by Helen Hoang
Love?
Sharpness panged inside his chest.
She could never love him. He felt the certainty with every fiber of himself. Love required trust, and only a fool would trust him. He was his father’s son.
But he could prove he was more if he did this right. That was all he could ask for. He glanced at the clock and was amazed to see it wasn’t even ten yet. The events of the morning had felt life-changing, but they’d only been awake for two hours.
“I’m starving, and I need coffee,” he said. “I also need to get my car. All of my clean clothes are in there.”
Mostly, he needed some space. She was getting too close, and he needed to put distance between them. He got out of bed and pulled on his jeans, fully aware of his audience’s appreciative gaze. He felt a little ridiculous about it, but maybe he did it slowly. Maybe he flexed his abs and biceps as he zipped his fly and buttoned his pants. Because really, putting on pants required a lot of muscle.
“Hurry up and get ready, Stella.”
Her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“We’re going shopping. Couples do that on Sundays.”
* * *
• • •
Stella pursed her lips as she stared at her reflection in the mirror. Michael had just opened up an entire new branch of apparel to her.
Yoga clothes.
In particular, yoga pants.
She was very possibly in heaven. The pants didn’t itch at all, and they were tight. She loved clothes that hugged her. Even better, they made her legs and butt look outstanding. She looked like a dancer. Or a yogi. Or some hybridized version of the two.
“Come out so I can see,” Michael said from outside the changing room.
Biting her lip to hide her smile, she opened the door and stepped out.
His crooked grin came out in full force, and his rare dimple winked. “Knew it.”
“Do you like it?” She smoothed a hand over her tummy and turned in a slow circle.
He stood up from the waiting chair and approached her, running appraising eyes over her curves. He slid a hand down the length of her neck to her shoulder and across the tight-fitting long sleeve so he could interlace their fingers. “I love it.”
“I’m sexy in this.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her near. “Very sexy.” He brushed his lips over hers and tickled his way to her ear and neck, making her squirm and bite back giggles that would have been decidedly unsexy.
From the corner of her eye, she caught a shopgirl watching her with open envy. The girl mouthed the words So lucky, and Stella grinned even though she had mixed feelings. None of this was real. She was paying for it. Not that she minded the expense. Michael was worth every penny.
“I assume you’re going to buy them?”
“One of every color.”
“I have to put my foot down. Not the fluorescent orange with yellow spots. It hurts me,” he said with a wince.
“No fluorescent orange and yellow, got it. Oh, they have dresses.” Her eyes rounded at the possibilities.
When they stopped for lunch at a small French bakery in the Stanford Mall, three enormous bags of apparel took up the space on the pavement by their feet. He insisted they had the best non-Asian sandwiches in California, which Stella found interesting because she hadn’t even known Asian sandwiches were a thing.
She expected the sandwiches to be stacked high with deli goodness, but when he brought lunch to their outdoor table, it was plain baguettes with turkey, Swiss, and butter. At least he’d bought an almond croissant, too. To her surprise, her first bite of the baguette was delicious.
“The secret is really good bread and butter. All you need is strong basics,” he said with a wink, and she got the feeling he was talking about more than food.
As light afternoon shopper traffic passed by and the sun shone down through the trees, Stella decided she might want to do this again. Her regular Sunday schedule was shot, but she was open to developing a new weekend routine. She was adaptable, especially when things involved Michael.
Dressed in casual khakis and a white button-down open at the collar and rolled up to his elbows, he looked magazine delicious—as usual. It occurred to her they’d spent the entire morning shopping for her. How selfish and self-absorbed of her.
“Do you want to look at men’s attire?” She considered the shops around them, wondering if any of them appealed to him.
He shook his head with a funny smile. “No, thanks.”
“Are you sure? Would you let me get you something?” When his expression went uncomfortable, her heartbeat picked up, and she tried to make light of the situation by adding, “Since you won’t let me get you a Lamborghini.”
He sent her a searching look. “Would you really get me a Lamborghini if I wanted it?”
She stared down at the crumbs on her sandwich wrapper and nodded. “I can afford it, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t really know how to talk about money matters, but I make a lot, and there aren’t many things I want to spend it on. I would love to get you a car. Especially if—” She cut herself off before she could say something that would make him angry.
“If what?”
“I’d rather not say. I’m pretty sure it’s not appropriate.”
He tilted his head to the side, and his expression grew shuttered. “I’d like to hear it.”
“I was going to say . . .” She took an uncomfortable breath. “Especially if another woman got you the one you have.”
He focused on folding his sandwich wrapper into a neat square. “Are you asking if the car was a gift?”
She was pretty sure it was, and it infuriated her. “Yes.”
“It was, actually.”
“From the blonde at the club.”
His brow wrinkled. “How do you know that?”
