Icy Pretty Love (17 page)

My shock levels up into pure astonishment as he comes back and, without saying a word, tucks the rose gently behind my ear.

"Um," I say. "Um. That was really, um, roman—"

"If you say romantic, I'll wait until we're at the very top of the Ferris wheel and then jump off. And it'll be the worst Valentines Day ever. Even though every Valentines Day is the worst Valentines Day ever." He hesitates. "This one...isn't so bad, though."

Holy shit.

Was that splashing sound I just heard the first drip of water melting off the iceberg?

I swallow. I can't seem to find the right words. "I didn't need a rose, you know."

"I know."

"I didn't even want one. The whole thing is dumb."

"You've been staring jealously at every single girl who's walked past you with a rose all day," he points out.

"It would be more romantic if you'd just said 'I know' again and smiled knowingly."

"That's too much knowing," he says. "And we're not using the R word, remember?"

I take the rose out from behind my ear and look at it. It's a full, rich red, the same color as our wine. Each petal is perfectly formed. "It still has the thorns."

He winces. "I didn't notice. Did I scratch you putting it in your hair?"

"No. There's only a couple." I rest the pad of my finger gingerly against one. "I still like it. And I guess it's good that you got me one. It's natural for Cohen Ashworth to buy a rose on Valentines Day for his fiancé Georgette Montgomery, anyway."

"I didn't buy a rose for Georgette Montgomery.” He gazes up at the Ferris wheel. “I bought one for Rae Grove."

I wish he would stop saying things that ruin my ability to speak.

The line moves along, and finally it’s our turn. Above us, the wheel stretches enormous, as if all the stars in the light-polluted sky had fallen to earth and formed a circle for us to ride. Our car swings to a halt on the platform, sandwiched on either side by cars populated by two couples, who detach from each other as they realize they're now visible to the waiting line. I check the seat for fluids before I get inside.

"How regularly do you think they disinfect these things?" I ask Cohen. He shrugs, turns to the employee and asks him something in French. The guy cracks up.

"My guess is not often," Cohen says, sliding in next to me. The benches are conveniently sized for two, and he's close enough that his body heat warms my hip. The rest of me notches up a degree or two as well. I stare out the scratched plastic window and pretend I'm sitting next to a Telletubby.

"Anyone having sex in these things would probably get like, five STDs," I say. Sex in here is not an option. Sex with Cohen anywhere is not an option.

He nods. "Not to mention the cramped conditions."

"And the hard benches."

"And the potential for motion-sickness and one person yakking all over the other."

An awkward silence descends as our cart lifts into the sky. Now my brain is full of sex. Is his brain full of sex too? Probably not. His brain space seems generally reserved for business and reasons why he hates people. I haven't actually seen him express attraction toward anyone, not counting the odd little flirtations he's made toward me. And even those were probably all in my head. The VIPs in my brain space are insanity and weirdness. They have exclusive reservations.

Lately an overwhelming attraction toward Cohen has been muscling itself in on the exclusive club, though, setting up shop on a corner table and ordering fancy, attention-grabbing drinks. It's an entirely unwelcome guest.

As our cart gets higher, I spot the Eiffel Tower in the distance, a white spear sprouting upwards from the ground. It's so gorgeous that I instinctively lurch across Cohen's lap to point it out. "Hey! It's your mortal enemy and my favorite landmark!"

"It's almost as ugly from a fair distance as it was up close," he observes.

I shake my head and peel myself off his lap before my body gets too aware of what's below me. "You could probably watch a sunset over the Alps and criticize the shade of orange."

"Wrong," he says. "I'd complain about it being orange in general. I hate orange."

"You..."

"I was kidding. That was a joke." He points to his face, which is as inscrutable as ever. "See? Look how amused I am."

"The point of jokes is to make other people amused, not to amuse yourself. Also, you look exactly the same."

"Everyone's a critic." His hand drops.

The wheel hoists us higher into the sky. If I stand and peer over the lip of the seat, I can just barely see into the cart below us. Two murderously attractive Parisians are going at it like the wheel's a second away from collapsing, and sucking on each other's faces is how they want to spend their last two seconds.

