The Club

by Lauren Rowe

  Kat laughs. “You’re obviously obsessed with him. And he wouldn’t have tracked you down like a big game hunter if he weren’t at least slightly obsessed with you. So why not take him for a spin and at least see if you’re more compatible than you think?”

  “It’s not as simple as test-driving a car—”

  “Yes, it is. It’s precisely as simple as test-driving a car. I say this with love, girl, but you make everything more complicated than it has to be. No offense.”

  “None taken.” She’s absolutely right. I hate that about myself. I sigh. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should—”

  There’s a loud knock at my door.

  Kat’s eyes go wide. “Oh my God,” she whispers. “I knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer!”

  My heart’s in my throat. I’m wearing sweats and a T-shirt and no makeup right now. Oh my God, please, Lord, no. He wouldn’t just show up at my house, unannounced, would he? Yes, he would. I know he would. That’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do.

  “I guess he’s not letting you off the hook that easily, little Miss Over-thinker,” Kat says, marching with glee to the front door.

  I bolt to my bedroom like a mental patient escaping from a psych ward, trying frantically to think what clean clothes I have in my drawer that don’t make me look like I’m dressed for a marathon study session. My heart’s beating out of my chest and my pulse is raging in my ears. I can hear Kat opening the front door and greeting whoever’s on the other side of it. I hold my breath, listening.

  A male voice says, “Sarah Cruz?”

  Oh God. This is disastrous. Worst case scenario. If he sees Kat first, he’ll only be massively disappointed when I show my face and say, “Sorry. Sarah’s me.”

  “No,” Kat says, squealing. “But you’ve got the right place. I’ll take those for her.”

  “There’s more stuff in the truck, too. I’ll be right back.”

  What the hell is going on? I march out of my bedroom back into the living area to find Kat standing before me with the most exquisite arrangement of roses I’ve ever seen—at least three dozen roses of every imaginable hue bursting out of an elegant crystal vase.

  Kat laughs. “Looks like someone’s not accustomed to being turned down.”

  Kat and I take stock of the various goodies littering my kitchen table. In addition to the six arrangements of outrageously beautiful flowers, there’s a gigantic box of chocolates in a heart-shaped box tied up in a huge red bow (which Kat has already untied and dug into), a gigantic white teddy bear holding a red, heart-shaped pillow embroidered with the phrase “Be Mine,” and, to top it all off, a sealed, pink envelope with my handwritten name across the front.

  I stare at my treasure trove, unable to speak.

  “Aren’t you gonna open the envelope?” Kat asks, picking it up and handing it to me.

  “Yeah, I’m”—I gesture toward my bedroom and begin walking quickly toward it—“just gonna read it in private.”

  Kat looks mildly disappointed, but she says, “Okeedoke.”

  In my room, I perch on the edge of my bed and stare at the sealed pink envelope in my shaking hands. I want to open it more than I want to breathe. But I’m nervous. If I know Jonas Faraday, the card will surely include words like “lick” and “come” and “fuck” and maybe even “clit,” and I don’t want to read those words right now, to be honest. I’ve got romantic visions of flowers and candy and teddy bears dancing in my head, and I don’t want his unique form of “brutal honesty” to burst my bubble. Even if I know he’s just making some sort of sardonic point with all this clichéd stuff, I can’t help but enjoy the over-the-top romanticism of it all, even if he’s only mocking traditional romance. Frankly, if all he’s got to say to me at this point is “I want to make you come,” I’m not in the mood to hear it.

  I stare at the envelope in my hand. I feel so excited right now, so genuinely hopeful, I almost don’t want to open the card and get let down. The odds are high that whatever’s inside this card is going to ruin this moment—and the silly hopes that are rising up involuntarily inside me against my better judgment. I mean, no matter how cute that teddy bear is out there, we’re still talking about Jonas Faraday, after all—and he’s not a teddy bear kind of guy.

  Well, there’s only one way to find out what it says.

