When I leave my bedroom a couple minutes later, Mark’s waiting in the tiny living room, cracking his knuckles, all fidgety.
Hell. He’s struggling. But I don’t know if it’s a big deal?something he can barely even acknowledge?or just an ordinary case of inconvenient attraction to someone you don’t actually like.
I’m not going to say anything. If he wants to avoid the subject, then so will I.
“What’s the matter?” I tease. “Is the bed not soft enough for you, Goldilocks? You want mine?”
Mark mumbles something that sounds a lot like fuck off. But then he exhales heavily, gestures around the bright little room, and says, “This is fine. It’s no problem. I just didn’t realize we’d be staying here instead of in the house.”
“Good, good,” I say crisply, since I don’t want to dwell on our close quarters either. “So what do you say we grab some fish tacos and then head to the florist?”
“Right. Yes,” he says, rising to his feet. “Let’s do that.”
“Excellent. I’d like to pick up a bottle of wine for later too.” But not because I’m going to ply you with rosé and hit on you. Nope. No sir. “. . . And then we’ll hit the florist and check off item 2A on your spreadsheet.”
That red hue returns to his cheeks.
Weird. Do errands get him hot?
No. It’s still me somehow. I recognize that look from Angel’s showroom too. When he was undressing me with his eyes. It’s the same look he had in the car when I stretched across him. And the one he wore, too, when he covered my hand with his thirty minutes ago and told me he wanted to drive.
I take a deep breath and ignore it. “Come on, Banks. I’m not getting any younger.” I head for the door, where I step out and then turn around to make sure he’s following me. “P.S.—this time it’s my turn at the wheel.”
His pupils widen, and here we go again.
Fuck.
Ignoring this attraction won’t be easy.
It gets a little easier when we hit the road, with the wind in our hair. I turn on the radio, and EDM blasts from the speakers.
Mark immediately changes the channel, surfing until he finds NPR.
I snicker. But I let him get away with it. The MarketWatch guys are giving a financial rundown. “The S and P is up twelve points in blah, blah light trading. The US Ten-Year Note is blah, blah, blah, blah. A big company bought another big company, and for some reason that matters.”
I’m paraphrasing.
Mark pulls out his phone and makes a call. “Hey, Brett. How’d the yield curve react to the CPI? Eh, okay. I hope you hedged out those futures. Right. Sorry. Yeah, I’m sure you’re tied up. But before I go?rook to A4. Later.”
He hangs up, and I attempt some casual conversation.
“What’s a CPI?”
“Consumer price index. It’s a measure of inflation. The bond market hates inflation.”
“Don’t we all. And what’s A4?”
“Oh, a chess move. It was my turn.”
It takes me a beat to understand what he meant. And then I snort. “Who were you talking to? I thought it was a co-worker.”
“It was. Brett is my work husband. And we play chess too.”
There are so many things I need to unpack in that sentence. “Your work husband?”
“Sure. Just because it’s Wall Street doesn’t mean you can’t have friends. Especially if they play chess.”
“But you don’t have a chess board here in the Porsche, Banks.”
He points at his temple. “It’s right here. I’ve been stewing over this move, because he’s kind of got me cornered.”
I’d like to get you cornered.
“Huh. Is playing chess without a board anywhere on your scale of hotness? Because it totally should be.” Oops. That just slipped out.
For the briefest of seconds, his lips curve up in a grin. “Maybe,” he grumbles before changing the topic. “Where’s this taco place?”
“Coming up.”
Maybe I’ll make my own scale and just call that move chili pepper hot.
Lunch is fine. I barely taste the food. And Mark wears those shades the whole time, so I can’t see his eyes. I don’t know what he’s thinking.
Not that it matters, I guess.
Then we’re off to the florist, where we learn that they don’t have the salmon blush roses Hannah requested, but they have peach blush roses instead.
Apparently this is a problem, because Mark's lips thin. “Could I see one, please?”
“Right away, sir.” The young man behind the counter disappears into the back and returns a minute later with a . . . flower. Christ. I care about aesthetics, probably even more than most people. I like art, and I love photography. But flowers are all pretty, and a rose is a rose is a motherfucking rose.
Shakespeare was right.
Mark picks up that flower and inspects it like the future of humanity, and maybe even his precious inflation index, too, hangs in the balance. Then he sets it onto the scratched wooden counter and aims his phone at it.