The wheel gives a little jolt. Since I'm standing, I fall sideways onto Cohen's lap for the second time in five minutes.

He groans. "You need to stop doing that."

"Sorry." I straighten. "Am I crushing your delicate pelvis?"

"No. You're crushing my restraint."

What? I swallow. "Uh, hey, do you think the wheel's about to break? Since it jolted?"

"There's probably just a hitch in the machinery."

My heart rate's up. I guess I must be afraid. Or something. "If you knew you were about to die and had a few minutes, right here, how would you want to spend them?"

Wow, Rae. Of all the questions to distract yourself from your crotch, you have to ask the one that sounds incredibly flirtatious.

Cohen's brow creases. "How do you want me to answer that?"

"I don't. I mean, you don't have to answer that. It was a stupid question."

"Good," he says. "Because I only have a stupid answer."

"Now I kind of want to know your stupid answer," I say, and wish I could stuff my fist in my mouth without being so obviously bizarre.

He sighs. "It would be a pointless thing to say to you."

"Ugh. See, I hate it when people do this. They say they have something to say and then refuse to say it, and start making all these mysterious little comments about it. It's so obvious that they really just want the other person to force them to say it. So that's what I'm going to do. Spit it out."

"You're very blunt with me." He looks away from me and stares out the plastic window, the reflections of the City of Lights glancing across his face and highlighting his cheekbones, his eyes. "For someone who must be very good at tact and deception, ordinarily."

"I'm not naturally good at - how did you put it - tact and deception." I shrug. "Those are sort of just things I adopted to survive. I like to think the girl I would have been, the girl who graduated high school and went to college, was one of those types who says exactly what they think. I always admired people like that."

Cohen is quiet for a moment. "Tell me more about this girl. Your alternate self."

I smile. "Oh, I have lots to say about her. She's who I think about before I go to bed. She's really pretty, and super picky about boys, so she hasn't had many relationships, probably. Her friends tease her for how inexperienced she is. She's so smart, and brave, and funny, and she's studying to be a teacher, because she loves kids. She's just...great. It's funny, because I pretend to be so many different people, but the only person I've ever really wanted to be is her."

He frowns. "It sounds like you're just describing the way you are now."

"Yeah?" I laugh. "So inexperienced I get teased for it? That's me, all right."

"Not that. The personality." He's still not looking at me. "Smart. Brave. Funny. Says what she thinks."

"I'm not like that at all, though." Suddenly it seems very important to me that I force him to understand. "I'm a coward. I hide and dodge and change my personality like clothes to whatever suits others best. I'm...it's like I'm slimy, or slippery, or something. Insubstantial."

"Do you feel that way right now?" He turns to look at me. "Like you're changing or dodging?"

"Well, no. Not recently. But—"

I stop. He's still looking at me. It's so damn difficult to focus in front of those eyes. Like trying to memorize Law and Order while standing in the center of a hurricane.

"I guess I haven't felt that way recently," I admit. "I've been so distracted by Paris and our niceness lessons that I haven't noticed. It's like..." I blink. "It's like when I'm with you, I feel more like that girl I could have been. Okay, no, that was stupid. I'm sorry for being stupid. It's the altitude."

"You're not being stupid," he says quietly. I'm not used to this gentle genuineness from him, and it throws me off. But he's clearly not used to it either. His back is stiff and straight, his jaw tight, like his body is rebelling against his words. "I know what you mean. I feel...different, when I'm with you."

"Different how?"

"I don't hate you."

"Wow. What a compliment. Let me just have you write that on a piece of paper so I can get it bronzed and hang it on my wall."

"Shit, no, that's not what I meant. I'm not good at this." He lets his head fall against the side of the metal frame with a self-admonishing thunk.

"Don't do that." I reach over and wedge my hand between his head and the frame. "You'll hurt yourself."

He opens his eyes and it's almost like I'm cradling his face. But I don't move.

"Hate isn't the right word," he says. "I don't hate people. I just want to be away from them. All the time. I hold their very presences against them, and I lash out. It's not fair. I know that. But you...I don't feel that way with you."

"So you're saying you can tolerate my presence. I'm flattered." I'm laughing, but there's an edge to my words. I'm pushing him and I don't know why. What do I want from him?