“She’s the client who won’t leave you alone.” The memory of the woman kissing him flashed in her mind, and Stella’s hackles rose. Not only that, but he’d had sex with her—probably multiple times. She dug her nails into the glass surface of the table as her breathing went fast and bitter.
He settled a hand on top of hers, and her heart rate eased. “I don’t like getting those kinds of gifts. Please don’t, okay?”
“Okay.” But she couldn’t help feeling he kept the gift because he liked the woman who’d given it to him. Wasn’t that what you did when someone meant something to you? You kept the things they gave you?
She wanted him to keep something from her. The fact that he wasn’t allowing her to give him anything made her feel almost desperate.
“You’ve got your work cut out for you if you’re going to start getting jealous of my past clients, Stella,” he said, his eyes level and his voice somber, like his escorting was a sad reality they had to accept.
Question after question piled on her tongue. If he didn’t like it, why did he do it? He was so talented with clothes. Why didn’t he make more of it instead of dry cleaning and altering it? What did he use his escorting money on? Did he have some secret addiction? Was he in danger?
Why couldn’t he be hers for real?
He was hers for now, though. He didn’t want the blonde. He hadn’t been with the blonde this morning.
As they finished up with lunch, the question from before persisted in the back of her mind.
Why couldn’t he be hers for real?
There was only one plausible reason she could think of: He didn’t want her back.
Things like that weren’t written in stone, though. At the beginning of all of this, she’d been prepared to learn skills that would aid her in seducing a man—possibly Philip James. But why should she settle for Philip when maybe she could have Michael? Could she use what he taught her . . . on him? Could she seduce her escort?
{ CHAP+ER }
17
/> She was supposed be working. The online underclothes project was interesting. Normally, she’d have finished by now. But she simply could not look at underwear, even the word underwear, and not think of Michael.
The desk drawer where she kept her phone beckoned to her. She wanted to text him. Was that . . . allowed? Aside from that night at her office, they’d only texted for logistical purposes.
She tapped her fingers on the surface of her desk before she fisted her hand. How was she supposed to seduce him if she couldn’t get up the nerve to send him a simple text message? She dug her phone out.
Hi.
She deleted the message before sending it.
I miss you.
Just the sight of those words made her palms sweat. Too direct. Delete.
I wanted to confirm our plans for tonight.
She hit send and placed the phone on her desk as she stared at her computer monitors without seeing a single thing. The screen on her phone went black from inactivity. He was probably busy.
Her phone vibrated, but instead of buzzing once to indicate she’d gotten a text message, it kept buzzing. A phone call.
She peeked at the screen, and her heart jumped when she saw it was Michael. She hugged the phone to her chest before answering it. “Hello?”
“Hi, Stella.” In the background, his mom gabbed in Vietnamese and a sewing machine whirred. “I need both hands so I decided to call you back instead of texting. We’re still on for tonight. That Thai place in Mountain View.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you there.”
“Perfect.”
The sewing machine paused, and silence hung in the virtual space between them. She willed him to speak. She wanted to hear his voice again.
“Remember clothes. For my place. Unless you don’t want to stay there. You don’t have to,” she said in a rush.
“No, I’m fine with that. I just forgot. Thanks for reminding me.” He chuckled, and Stella’s hands tightened on the phone. She really, really missed him, and it had only been a day since she’d seen him last.
His mom said something, and he sighed. “I have to go. Looking forward to tonight. Miss you. Bye.”
Her breath caught before she murmured, “Miss you, too.” The line had already disconnected, however, and she said the words to herself.
How did other people get through their day when they missed someone like this? She wanted to see him.
She tapped on her phone’s photo bank, and found it, as she’d known it would be, empty. Feeling impulsive, she texted Michael again.
I want a picture of you for my phone.
Please.
She waited.
When she lost hope that he’d respond and set her phone on her desk, it vibrated.
It was a quick selfie, a close-up of his face with his eyebrow raised. He looked goofy but still utterly delectable. She sighed and ran her thumb over his cheek.
Her phone buzzed again with text messages from him.
Where’s mine?
I want your hair down.
She released a disbelieving laugh. Are you serious?
Hair down. Selfie. Now.
Undo your top two buttons, too.
Feeling silly, she gripped the rubber band holding her hair back and tried to pull it free. It caught, and when she pulled harder, it snapped, unraveled from her hair, and landed on the floor. She worked the strands apart with her fingers and then loosened the top buttons of her shirt. Her face peered at her from the phone screen, but she looked . . . different. She didn’t look like regular Stella. She looked like Secret Stella, the girl who was going to see her lover tonight.
Her finger accidentally hit the camera button, capturing her face as understanding hit. That was what they were. They were lovers. She liked the sound of that, quite a lot.
She sent the picture to Michael.
Almost instantly, her phone vibrated.
Damn, Stella.
Sexy. As. Hell.
