He smiles wryly. “I don’t want an out.”
I smile, nodding. Growing more aware that I am still sitting here naked with this man I just met. “So, finance?”
He nods.
“Do you like it?” I ask, smiling.
“Love it,” he says quickly.
My eyebrows perk up. “Really?” I grimace. “It seems so restrictive. Boring and kind of like … redundant?”
He scowls. “And what do you do?”
I shrug. “I’m a painter. Actually, the reason I am staying here is because I was supposed to be in an art show at the gallery next door tonight, showing off a piece.”
“What happened?”
I groan. “I didn’t reply to the email, so I lost the spot, and it was so stupid because I totally meant to.”
He runs a hand over his hair. “And what do you do for money?”
I drop my jaw. “What kind of question is that?” I ask, offended.
“A logical one?”
I scoff, suddenly feeling even more confused by this match. “Honestly, it’s none of your business, but my parents fund my grad school and apartment, and everything. But you and me … we are opposites. I thought my mother was trying to match me up with the man of my dreams … turns out …”
His eyes narrow. “What does your mother have to do with this?”
I wrap my hair into a bun on the top of my head, securing it with a hair tie. “She filled out the application or whatever. And she must have lied. I go for artists, for philosophers, for writers — not business men who order steak and wear loafers. Not men who aren’t emotionally available.”
“Are you fucking with me?” he asks, setting down his empty glass.
I shake my head. “No. I mean, you say hardly two words at dinner, fuck me senseless and then get all closed up again. I want a man who wears more than a hard-on, I want a man who wears his heart on his sleeve too.”
Neil is reaching for his pants, and pulls them on. “I don’t think you know what you want, Imogen.”
I blanch as he buttons his shirt. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I blink rapidly, confused as to why this has to spiral so fast. “I like you, Neil. You make me feel …”
He pauses, looking at me. “What?”
I look up at him. His deep brown eyes searching mine. “Everything.”
He steps toward me where I still sit on the edge of the bed. “Do you like that?”
I take a deep breathe. Do I like that? “What kind of question is that?”
“Yes or no. Do you like it when I’m with you or not?”
“I …” I don’t know what to say. And this never happens. Yes, I like it, but also Neil unnerves me. Makes me doubt everything. “We just met.”
“Whatever your mom put on the application,” he says, reaching for his coat, “must have been a lie.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I asked for a career-oriented woman who know what she wants. Do you even want to be a wife?”
I nearly spit out my drink. “A wife?”
6
NEIL
The way she looks at me makes me feel like a fucking fool.
She is clearly all wrong for me— just look at her. So beautiful it’s as if she was plucked out of a painting herself.
A muse in her own right, and way too enchanting for a stick-in-the-mud like me.
She repeats herself and it sends a dagger to my heart. “A wife? Really? That’s what my mom said? I mean, I’m … I never … we just…”
I need to get out of here. Now.
“No explanation necessary. I get it.”
“Neil, wait,” she says, wrapping a sheet around her.
I turn back, my heart tightening as I look at this woman who has my head spinning. “What?”
“You and me … we’re opposites, but … I swear…”
“Swear what?” I ask. Truth is, I feel something deep, something so damn real it scares me. I haven’t felt this way since Margene.
I may have just met Imogen but I knew the moment she sat down at the table that she was the one for me. Her eyes, her laugh — they way she made me feel. Like together we could fight the odds. Like together we might have that real, intangible, once in a lifetime thing: love at first sight.
But when I look into her eyes I see she is already backing away, shaking her head — is she scared?
“I swear I must have read this all wrong,” she says, looking at me in disbelief.
I want to tell her she didn’t. That she read this right. I want to tell her how I feel, what I am thinking — that I maybe be self-controlled but one night with her makes me want to be reckless, to throw caution to the wind, to turn a new leaf and make her mine. If I could, I know she would wrap her arms round me, I know she would be mine — but instead I feel my chest tighten, my shoulders stiffening … my vulnerability pulling me away.