What did surprise him was that he wasn’t bored, if anything, he was just perplexed.
“Why did you want to come here with me?” he asked her quietly, head tilting to the side as she tapped another melon—a cantaloupe this time.
He wrinkled his nose at the sight and she cocked a brow at him, her gaze catching his expression. “What’s wrong?”
“I hate cantaloupe.”
She grinned. “Then, I won’t buy one. You only had to say.”
He snorted. “If only life were as simple as that.”
“It can be. When you’re a billionaire.” She winked. “I thought it would be good for you to come here.”
“Good for me?” he repeated. “Why would it be good for me?”
“Keep you grounded,” she told him, definitely tongue-in-cheek as she gathered some apples into a brown paper bag.
“Who said I wanted to be grounded?”
“I did.”
Despite himself, he had to laugh. “Already trying to change me, woman.”
She winked. “No. Keeping you perfect that’s all.”
He snorted again. “The last thing I am is perfect.”
She cocked a shoulder. “Maybe not to everyone’s tastes, but you are to me.”
That had him blinking, touched despite himself. “That’s probably the sweetest thing a woman has ever said to me.”
It was her turn for her nose to crinkle. “Because ‘sweet’ is exactly how I want you to think of me.”
He reached over and caught her hand. “It’s exactly how I think of you. As well as a million other ways.”
That had her peeping a glimpse at him through her lashes. “Oh? How?”
“I think of you as a minx, as a tease, and as a joker.”
Her breath caught, and she slowly licked her lips. His eyes were glued to her tongue, and for a second, his heart stopped, his brain unable to focus on anything else, not even breathing, as he watched the passage of her tongue around the decadent curve of her mouth.
Then, she shattered his calm by whispering, “What about as a victim?”
“Huh?” he asked, blinking and utterly taken aback by her question.
She shrugged. “Do you think of me as a victim?”
He scowled, sensing the depths that question plunged to. That bastard best friend of his. “No,” he said gruffly. “The last thing you are, Samantha, is a victim. You’re a fighter.”
She bit her lip. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“I’d most likely still be with Jamie if he were alive. That doesn’t make me a fighter. It doesn’t even make me a victim. It just makes me stupid.”
He shook his head. “No, it doesn’t.”
Her jaw clenched. “I was thinking about it the other night. It does.”