  I take a deep breath and tear open the envelope.

  It’s a Hallmark card. I can’t believe my eyes. It’s a frickin’ Hallmark card, covered in pink and red hearts. The cover of the card says, “Happy Valentine’s Day” in swirling gold letters. Where did he find this card in March?

  The inside of the card is imprinted with a stock message that makes me gasp: You are everything I never knew I always wanted. The message is followed by a handwritten letter “J.”

  This is the last thing I expected him to say. My mind is reeling. I don’t even know what to think.

  “Sarah!” Kat calls from the kitchen. “There’s a note in the flowers!”

  I rush out of my room into the kitchen, and she hands me a tiny envelope. I open it to find a handwritten notecard.

  “My Magnificent Sarah,

  “I hereby decree today to be Jonas and Sarah’s Valentine’s Day—and since I am God, thus it is so. A car will pick you up for our traditional Valentine’s dinner at 8:00, and we will dine at a candlelit restaurant, out in public, like normal people do. At the end of our dinner, I will kiss you goodnight, if you’ll let me, and nothing more—like normal people do—and then the car will take you directly home, without me in it. (Come on, Sarah, it’s just dinner. You need to eat, right?)

  “Truthfully yours, Jonas

  “P.S. After we spoke yesterday, I saw your photo for the first time—hence the upgrade in your name from ‘My Beautiful Sarah’ to ‘My Magnificent Sarah.’ Damn, Sarah, you’re absolutely gorgeous.”

  Holy frickin’ moly. My cheeks are burning. My head is spinning. My knees are weak. What the hell is going on here? I can’t make heads or tails of it. I know in my head that this entire charade is a big fat satire to him—some kind of nod to an alternate, surrealistic reality he’s poking fun at somehow—and yet it’s making me swoon nonetheless.

  “What does it say?” Kat asks.

  I wordlessly hand her the card, my mouth hanging open.

  “Oh my,” she says as her eyes scan the note. When she’s done, she looks up at me, smiling from ear to ear. “Oh my,” she says again. “My, my, my, my, my.”

  Chapter 13

  Jonas

  It took an outrageous chunk of change to rent out every table at Canlis for the entire night on such short notice. I had to agree to buy out their highest projected nightly revenue, times five, before they finally agreed to shut down the entire restaurant and cancel all dinner reservations (on the pretense of a possible gas leak). But what the hell—I’ve already thrown a quarter-million dollars down the toilet plus twenty thousand on hacking into the University of Washington’s server—what’s another thirty thousand for a dinner date? Tonight, I’ll pay and do and say whatever I have to if it will make her understand I’m more than just a gigantic, throbbing hard-on.

  I look at my watch. It’s just past eight. Soon. Very soon. I’m jittery.

  What if she refused to get into the limo when it pulled up in front of her apartment? What if she got my gifts and threw them into a dumpster¸ or smashed each and every crystal vase to the ground?

  “Is everything as you wish, Mr. Faraday?” the owner of the restaurant asks me, gesturing to the twinkling white lights strung around the place at my request.

  “It’s perfect,” I reply. “It looks very Valentine’s Day-ish. Thank you.” I look out the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city. “And the view is incredible.”

  “Seattle never disappoints.”

  I exhale. I’m way more nervous than I thought I’d be. There’s no guarantee she’s even heading here right now.

  I sit down at the table the restaurant has prepared for us
and stare out at the twinkling skyline. My knee is jiggling. I force it to stop.

  My cell phone buzzes with an incoming text. I look at the display and smile. “ETA 5 min,” the text reads. I’d told the limo driver to text me when he was five minutes away. Looks like she got into the car. That’s a start—an excellent start.

  As I stand in the cold night air in front of the restaurant waiting for her limo to pull up, my senses are heightened, like I’m a jungle cat stalking my prey. It’s going to take all my restraint not to pounce on her when she arrives.

  The limo finally pulls up and I open her door, adrenaline flooding my entire body.

  And there she is.

  Damn.