A laugh bubbled free, and she was half tempted to send him something really sexy. Except she had no clue how to go about it. There was probably an art to the camera angle and body positioning, and her office was surrounded by windows. Either her colleagues would get an eyeful or she’d have to figure out some way to stuff her phone inside her fitted clothes.
She set her phone down in defeat and made herself focus on her work, which she still loved. As she waded through the data, she ran across an interesting finding: The vast majority of married men didn’t buy underclothes—not even for themselves. Their wives did. Screening and filtering the data, looking back through the many years of numbers provided, she discovered they quit purchasing underclothes even before public records announced their marriages.
What was going on there? What kind of anthropological phenomenon was this?
The thrill of a new puzzle simmered through her veins, captivating her. She plotted the data against several different variables, analyzed the curves and seemingly random scatter graphs, looked at the statistics. She could not figure it out. She loved when she couldn’t figure it out.
Her phone buzzed, and the screen read, Dinner with Michael.
She sent a longing glance at her computer monitors, but she didn’t let her hands touch her keyboard again. There was no such thing as five more minutes for her. If she went back to work, the next time she surfaced from the data would be well after midnight. That was why she set the alarms.
Also, Michael was just as interesting as the data, and he made her laugh. He smelled good and felt good and tasted good and . . . She hugged herself as her feet danced over the carpet. This was almost too much perfectness. Exciting work during the day. Exciting Michael at night. She wanted this every day, forever.
She saved her work, powered down her computer, and gathered up her things. Walking down the hallway while people were still in the office was something she did rarely, but her coworkers didn’t usually think much about it. Tonight, however, the unusual attention she got as she passed by confused her. The top econometricians in their offices paused in the middle of writing formulas on their whiteboards. The younger analysts in their cubicles gave her startled looks.
As she strode past Philip’s office, he looked up from the papers on his desk and did a double take. She waved at him and went to the elevator banks. Just as the doors began to close, Philip jumped inside.
“You’re heading out early today,” he said.
In the process of adjusting her glasses, she realized her hair was down. This was why everyone was acting so funny. She rolled her eyes. It was just hair. “Dinner plans.”
Philip’s light eyes tracked over her in a thorough sweep. “Meeting someone?”
She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Yes.”
“Took my advice, huh?” he said with his usual smirk.
“I did, actually. Thanks.”
He blinked, and his eyebrows climbed. “You’re surprising, Stella, and you look good with your hair down.”
The appraising nature of his gaze made her thoroughly uncomfortable, and she itched to refasten her top two buttons. “Thanks.”
“So who is he? Do I know him? Is it serious?”
She tapped her fingers on her thighs. “I don’t think you know him. I hope it’s serious. It’s serious to me.”
“Don’t ask him to marry you too soon, okay? That scares the crap out of guys.”
She scowled at him.
He cleared his throat. “Sorry, that came out wrong. Just go slow. That’s what I meant to say.”
When the elevator dinged and the doors slid open, he pressed a hand to the door sensor to keep it open. “Ladies first.”
She marched out, hoping a fast gait would help her leave him behind, but he speed-walked to her side.
“Where are you two going?”
“A Thai place.” S
he spotted her car in the parking lot and wished she could teleport herself directly inside. She was never wearing her hair down at work again.
“So you like spicy food?”
“I do. I’ll tell you if this place is any good, and you can take Heidi there.”
“Not dating Heidi anymore. She really is too young for me. No common ground. She said I have to work on how I communicate with people. Apparently, I come across condescending. It’s frustrating. I can’t help it if I know things.” He coughed. “Forget that last part.”
That gave her pause. She knew what it was like to have trouble communicating. Did that mean Heidi had broken things off? Underneath his obnoxious exterior, was Philip sad? Was he capable of being sad? “I see.”
“You and I have common ground.” By the look in his eyes, he meant it. He was actually interested in her now.
Stella stopped at her car. “We do.”
Her mother thought they were perfect for one another. If he hadn’t inspired her toward out-of-the-box thinking with his asshole advice, she might actually be interested back. At the very least, she might have let him be her fourth disastrous sexual encounter.
Not any longer. The only one she wanted now was Michael.
“I have to go, or I’ll be late.”
He stepped back. “Have a good night, Stella. Not too good, though. See you tomorrow.”
After she got inside her car and buckled up, she caught sight of him getting into his own vehicle. A brand-new, bright red Lamborghini. Not her style at all. She would have hated it on sight if it weren’t for the fact that Michael liked them.
Sighing, she headed to meet him. The drive was quick, and it wasn’t long before she walked into the humid interior of the restaurant. He was waiting for her at a table for two by the window, looking edible himself in black slacks, a striped button-down, and a black silk vest that fit his trim waist to perfection.
His eyes twinkled, and he tapped his lips with an index finger as he watched her walk between rows of tables toward him. When she reached the table, he stood up and wrapped her in a tight embrace, pressing his lips against her neck as he wove his fingers into her loose locks. “All this hair. My Stella looks gorgeous tonight.”