"I didn't answer your question," he says.

I bite my lip. I should move my hand, but before I can, he reaches up to grasp my wrist.

"If I had two minutes left in this world?" he says. "I would spend them kissing you."

And he does. He leans forward, and then his lips are on mine.

My clients are not usually interested in kissing. Kissing is tender. Kissing is romance. When I've been kissed, I've been kissed hard, by whiskery booze-rank mouths. It's been something to cringe at, a reason to brush my teeth afterwards. Kisses I wish I could spit back out, like bad pieces of meat. But when Cohen kisses me, something happens. An injection of lava mixed with Pop Rocks. The hot tingle sizzles on my skin, sinks into my bloodstream, travels all the way down into my stomach, where it swirls and swirls endlessly.

His hand moves to the small of my back. I'm half on his lap, my fingers still cupping his cheek. My eyes are closed. I'm lost in this.

A thousand years later, some faraway voice says something gruffly in French and then in English. "All right, all right. We have people waiting."

Cohen and I break apart. We're back where we started, on the platform where two giggly teenagers are waiting to get on. The girl eyes Cohen, looks at her own pimply boyfriend, and sighs deeply. That's the thing that breaks the spell. Suddenly I'm blushing like a eighth grader who just got felt up for the first time at the movies. Cohen's expression is equally bewildered, like what happened in the air was a dream and now we're both disorientingly awake.

I climb out first, wobbling a little on the platform like the drunk person that the wheel operators probably assume I am. On the way out, the ticket guy gives Cohen a congratulatory slap on the back, a gesture that would normally earn him a verbal decapitation, but Cohen just gazes straight ahead with slightly stunned eyes.

Geoff is waiting at the curb. Good old Geoff.

We get into the car silently, leaving a wide stretch of upholstery between us. My heart is pounding now.

Cohen kissed me.

That's to be expected. He's my client. Frankly, it's amazing he's taken this long. It's what I'm used to. Same old game. I thought Cohen wasn't interested, but he is a man, after all. A straight man, specifically. It was inevitable that he'd eventually ask for the service he was already paying for.

So why does it feel like my ribs have been replaced with an electric fence?

And what happens when we get home?

That thought is enough to send a lightning bolt to a place in my body that almost never gets thunderstorms anymore. At the same time, my heart clenches. I was just starting to see him as a friend. Will this change everything between us? After tonight, will I only be a call girl to him?

And that's just the thing. I should've always been just a call girl to him. But he's never treated me the way everyone else did, like I was from a lower sect of humanity, worthy of only the worst type of attention. He's treated me the exact same as everyone else from the moment I met him.

I don't want to ruin that.

Even Geoff seems aware of the tension, since he blasts some weird warbling French musician all the way home. I keep expecting Cohen to bang on the divider and demand he turn it down, but he doesn't. He's as silent as death for the entire drive. My mind churns out one high-pitched thought after the other—is he angry with me? But he was the one who kissed me! Was I supposed to stop him? Should I have taken the opportunity to give him more?

We don't say a single word to each other the entire way back.

I trail after him through the lobby, ignoring a probing question or two from Renard, and follow Cohen into the elevator. I chance a glance up at him. He's oddly pale, his eyes focused on nothing, like he's thinking furiously—or trying hard to keep something within him from escaping.

We get to the apartment. He unlocks the door and turns the lights on. Then we're both standing uncomfortably in the living room.

"Well, I should get to bed," I say hesitantly.

"Yeah. Me too." But he doesn't take his eyes from me.

I clear my throat. "Pretty tired. Long day."

"Yep."

"Then I'll just..."

I don't move.

He does, though. He moves forward. And then he's kissing me hard and my body lights up like a firework and every word disappears from my head except one:

Yes, yes, yes.

He’s starving for me. I can feel it in every inch of him. He lifts me up, his hands cupping my thighs, and I wrap my legs around him. He bites my lower lip and I gasp. The noise wrenches a moan from him and he tears his lips from me. I almost complain, but then he’s kissing my neck savagely, each bite a melting star. I can’t wait to look at those marks tomorrow.