“Is this what ‘dating you’ is going to be like?” I sneer.
“Close.” His lips twitch at the corner. “Add in a few slow, long, wet kisses that’ll curl your toes and a little under the shirt/over the bra action, and you’re there.”
Barrett
There it is. The reaction I was expecting. Catarina’s back snaps straight. She slams the paper onto the table and proceeds to lecture me. She’s saying I won’t ever touch her, let alone kiss her. She mentions a boyfriend and says that even if she didn’t have one there’s no way she’d allow me anywhere near her. While she complains, I commit to a plan to taste those lips.
Mia told me about this “boyfriend” of hers. He was described to me as a stick-in-the-mud guy who is self-consumed and aloof and doesn’t treat Catarina the way she deserves. I’m not sure if Mia has an ulterior motive to break up Catarina and the bozo she’s dating, but I’m not getting involved either way. My job is to date Catarina and be myself. That’s what I’m doing. Or well, the version of myself Mia’s paying me to be.
Catarina is fucking beautiful, by the way. And prissy. Rigid. Haughty. But beautiful. Long, dark brown hair with the right amount of weight and wave rolls over slender shoulders. Her white blouse is classy, like her. Even angry, her shaped eyebrows slammed together, all I can think about is winning her over to my side of the field. If she let me kiss those lips, she’d forget her problems. They’re the pinkest, fullest lips I’ve ever seen, and I’m an excellent kisser.
“Mr. Fox, could you do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye?”
“Sorry, Kitty Cat. I’ll try.” I shrug helplessly. “I like that lip color.”
Her mouth drops open before snapping closed. She’s decided not to like me, which is par for course where I’m concerned. Most women don’t like me but are willing to stoop to hang out with me to get what they want. I’m used to it.
I do as she asks and look at Catarina’s eyes. They’re as beautiful as the rest of her. Coffee-brown and sparkling. Big and wide and taking in the world around her. Not innocent though. More jaded. This is a woman who’s seen a lot of what the world has to offer and has decided not to like most of it.
“...going to talk to Mia about this,” she announces as she stands.
I stand with her, and she turns and pokes me in the center of my chest with one short, polished fingernail.
“Alone.”
“I’m on assignment here, too, Kitty Cat.”
“Stop calling me that. I don’t care how much money you’ll bring to this paper. I’m not pretending to date you. I can’t stand looking at you.”
With that she opens the conference room door and storms through the office. I watch her go, admiring the proud way she holds her shoulders back and the flow of her long hair behind her as she walks, and yeah, okay, the wiggle of her small, round ass in a superslim skirt.
I catch the eye of the cute blonde who was in here a moment ago. She’s still mooning. She bites her lip and gives me a little wave. I wink at her, knowing that made her whole day. I can tell by the way she blushes fiercely.
Whistling, I amble in the direction of Mia’s office in hot pursuit of Catarina Everhart.
Damn.
I love being me.
Chapter 2
Catarina
“And then,” I say after draining my wineglass, “Mia told me that she appreciated my professionalism.”
“Her way of telling you that she wasn’t reassigning you,” North says, reaching for the bottle.
I hold out my glass and he refills it. “Precisely. What am I supposed to do? Sue for sexual harassment?”
“Did he harass you?”
“No.” I wrinkle my nose, surprised by that admission. “He’s a cocky jerk but behaves more like a child in need of attention.”
“Much as I can’t condone you even pretending to date Barrett Fox, bad boy of the NFL,” North adds snidely, “Mia is right. You are a professional and you’ll find a way through this. In the meantime, don’t let him rile you. He is a child. This is his game.”
North straightens the cuff of one sleeve tucked beneath a perfectly pressed suit jacket before scraping his keys off my kitchen counter.
“You’re leaving? You just got here.”
“I have a late showing, Catarina. I told you this.”
“No, you didn’t,” I say, a tad petulantly. Either I have early onset Alzheimer’s, or he didn’t tell me. This is the third time in two weeks he’s had a late appointment I didn’t recall him mentioning. “When will you be done?”
“Late. The apartment building is across town, and the buyers flew in from Japan. I’m going to have to do the whole take-them-out-for-drinks-and-kiss-their-asses bit. You know how I hate that.” He leans in and presses a kiss to my cheek. I inhale the scent of him—as crisp as autumn with low-key spice notes.
“I like that new cologne,” I murmur, ticking my fingers down his shirt buttons.
“Not now, Catarina.”
I drop my arm with a huff. North and I have been dating for six months now. I didn’t expect the sex to drop off a steep cliff three months in, but it did. Lately, we see each other less and less, which is putting a chink in my perfectionist armor. Our relationship should be stronger, especially this early on.
Now’s not the time to address it. Maybe I’ll dig up some of my former articles as talking points. North does better when he has an agenda for a conversation.
“See you tomorrow,” I tell him as he shuts the door with a soft click.
I sigh into my wineglass, thinking again how it shouldn’t be this hard for a relationship columnist to have a relationship.
The next day at work I search through some of my former articles. “How to Lure Him In Using Your Brain.” Oh, that was a good one. It doesn’t apply to North and me though. He fell for my brain first and foremost.
Oh, here’s one. “The Seven Month Itch: How to Survive Your First Year of Dating.” I hesitate a moment before printing it. I’ve had other relationships that have bypassed the seven-month point. Maybe there’ll be some insight in there I’ve since forgotten. The printer at my desk whirs to life as I come across another one I wrote two years ago that, frankly, I forgot about. “How to Tell If He’s Cheating.”
My finger is hovering over the trackpad on my laptop, the pointer positioned over the x. I should close the search window. There’s no way North would cheat on me any more than I would cheat on him. In the same manner I told him about Barrett and this ludicrous situation, North would tell me first if he had even a stir of interest in someone else. We agreed to that stipulation when we began dating. It was only logical to break up if interest lagged.
I think about our current sex rut and bite my lip. I hate uncertainty.
Rather than click the x, I scroll through the article, skimming my own bold, bullet-pointed advice.
He stops saying “I love you.”
Well. North doesn’t believe in saying “I love you,” so I can throw that one out. I scroll to the next bold header.