these small ‘reality shows’ with you.”
Klaus directs the faceless man in the front seat to find us a neighborhood with walking-friendly streets. The driver spends a minute perusing a map on his phone, then takes off.
It’s late enough on a Sunday night that traffic is easy, and soon the car pulls up curbside to a winding neighborhood road flanked with small homes. Klaus climbs out, then opens the door and holds it for me, politely keeping his eyes averted as I struggle to stand without my dress slithering up to my waist. The evening breeze is balmy with the scent of eucalyptus trees and pavement.
Klaus offers an elbow. After a pause to consider, I take it. Immediately I’m struck by the warmth of him radiating through the fabric—there’s something so personal about it. We wander slowly, passing through two pools of streetlight before either of us speaks.
He lays a hand over mine in the crook of his elbow. “My gaffe the night we met in Abu Dhabi… it’s no excuse, but I must clarify that this habit—the giving of money—has never been a reflection on the women. It’s far more the case that…” He looks up at the city-light-tinged sky. “I sometimes find it difficult to trust that a woman is interested in me for non-monetary reasons.”
“Oh, hush. I’m not buying that you don’t recognize you’re objectively hot.”
“It may surprise you to hear that the money is rarely declined. You’re the only person who has been offended—”
“Hurt,” I cut in.
“Hurt, yes. It has shamed me, realizing there may have beenmanywomen over the years who were hurt or offended but didn’t call me out as you did.”
I pull my arm from his. “I wasn’t insulted at being mistaken for a sex worker. I don’t judge, and sex work iswork. But you implied I might’ve been in it for a reward. That my enjoyment was… performative. I’d have been less upset if it hadn’t beengoodwith you. Like you understood more than just my body.”
There’s no mistaking the ripple of sorrow that crosses his expression at my words. “I felt that too. You may not believe me, given the circumstances.” His left hand faintly moves toward me; then he pockets it—I’m not sure if he’s trying to seem aloof or trying not to touch me. He clears his throat. “It was an amazing evening.”
I want to agree, but I want to punish him even more.
He’s making it really hard to keep hating him.
“I knew… why Sofia cared for me,” Klaus continues, tentative.
He tries for the comment to land lightly, but it can’tnotfall unruly and broken as a dropped sack of groceries. It’s interesting that he doesn’t specify who Sofia is, like he knows I must’ve looked him up. It’s then I realize he’s surely looked me up too.
“There was an ease in my essential self being…remembered,” he goes on. “We were, to each other, always the people we’d known since our youth. Now so much feels like pantomime.” He shakes his head. “Wealth changes everything, makes it harder to let anyone in. But I’m the person my life has made me: a businessman, head of a hundred-million-dollar racing team, a widower, a pragmatist.”
I don’t know him well enough yet to tell if his candor is vulnerable honesty or manipulation.
He studies me sidelong. “I don’t suppose I have any chance with you?”
“Not a prayer, bub.” I do my best to make it lighthearted—ajoking tone like a Prohibition-era wise guy. I need to act as if I don’t recognize what’s at stake. The moment feels bigger than both of us, bending time with its gravity.
We’re quiet for a full block, watching lit windows as we pass. Mostly it’s just illuminated curtains, walls, furniture. But in a few houses there are visible people: a standing man holding a beer and talking to some friends who sit on a nearby sofa, a woman carrying a laundry basket, a stocky man on an exercise bike watching TV.
