I blinked at her. "No?" I echoed.
"Nope," she repeated and turned her attention to the menu.
I wanted to get up and leave right then, but I didn't like losing. "Why not?" I asked.
She set her menu down and met my gaze. "You were late. By more than twenty minutes. No call or text. So that's pretty disrespectful. Then you show up with no apology. Plus I saw you staring at me for at least five minutes across the room and any idiot could tell you were debating whether or not you wanted to come over. Am I not pretty enough for you?" Maron growled. "Let me guess. You like blondes and preferably ones who let you get away with a lot of shit?"
I gaped at her.
She nodded. "Ah. Pegged you. Nice. Well," she said as her attention turned back to her menu, "as you can see I am most definitely not blonde and neither am I vapid." She shrugged. "Cool blooded, as I am a vamp and it’s biology, but certainly not cool-tempered, especially when it comes to jerk werewolves who think they're better than me."
At that moment, our waitress came over with our drinks. It was a different woman but the way she looked at me told me she'd already been briefed by the hostess. She greeted Maron with a warm smile and set her drinks down carefully, but when it came to me, she set a four ounce glass of water down in front of me so hard, half of it sloshed over the side and into my salad plate.
"Gosh," she said. "So clumsy." And with that, she walked away.
Was I in a restaurant full of crazy, hormonal women or was this some sort of fight club where I was about to get my ass kicked and thrown out the back? This place was seriously hostile. I glanced around the dining area and it was full of happy couples laughing.
I looked back at Maron only to see two high spots of color on her cheeks.
This chick was super pissed at me. Guilt made the spot between my shoulder blades itch. I glanced at my watch only to see I had less than a half hour before the podcast started. I couldn't be nice and make it home in time, so plan piss off my date was still on. I hadn't expected to be quite so successful at it, though.
I attempted to raise a white flag. Tense was one thing. Hostility was something else, entirely. "I don't think I'm better than you," I said quietly.
"Oh really?" she snapped. "Then why are you being such an ass?"
"This is just the way I am," I answered. It was partially truthful, though I did know how to be a gentleman and I also knew how to show up on time.
"It's a miracle you're still single," Maron said, her tone as dry as drought season.
"Quite," I agreed, even though I knew she was being sarcastic. I snapped my menu back open. "So what's good here?"
"I'm not the one to ask," she said. "I don't eat meat."
I slowly lowered my menu and stared at her. "Excuse me?"
She sighed. "Let me guess. You didn't even read the packet Portia gave you, either?"
I shook my head. "Didn't seem important."
If steam could have come out of someone's ears, Maron would have been a locomotive. A thin film of red crossed over her eyes and my testicles shrank a little as I remembered my parents cautioning me toneverpiss off a vampire.
Especially a redheaded one. Their souls were already in question and then for her to be a vamp, too?
"It.Didn't. Seem.Important?" she said, enunciating her words one at a time making it sound like she was chopping verbal vegetables. "You're looking for a wife and you didn't think reading the information about them was important?"
Abort! Abort!
I tried for cool and casual. "I'm one of those see where it goes kind of guys, ya know?" I most definitely wasn't one of those kind of guys, but I wasn't sure what to say to calm the rabid beast down.
"Ah," she said, "I see." But I could tell she didn't. Not even a little.
"Good," I said because that was the only thing I felt Icouldsay.
"Listen, Sterling." She said my name like it was a dirty, vile thing, and I almost winced. "There are a lot of important things listed in that file. A lot of things about me. What I'm looking for. What I see for my future. And now since you didn't bother to read it, you don't know any of it. So what that means is you've left the burden of this date to me. Because I know things about you. Because I read what Portia gave to me. And if I'm being perfectly honest, I didn't find one thing on there particularly appealing, but we aren't defined by what's on paper are we?" She reached up to squeeze the space between her brows as if I were a vexing problem she was having to deal with.
I shook my head. "Definitely not."
"But you see, I think you've proven me wrong tonight. I see you as one dimensional as a sheet of paper fallen to the floor. You've shown no depth, no concern, no real feeling other than for yourself."
