“Come on, Nick.” She laughed. “I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of hussy.”
“What if I promise not to think you’re a hussy?”
“Nope.”
“What if I say please?”
“I’ll still say no.”
“Pretty please?”
She laughed hysterically. “You really are adorable.”
“So what do I have to do?”
She smirked at him and the puppy dog look he was giving her again. “You can take me on nine more dates. And then I will take you home with me.”
“Ten dates, huh?”
“Yup.”
“Is that the standard for everyone?”
“Yes, but I’ve yet to have the chance to actually enforce it with anyone.”
He lifted his eyebrows as his jaw fell open slightly. After a moment, he cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Uh … so you’ve never actually like … been with anyone?”
She laughed sheepishly. “No, I have. But only three people. And the third one was why I had to make it a hard fast rule.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, because I slept with that one almost immediately and he turned out to be a total player and a big fat liar,” she sputtered indignantly. “And that wasn’t nice to experience. I’d hate to deal with it again.”
Nick fell silent as he took a long sip of his drink.
“Why ten?” he finally asked.
“Because,” she replied. “If you can manage to stay with me for ten dates, you’re worth what I have to offer. And I deserve someone like that.”
Chapter Six
Nick
After dinner, Nick led Samantha across the street to a club. He almost cut the evening short, knowing he wasn’t going to get what he wanted, but realized he actually enjoyed hanging out with her. Not enough to deal with the stipulation that would ultimately get him in those sexy white shorts, but enough to stick around until the end of the night.
It was true; she was beautiful and had a great sense of humor. She would make an awesome girlfriend—for someone else. Maybe even for him in some other alternate universe where relationships were only fun dinners and heated nights in the bedroom. But that wasn’t the universe he lived in so he opted to use the evening to randomly make out with her and potentially cop a feel if he could get away with it.
The potent Cape Cod from dinner had loosened her up quite a bit, and she flirted with him relentlessly, which only caused him to be somewhat hell-bent on changing her mind about the stipulation. So he flirted back.
They clung intimately to each other as she placed an order for two shots, and then two more until they ultimately found a dark corner and sipped on mixed drinks while trying to converse.
“If you don’t like to cook,” Samantha slurred. “What exactly do you do with your spare time?”
Nick swayed his head side to side slightly. “Ehhh. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? How do you not know?”
“I don’t know.”