  Wow, her photo didn’t even begin to do her justice.

  Some sort of primal hunting instinct is threatening to overtake me. I want to tackle her and ravage her right here and now. But, of course, that’s not an option. I’ve got to make her understand I’m not all about fucking her. If that were all I wanted, I could get that in The Club. Somehow, I hold it together well enough to pretend to be a civilized human being, capable of normal conversation.

  “Sarah,” I breathe, holding my hand out to her. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  She smiles up at me. Oh, those lips. They slayed me in her photo, but in person, they make me want to get down on my knees.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day, Jonas,” she replies. Oh, that hint of gravel in her voice. Maintaining control over myself tonight is going to be a tall order.

  She takes my extended hand.

  Her skin is soft and warm. I look down at her hand in mine and see that damned thumb ring of hers, and that just about does me in. For a split second, I contemplate pushing her back into the limo, crawling on top of her, and running my hands over every inch of her. Instead, I bring her hand up to my mouth and gently kiss the top of it—and then, slowly, pointedly, I lay a gentle kiss right onto her thumb ring.

  Her eyes blaze—she knows I’m already a goner. She smiles and slowly pulls her hand away from my mouth—but the expression on her face tells me she likes the feel of my lips as much as I like the feel of her skin. Just that simple exchange, and the air is sexually charged. Not good. I mean, it’s fucking awesome, don’t get me wrong—but tonight is supposed to be about everything except my insatiable hard-on for her. In fact, tonight is emphatically not about that. Tonight is about showing her she’s not some phone sex operator to me. Tonight is about showing her I’m quite functional in ways that don’t involve my tongue or dick. I’ve got to make her understand that what she knows about me, she’s learned only thanks to a uniquely exposing circumstance—a situation unlike any other that, by its nature, compelled me to reveal the darkest, most primal parts of myself, parts I’ve never shown or talked about with anyone else. In real life, I swear, I’m really quite charming.

  She needs to understand that, if you only look at my sexual appetites, out of context from other stuff about me that’s actually kind of normal, you’d get a pretty warped view of me—which she undoubtedly has. Wouldn’t that be true of anyone? I’m sure of it. I’ve got to show her that, despite my insatiable and seemingly uncontrollable desire for her, I really do possess some attributes that aren’t even the least bit sociopathic. So, yeah, the more I think about it, tonight is all about showing her the parts of me that aren’t the least bit sociopathic.

  I exhale, trying to get ahold of myself. I can’t allow myself to have a raging hard-on all night long. I’d never be able to concentrate on anything she’s saying—and that would blow my show-her-I’m-not-a-sociopath strategy to bits.

  “So nice to finally meet you,” she says, smirking.

  “No, Sarah, believe me, the pleasure’s all mine.”

  The view is spectacular, all right. And I’m not talking about the skyline. She’s wearing a green dress that hugs her curves in all the right places, and the view of her backside as we follow the maître d’ to our table is something else. Now that’s an ass I could really sink my teeth into.

  “We’re alone?” she asks, scanning the empty restaurant.

  “I didn’t want there to be any distractions.”

  “You rented out the entire restaurant?” Here eyes are wide.

  I love the look on her face right now.

  We reach our table and take our seats.

  “Wow. This is amazing.” Her face is awash in childlike giddiness. “You rented out Canlis,” she mutters, seemingly to herself. “Wow. Thank you. That’s ... wow.”

  A man could get addicted to trying to make her face look like that.

  I take my seat across from her and smile. Or, at least, I try to smile. I’m finding it hard to relax my face into any kind of normal facial expression. It feels unreasonably warm in the restaurant.

  I flag the maître d’ back to the table as he’s leaving.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Can you turn down the heat just a tad?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Sarah smiles at me, her eyes flickering with some sort of amusement.

  Oh, that mouth. Oh God, if I let myself focus too long on those lips, this dinner date will take a sharp detour. And I’m not going to let that happen. Not tonight. I already made that mistake on the phone, and I’m not going to do it again. Tonight, I’m going to show her the upside of Jonas Faraday—yeah, tonight, I’m all upside, baby.

