There is innuendo in those words that has me snapping back at him. “But you won’t be around to expand my tastes, now will you?”
“That depends on you.”
“What does that mean? Because if sleeping with you is a negotiation strategy, I don’t want to sleep with you.”
He closes the space between him and the table and I have nowhere to go. He’s in front of me, so close I can smell that earthy scent of him again. He picks up the bottle, reads the label and fills my glass before drinking, his mouth now where my mouth was only minutes before. His eyes twinkle with mischief and suggestion as he says, “It’s good,” and then adds, “for champagne.” He sets the glass down. “And yes, I want to fuck you. No, it’s not a negotiation. Fucking you and getting fucked by the Kingston family are not synonymous, even if that’s your intent.”
“I didn’t come here to fuck you, Eric,” I snap. “I came for help. Just leave, okay? I told you, forget I was here.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Not until you finish what you started?” I challenge.
“We aren’t done with each other. I think we both know that.”
“We’ve been done for six years.”
“If we were done, I wouldn’t be here right now. You’re the only reason I’m here.”
I cut my gaze, and I’m back in that night I met him, standing on that stage, staring out at the audience and looking for him. “Harper,” he says softly, and when his voice was hard moments before, it’s not now.
I force my gaze to his. “I went back to the cottage, hoping you hadn't really left.”
His lashes lower and now he cuts his gaze, like the idea of me going there actually affects him, and when he looks at me, his blue eyes are laden with emotions I can’t read. “I had to leave.”
“I know,” I say, because I do. He hates that place. H
e hates me as an extension. How can I want a man that hates me?
The doorbell rings again and it’s sweet relief and my escape. “That’s my food. You can go. I know you won’t help. I knew almost the moment I walked into the lobby today.”
He studies me a moment and turns to the door. My heart squeezes with how easily he’s going to leave, how certain his steps, when I just told myself and him that I wanted him to leave. He opens the door and I hurry around the table to greet the delivery person. Eric steps back and allows the woman to enter, and I expect him to exit, but he doesn’t. “Where would you like it?” the woman asks of the tray in her hand.
She asks this question of Eric and he arches a brow at me. “Right here,” I say, indicating the coffee table.
The woman sets everything up for me and still, Eric doesn’t move. I give him a “you can go” look and he returns it with a short shake of his head, a silent no, and the look in his eyes is pure heat. I cut my gaze and sign the ticket with a generous tip. The woman hurries to the door and then I’m alone with Eric again. He saunters to the couch and sits down in front of my tray, and when he tries to lift it, I have no idea why, but it sets me off.
I rush forward, sit next to him and hold down the lid. “You don’t get to know what I order or what I like. You left. You’re going to leave again. Who I am and what I like is not your business.” I stand up. “Leave now.”
He pushes to his towering height and faces me, and I’m immediately aware that joining him on this side of the table was a mistake. He’s close, big, and he smells all earthy and perfect. I have about ten seconds to have that thought before he drags me to him, and my God, he feels just as good as he did back then, and it’s too much but not enough. “You keep talking about me leaving,” he says. “Why? Because you can’t believe that the bastard could walk away from the princess?”
Anger flares hard and fast. “I’m going to forgive you for saying that because I know how they treated you. I know where it comes from, but you told me not to make us about them, but you did, then and now.”
“I was wrong when I said it wasn’t about them. I saw you up on that stage, with them, a part of them.”
“Really? Because I looked for you and saw you leaving.”
“I was there just long enough to see who you are.”
“You didn’t see me at all. You saw what you wanted to see and for a really smart person, that was a shallow way of thinking. You barely knew me. I barely knew you.”
“Do you want to know me, Harper?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “You’re leaving again. You won’t help. You won’t—”
“Do you want to know me, Harper?”
“I’m pretty sure you’ve already shown me the parts I need to see and they don’t work for me.”