Still not saying she’s not interested, because it would be a lie. She glares at me, and I realize I’m smiling again. “Okay, no games. Tell me you feel no vibe between us, and I’ll let it go.”
“How many ways do you need me to say I’m not going to date you?” she asks.
I fight a laugh. She can’t say it. She knows there’s a vibe. “What I’m hearing is that you sense we crackle, and you were jealous when you ran into me with Lyra this morning.”
“First of all, let’s establish that Lyra is definitely not her given name. Secondly, we crackle?” She shakes her head. “I do feel like I’m about to snap, and if you don’t let this go, I’ll pop off.”
“You want to hear my confession?”
A pause. “No.” But she gnaws at her thumbnail and eyes me like she thinks I might bite … and she might be into it if I did.
“Sitting here making cereal puns with you is more fun than anything else I’ve done today.”
“You need better hobbies.” But she’s stopped chewing on her thumbnail.
“Now that I’ve made a confession, don’t you feel safe to make a confession too? Like that you were jealous at the restaurant?”
She places her palms on the table and meets my eyes, her amber ones glinting. “Was I jealous when the man I labeled asa charmer the first time I met him then charmed a librarian into brunch because he needed the attention I wasn’t giving him?” She leans forward and, without breaking eye contact, says, “No.”
There’s no room for interpretation in her denial, and it doesn’t make me feel good. “Why is it bad to be charming and enjoy the company of women?”
“It’s not.”
“Then why are you holding it against me?” I scrub my hands over my face. Why am I trying to make her jealous? Do I have that much ego? “It wasn’t even a date. With Lyra this morning. She asked to meet up because she put out some feelers in her network and came up with a connection who might have some information on Samuel Brown.”
She shifts in her chair. “You didn’t have to tell me that.”
“Yes, I did.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“I want it to be your business. I’m trying to figure out how I get a fair chance.”
“Atwhat?” She sounds genuinely exasperated now.
“Withyou.” It comes out blunt because I don’t know how much I mean it until I say it.
“Your chances aren’t any better or worse than anyone else’s, because I wouldn’t give anyone else a chance right now either. I’m here to focus on work. Period.”
“That’s not true. I have more of a knock against me. You’ve decided I’m like Hayes, and that’s it. You’re not accepting any more input. Everything I do comes to you through a Hayes filter.” I lean back and cross my arms. “Basically, you’re prejudiced against me.”
“You mean because you grew up in the same city, went to similar prep schools and the same college, and come from wealthy families? And because you’re both way too aware of your hotness, and you both need to flirt with anything in askirt?” She gives me a look of mock surprise. “Gosh, Jameson, you caught me. I’m one hundred percent prejudiced against East Coast Ivy boys when their hair is suspiciously pretty.”
I reach up to touch my suspiciously pretty hair before I catch her smirk and drop my hand with a scowl. “You’re saying that you don’t have the ability to look past my external traits to see if I’m different?”
“Hate to break it to you, but almost everything about you is exactly what I expected it to be, including your hair.”
“Almost.”
“What?”
“You saidalmosteverything. What’s been unexpected?” I’m pushing my luck in this conversation, but I want to understand this woman I like more each time I spend time with her.
“Your job,” she admits. “I would expect MBA, law school, even med school. But historian and author of nonfiction books with clickbait titles? Didn’t see that coming.”
“Choosing teaching as a career—something no one born with my silver spoon does—doesn’t improve my score?”
She shifts, and for the first time, she looks like she doesn’t know what to say.