  A waiter comes to the table with wine and an appetizer.

  “You’re gorgeous,” I say after the waiter leaves. And she is. “That dress is incredible.”

  She looks down as if to remember what she’s wearing. “Thank you. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wear my favorite dress for you. Such a pity.” She smiles mischievously and takes a sip of her wine.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s purple.” She laughs her gravelly laugh.

  Somehow, that laugh of hers puts me at ease. I can feel my shoulders relaxing a bit. I lean forward onto my elbows. “If I could order a woman out of a catalogue to my precise specifications, I’d order you.”

  There’s a brief silence.

  Shit. I need to reign it back in. I’m coming on too strong. I can’t blurt out every damned thought that flitters across my mind. I take a long swig of my wine.

  She moves her mouth to speak—to make some sort of snarky comeback, I’d guess—but then she closes her mouth without speaking.

  “What are you thinking right now?” I ask.

  She purses her beautiful lips. “A thousand things. Mostly, I can’t believe I’m here right now. At Canlis. With you.” Her mouth twists for a moment. “And, well, that you’re probably the most outrageously good-looking man I’ve ever laid eyes on, let alone been on a date with. And, yeah, that I can’t believe I’m here. With you.”

  Damn, I want to take that dress off her. “I’m so glad you’re here. You’re absolutely beautiful.”

  She looks at me like she’s trying to figure out the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t fit. “What are you thinking right now?” she asks. She leans forward onto her elbows in mimicry of my position and the tops of her breasts push out of her neckline.

  My cock springs to attention. “If I answer that question, my entire strategy for the night will be blown to bits.”

  “You have a strategy for the night?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “What is it?”

  “If I answer that question, my entire strategy for the night will be blown to bits.”

  “So you won’t tell me what you’re thinking, then?”

  I exhale, thinking about her olive skin writhing around on my crisp, white sheets. “You know exactly what I’m thinking.”

  She licks her lips. “Oh, well, good luck with your strategy, then.” The candlelight flickers across her face. She leans back and so do I. I’m not sure who just dominated and who submitted in that exchange. Maybe it was a draw.

  There’s a brief silence as we assess each other and sip our wine. We each sample the appetizer. It’s delicious.
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  “Thank you for the Valentine’s Day gifts,” she says. “You shocked the hell out of me.”

  “Did you like them?”

  She pauses. “If I answer that question, my entire strategy for the night will be blown to bits.”

  “You have a strategy for tonight?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “So you won’t tell me if you liked my gifts?”

  She smiles. “No, I’ll tell you. Strategies are over-rated.” She leans forward again. “I felt light-headed and weak at the knees when your gifts arrived. The scent of the flowers wafting through my little apartment made me swoon. As I got ready for our date this evening, I danced around my apartment just for the heck of it—out of sheer joy. Oh, and I must have hugged that teddy bear fifty times, imagining he was you.”

  My heart is suddenly pounding a mile a minute. I’m smiling from ear to ear. “Yeah, okay, but did you like them?”

  She laughs.

  “How could that answer ruin your strategy for tonight? It’s the best answer ever.”

  “Well, considering how you feel about Valentine’s Day ‘bullshit’—and the women who are brainwashed into wanting it—it’s fifty-fifty you might run for the hills now that you know for sure I’m one of the droning, brainwashed female masses. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to like everything or if you sent it as some sort of test—like, if I swooned, then I failed the test and proved I’m brainwashed.”

  “You thought I sent you all that so I could say, ‘gotcha’?”

  “I’m not sure why you sent that stuff.” She shrugs. She takes a sip of her wine.

  I look at her, incredulous. Wow, I’ve really got my work cut out for me tonight. I have to keep remembering that, thanks to that application, I’m starting out in a deep hole, trying to dig my way out. “I’m sorry you even had to wonder. That sucks.”