Model Behaviour. Tamara Morgan
Читать онлайн книгу.
been serious about you, even though you refuse to see it. We’re good together, you and I.”
“We’re only good together because we’ve never been together.” Livvie leaned right back, dropping her voice to a strained hiss. She wasn’t sure why, but it seemed important that no one overhear this conversation. And she was a woman who normally shouted sexual overtures from her fire escape, leaving them hanging there alongside her bras. “Sex ruins things. The second you cross that line, there’s no going back.”
“I told you, I already crossed that line. I crossed it the day I met you.”
Her heart picked up. That was the golden day. The origami day. How dare he ruin it?
“And I’ve been standing here for years, waiting for you to cross over and join me. I thought I could wait forever, but it turns out I’m not as patient as I thought. I’m sorry to have to call in your promise like this, but you leave me with no other choice.”
He made another motion toward his jacket pocket, this time extracting his cell phone. His umbilicus, she liked to call it. Although he was always polite enough to turn it off when they had their dinners, he kept it on for all other events and gatherings. She’d once thought about taking up smoking, if only so she could have a reason to step outside whenever he did.
But no one could smoke every time Ben was on the phone. Not even a chimney.
“Oh, shit. You’re not really—”
He dropped his phone into her gimlet. She could see the screen flashing out as the alcohol seeped into the cracks and rendered the expensive electronic useless.
“‘Number two. You must spend an entire twenty-four hours without your cell phone.’” He flashed her another one of those sympathetic grins. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay close by my side until, let’s see, eight thirty-four tomorrow night. You’re going to want to make sure I don’t cheat on this one.”
“You can’t really expect me to sit around babysitting you until then.”
“Oh, but I do. There are five other requirements on the list I need you to witness. I’m sorry, Livvie, love, but you’ve forced my hand. By this time tomorrow night, I’ll have satisfied all your obligations.”
“Don’t say it.”
“And then it’ll be your turn to satisfy mine.”
“If you think the silent treatment is going to work on me, I’m afraid you’re headed for disappointment.” Ben sat next to Livvie in the back of the cab, the warm length of his thigh pressed against hers in what she could have sworn was an intentional act of defiance. “The things I have planned for us don’t require much in the way of talking.”
She crossed her arms and scooted two inches to the right. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a response—not even to tell him how much she hated him right now. He was ruining everything.
“This also makes it easier for me to say what I want without interruption. I can’t decide whether I should start by telling you all the things I love about you, or if I should jump right into seduction. Do you have a preference?”
She felt his searing gaze land on her profile, and although she didn’t say so out loud, she prayed for the second one. At least with generic sexual overtures, she stood a chance against him. Withstanding overly aggressive male advances was something of her specialty.
“Since I still have to complete five more of your herculean tasks before the seduction portion of events takes place, I guess I’ll start with the compliments. Do you know what it was about you that first struck me? And before you start guessing, it wasn’t your sweet disposition.”
She snorted, immediately regretting it when a satisfied grin moved crookedly across his face.
“I remember it like it was yesterday.” He adopted a falsely poetic air. “I saw you at that Beck concert, rocking out in leather pants as if you hadn’t a care in the world, and was determined to introduce myself. I almost did, but my friend Mike told me not to bother. ‘That’s the infamous Olivia Winston,’ he said. ‘She hates pretty little rich boys. She’ll devour you before you get past hello.’”
“What are you talking about? We didn’t meet at a Beck concert.” This had to be the worst attempt at sweet talk she’d ever heard. He didn’t even have the right woman. “We met when we sat next to each other at some political fund-raising dinner that dragged on for four hours. We were bored out of our skulls. Our friendship was forged on mutual misery.”
He flashed a cocky smile. Dammit. She was supposed to be ignoring him.
“That’s where you’re wrong, love. The dinner might have been the first time we met, but I knew who you were well before that. Do you have any idea how much I had to slip one of the waiters to get him to move my place card next to yours that night? No. I won’t tell you. It’ll only make you vain.”
All her resolutions to ignore him fled as the taxi came to a stop in front of the Montluxe Hotel, with its impressive stone facade and glinting windows. He wasn’t happy to just step on her origami-night illusions—he was destroying them, ripping them to shreds and casting them to the wind. “Liar. You didn’t do that.”
“I did. You think they make it a habit to put the two youngest, best-looking people at those shindigs next to each other? Of course not. We were there to charm dried-up millionaires into opening their wallets for the next election, not make googly-eyes at each other over the dessert course.”
“I beg your pardon. I didn’t make a single googly-eye at you.”
“I know.” He reached into his back pocket to extract his wallet, then handed a large bill over to the driver with the request he keep the change. “And that was the first thing about you that struck me.”
He exited the cab in one smooth movement, not bothering to open her door or check to make sure she was following. The action wasn’t rude so much as it was telling, announcing his certainty that she would accompany him without question. It was yet another example of the way he saw the universe and his place in it. Right at the center.
And she would follow him—that was the worst thing. Ben knew exactly how to get the results he wanted from his audience, and she wasn’t immune to his hold on the strings. He’d done the unthinkable and wedged the idea of romance between them, and she wouldn’t be able to relax until he took it back out again.
She took her place next to him on the sidewalk, prepared for battle, but he didn’t turn to acknowledge her. At least, not physically. He remained gazing up at the hotel’s facade, almost as though he’d never seen one before.
“Do you remember that time you called me from Tokyo because you couldn’t sleep, when all the neon lights of the city were driving you crazy, and you didn’t know how to make it stop?”
She paused, uncertain whether to answer or not. Answering would only be playing into this game of his, but she did remember that night. She’d been feeling homesick at the time—not for a place, since the concept of home had never really existed for her, but for the comforts of a friendly voice and an understanding ear. For his friendly voice and his understanding ear.
“Of course I remember,” she said irritably. “We played Twenty Questions for hours, only you kept picking the same object over and over again. It was so annoying.”
He laughed. “After the fifth or sixth time, I figured you’d start catching on.”
She frowned. She had caught on, but that was the way Ben played the game. He lulled a girl into a false sense of security and then yanked, turning everything upside down.
Obviously.
“It wasn’t even a very good object, if I remember