Seduction by Song (7 page)

Clearing my throat, I sit up quickly and look away from him, hiding a blush. “That—was very thoughtful of you, Romeo.”

“I know,” he says.

I frown—yes, of course he would say that. His ego was the size of the whole state of Florida and he didn’t need anyone to tell him he’d done something nice. I roll my eyes instead, then, and firmly remove his arm from around my shoulders.

“Is that all, then? We’re finished?”

He grins, his teeth flashing in the dark of the theater. “No,” he says. “We’re nowhere close.”

I take his arm when he offers it again, hesitating for only a second this time. He must have gone through a lot of trouble to set this up—even if renting the entire theater was going overboard to flaunt his wealth—and I supposed the least I could do was make good on my promise of giving him a chance.

A longer limo ride after the theater brings us to
Deros
, a beautiful restaurant on the outskirts of town that I had only ever read reviews about and dreamt of going to. The girls had planned on taking me once, when I was first accepted into my graduate program with a full scholarship, but getting reservations proved to be an impossible task and we ultimately gave up and forgot about those plans. I try not to appear
too
impressed as we’re led inside to a candlelit dinner in a private, quiet section of the restaurant. After all, Romeo probably just flaunted some money around to secure this reservation—and he probably wanted me to know it, too.

Well, I wasn’t about to be
impressed
.

He orders some expensive-sounding wine before I have a chance to tell him I don’t feel much like drinking more that night, turning to me afterwards like he’s expecting to see me stunned by this whole show.

“Enjoying ourselves, are we?”

I shrug, attempting to appear as disinterested as possible. “It certainly seems you are.”

Romeo laughs, leaning in to smile at me. “And you’ve just been having a
terrible
time?”

I open my mouth to tell him that that’s
exactly
right, but—I suppose it would have been a lie, and I wasn’t about to stoop to
lying
to prove my point. Instead, I simply shrug again.

“The movie was a pleasant surprise, I’ll admit that,” I say, the words coming out more honestly than I intended. I steel myself afterwards, though, facing him with a frown. “But if you think a fancy dinner and bought out theater is all it takes to get under a girl’s skirt—.”

“I’d be right more often than not,” he interrupts very matter-of-factly. “This isn’t about getting under your
skirt
, though—well, it is, but it isn’t
just
about getting under your skirt. It’s about your heart, too.”

I roll my eyes. If he thought a night of luxury and some sweet words would charm me, he was dead wrong and in for a nasty surprise.

“And what’s so special about my heart?” I ask skeptically.

“
I suspect thatit’s pure in a way few hearts are these days.”

The words are spoken so honestly and plainly that I’m stunned into silence for a moment. Not
knowing how to respond to such a sudden bout of genuine feeling from a man like him, I allow him to guide the conversation for a while. I answer absently when he asks me about school as we peruse our menus over wine, struck by the strangeness of how simple and normal this feels all of a sudden.

“We’ll have the oysters to start and the duck for myself,” Romeo is saying when I tune back in, startled out of my reverie by the sudden reappearance of our waiter. “And the lady will—.”

And, just like that, the illusion of normality is ruined. I frown, clearing my throat and interrupting, “The
lady
will be perfectly capable of ordering for herself, thank you very much.”

“
Fire
cracker,” Romeo says in a loud whisper to the waiter, cracking a smile and not missing a beat. “The lady will have the lamb.”

I’m stunned once more, and not in a good way this time. It was one thing to assume, incorrectly, that I might want him to order for me simply because I was a lady and another thing entirely to order for me even after I made it
abundantly
clear that I did
not
want him to order for me.

He’s still
smiling like he’s got something to be proud of when I scowl and fold my arms across my chest.

“I could’ve been a vegetarian.”

He smiles even wider, then. “No, you couldn’t have.”

I frown deeper and raise an eyebrow at him. Sure, I
wasn’t
a vegetarian, but
he
didn’t know that.

“Your friend Lydia gave me some tips,” he continues before I even ask him how he thinks he might know such a thing.

I blink, surprised, before frowning again. Of
course
he charmed some information out of her. Why was I even surprised? I sigh and shake my head, relaxing my arms, but not my frown.

“That doesn’t give you the liberty to order for someone who clearly
didn’t
want to be ordered for.”

“Trust me,” he says. “You’ll like the lamb.”

I open my mouth to tell him he’s given me absolutely no reason to trust him, but I’m starting he’ll doubt to reason—
ever
. I begin to wonder why I agreed to this in the first place. He probably wouldn’t even keep his promise about leaving me alone after this one night.

He isn’t wrong about this, though. When the dish arrives, I
do
like the lamb. Everything is absolutely delicious, and I probably would have selected a similar dish if he had allowed me to choose for myself—it was the principle of the matter, though.

After a long pause, I clear my throat and wipe at my mouth with the cloth napkin in my lap. I had no intention of entertaining Romeo tonight, really, but I
had
been having a fairly good night—had it been with anyone
but
him, I would have called this an amazing date so far.

I suppose I felt the least I could do was make some small talk, because I catch myself saying, “So what’s your deal, then?
Women that aren’t interested in you strike you as special?”

“Oh, you’re definitely special,” Romeo says as he swirls the wine in his glass. His voice is so low and intimate that I feel myself blushing. “
And I thought we made the terms of our deal quite clear already.”

“Not
our
deal,” I say, taking a sip of wine from my own glad in an attempt to keep my voice even. “Yours. Aside from your fame and fortune, I don’t know a thing about you.”

