The Billionaire's Bitch

Twenty-One

"Nice digs."

Adrian slowly lifted his eyes from his plate where he'd transferred his food. It took him a long time because of how long the dining table was.

I wasn't sure where to sit so I'd sat at the end. He was obviously sitting at the head.

The room had dark wood paneling, floor-to-ceiling, and the effect was dim and elegant. And a little scary.

"Glad you approve." He said, then went back to carving his steak.

I nibbled on the end of a shrimp.

Delicious.

Usually I was a black hole for food, at least if you asked my sister's venerable opinion, but lately I'd been so tense I could barely eat.

"I'm surprised you don't have a personal chef." I commented next, because I couldn't take the menacing silence any longer. "Ya like this restaurant so much?"

"I used to have a chef." He answered in that calm, never-flapped way of his. "She quit."

"Ahhh. Of course." I sighed, swinging my feet idly under the table as I picked at my mixed pile of steamed vegetables.

"Do you always, uhm, eat here, in this...lovely room?" I dared to ask next.

He placed a piece of steak in his mouth, fork backwards in that well-bred way of his. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment before answering. "No, not often." He took a sip of his refreshed glass of scotch. "Usually I eat at my desk while I work or watch the news."

"Wow." I said, genuinely impressed. "You are a true workaholic, aren't you? So you never just, I don't know, Netflix and chill?"

He snorted into his glass. "Eve Mathers, are you coming on to me?" He asked, and he was laughing.

I scowled at him, rather affronted. My hand curled into a fist in my napkin. "No! Absolutely not!"

His chuckle promptly died away and he considered me with those intense blue eyes. "I know. I apologize, I just jest with you."

I cocked my head, considering him. Just when I was starting to think he was completely inhuman, a robot, perhaps, he went and he laughed like that.

God, I only just realized how handsome he truly was when he smiled. Those dimples were unholy weapons indeed.

"So I take that as a 'no'?" I said, surly now because the way he said my name always made me uncomfortable.

"I do not have Netflix." He assured me, like it was a venereal disease or something.

I began to regard him with a slow, sly smile then that I dare say made him feel uncomfortable, if his sudden shifting of posture was anything to go by. "Well, you have a TV, don't you?"

*~*~*~*~*

And we all know what "Netflix and chill" means, don't we? ;)

Happy reading, Minions!

HRH