After a short pause and a few more bites, Romeo shrugs and says, like a confession, “This is the only
authentic Spanish restaurant I know around here. I don’t eat out much because I like cooking. I learned everything from my mother. She used to cook us traditional Spanish meals. There was none of that everyone eats in front of TV crap. Everyone and I mean everyone except my Dad had to be home by 5:15 to help her cook, it’s prayers by 6 and delicious family dinner at 6:15. The care, the love she put into every family meal and the discipline she taught me and my sister are some of the reasons I am who I am today. Something like that, you mean?”

I have to clear my throat again before I nod. “
Sounds like you and your mother are really close.”

“Were,” he corrects me. “She passed away
a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I utter.

A longer silence stretches out over the next few minutes. I watch Romeo out of the corner of my eye, almost cautiously, and think over his words as I pick at my food.

“It’s your turn, then,” Romeo says, suddenly. “Let me guess. You put up your defenses because you don’t trust easily, but when you do, you melt like putty and crave a hand to mold you.”

I startle, shocked by how ridiculously
accurate
his statement his. Not that I would ever admit it. I put on a frown, as tough as I can, and ask him, “You think you can mold me?”

“No,” he says. “First I’ll make you
melt
for me.”

I shiver, the promise of his voice crawling up my spine like a set of seductive fingers trailing fire across my skin. Of course he’d say something like that—he was obviously cocky enough to believe it. I knew I should ignore it, shouldn’t let him get to me, because that was
not
appealing to me, damn it.

Except, it almost was.

“Too heavy for you?” Romeo asks after a moment, making me realize that I had gone very quiet and still. “I’ll let you answer another one, then. I’m curious—where did you learn to dance?”

I shake myself out of my reverie and try to frown at him again before I shrug. “What, that thing on stage? It’s nothing. My friends and I taught ourselves some dances to perform in high school talent shows.”

“
Really
,” Romeo says, leaning in across the table like he thinks she’s said something truly riveting. “No gymnastics, professional dance classes? Nothing?”

I shake my head, knowing I should pull away before he gets too close, but finding myself staying perfectly still. “My dad went through a messy divorce when I was a kid. We didn’t have much time or money to spend on extracurricular activities.”

“I was the same,” Romeo says. He relaxes again and settles in his seat, seeming to sense that I needed some space. “Not with the divorce—but I taught myself. It was out of necessity, in a way. I had to turn the music up loud in my room to drown out the sounds of my father yelling downstairs, and when it wasn’t loud enough, I’d add my voice to the noise. I sang along to any song I could recognize until I felt ready to put together a demo tape in high school with my friends.”

I nod, slowly
, feeling empathy flush in my cheeks as I remembered doing similar things myself. I swallow thickly and try not to let those painful memories get to me, not wanting to show weakness when Romeo was talking about such similar things like it was nothing. “So that’s your success story”

“I don’t think of myself as one,” he says with another easy shrug. “Success means you’ve made it.
I’m still a work in process, always trying to improve.”

I catch myself staring at him, then, and thinking his words over. They weren’t the words of a senselessly confident man who went at the world like he thinks he deserves it all. They were words of a man who, sure, had some confidence, but also knew he had to work to achieve what he wanted.

And I could hardly believe that he seemed to want me.

A little thrill of excitement shoots through my stomach, which is a thoroughly unsettling realization. When had I started
liking
this attention?

After that, we eat in silence
for the most part, accompanied only by the soft sounds of the music that plays throughout the restaurant and the din of those dining around us. The restaurant is nearly empty—probably Romeo’s doing as well—and our waiter is just attentive enough, checking on us once in a while to break the silence, but not so often that he becomes overbearing.

It isn’t until dessert, a beautiful chocolate soufflé, that I sigh and set my fork down with a clatter.

“I think I’m ready to go home,” I say, my nerves just about at their ends. I didn’t want the night to go on, if only for fear of falling too deep into the façade that Romeo was clearly putting on.

“I don’t think you are,” Romeo says, voice as firm as ever. “The night’s young yet.”

I frown and push my plate a bit farther away from myself, losing what little appetite I had. “Are you saying I have no choice in the matter?”

“You did promise me the night,” he says, setting his own fork down as well. “Here—perhaps this will ease your mind.”

I blink, confused, as he pulls a small parcel out from a hidden pocket in his coat. He slides it across the table to me and leaves it right in front of me until my curiosity gets the better of me. I frown at the velvet box, clearly home to something rather pricey, before finally opening it up.

Inside, cushioned by more of that beautiful velvet material is a gorgeous diamond bracelet that looks more real than anything I’ve ever seen before. I can’t help a surprised little gasp as I run my fingers over the stones, riveted for a long moment before I come to my senses and slide the lid shut.

“I can’t take this.”

“You can’t?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “I should think it’s pretty easy. You already had it in your hands.”

I scowl again—of course he would get technical about words
now
. “I
won’t
take it, Romeo. I don’t want it.”

He only smiles, even laughs a little, when I push the box back towards him, apparently not taking my refusal at all. “They’re a girl’s best friend, aren’t they?”

“I already have a best friend, thanks,” I say, as confidently as I can. I feel myself gravitating towards the box, though—the bracelet inside was just so
beautiful
. If Romeo wanted to give me such a gift, maybe I could—
no, Erin
. I grit my teeth and shake my head to myself. I couldn’t accept such a thing, especially not from a guy like him who would surely expect something in return.