Survival of the Fiercest (7 page)

We barely acknowledge each other as Evan pays the bill. I offer to expense it, but he waves me away, still not looking at me. I miss him teasing me. He called me a gossipmonger, and I wonder if my lips don’t look so good anymore.
Fucking Viper. Fucking Lou
. Once again, gossip is ruining my life.

Evan and I are silent as I lead the way out of the restaurant, waving to Johnny.

“See you later man,” I hear Evan say behind me.

It’s still a gorgeous afternoon, and I eye the taxis that are dropping people off.

“So what are you up to the rest of the day?” Evan asks over my shoulder, and I turn to him. He is wearing aviators and standing motionless with his hands in his pockets like he’s closed for business.

“Maybe walk around Golden Gate Park, sightsee, relax.” I shrug and smile.

He pauses for a moment, his mirrored shades and stony expression making him look ominous. “Come on, I’ll drop you in the park.” He cocks his head in the general direction of the parking lot, and I fall into step beside him.

“It’s okay, I can find my way,” I say to his back.

He just shakes his head at me and starts off toward the car lot. My feet fall in line.

“Thank you for brunch,” tumbles out of my mouth just as he slows in front of a shining black Mercedes-Benz. After two squeaks and a flash of the headlights, he holds open the passenger-side door.

“You’re very welcome,” he says, offering his hand for support. I take it, noting his hold is gentle but firm. My skin tingles with memory. “Careful,” he murmurs as I duck into the leather interior. After shutting the door, he walks around the car and slides into the driver’s seat.

The car purrs as we pull out of the parking space, and I remember how much I miss driving. Living in Manhattan, I don’t need a car, but I love feeling that power in my hands and under my feet. If I’m honest, sports cars turn me on, and I feel a stir of desire as Evan comfortably whips through the midday traffic, his forearms flexing with each turn of the wheel.

I wonder if he’s ever gotten a blowjob while driving or has been fucked in the backseat while parked in a dark alley…

“What’s wrong?” Evan asks when I glance behind me, trying to picture it.

“Nothing. Um, I like your car,” I say quickly.

“Thanks,” he says proudly, as if I’d praised his cock. “Do you have a car in the city?”

“Don’t need one. I train it mostly.”

“Where do you live?”

“Tribeca.”

Town houses whiz by as he expertly navigates the street. My heart races a little. The car takes a smooth corner, and I notice how his right hand goes to the gear shift.

“Tribeca’s nice,” he says. “I have a client who has a penthouse there along the Hudson.”

“Right, you mentioned that you were still practicing.”

“Just some private clients. Athletes mostly. Deal brokering and contract stuff.”

Just then we clear a hill, and a massive green lawn peppered with people becomes visible. Evan swings us into an empty parking space and shoots out of the car to open my door.

“You drive like you used to drive stick,” I say as he pulls me up by one hand.

His brows draw together at my observation. “The piece of shit I used to drive in high school was manual. Plus my buddy and I race cars from time to time at a track in Vegas. Did my driving scare you?” he asks almost apologetically.

“No, you just move your hand off the wheel to downshift.”

“It’s crazy that you caught that.”

“I tend to overanalyze.”

“No shit,” he says with a rueful smile. “So what have you gleaned from your analysis of my driving?”

“Aggressive,” I say.

“Is that bad?” he asks with an intense look.

“No,” I murmur, then glance toward the park. I feel rather than see his smirk. I turn back to him. “Well, thank you for the ride. It was nice getting to know you.” I try to etch the moment in my brain, studying his face, his lips. It feels like something is slipping away.

I wonder, if we had met under different circumstances, could we have been friends? Or lovers? Either way, things are a bit messy now. I offer my hand for a formal good-bye. His nose scrunches.

“I told you last night, it’s not over.” Walking past me, he begins a lazy pace toward the lawn.

Chapter Nine

At a coffee cart, Evan hands me a chicory blend that makes my day a little brighter. The unexpected company doesn’t hurt either, regardless of the fact that we are walking on eggshells. I don’t know what is on his agenda now, but I decide to just go with it. Delicious coffee. Picturesque park. Hot man. It’s the romantic-comedy trifecta. Rom-com trifectas—that might be a fun post for Fierce.

“What are you thinking about?” Evan asks, leading us to a line of benches.

“My impending lawsuit,” I say. He eyes me behind those mirrored aviators.

“You glaze over when you talk to yourself in your head,” he says.

“Actually, I was thinking of an article for work. Sometimes ideas just pop up. I guess I’m sort of always working.”

“Do you need a pen? I bet the cart has one.”

I shake my head but appreciate his efforts. Pete always gets annoyed when I need a few seconds to jot down ideas. I ask myself why I have been with Pete for so long, but my thoughts stall when Evan stretches out on the bench next to me. His arm rests on the back by my shoulders, and his hand is inches from my hair.

“So you still have clients in New York. Anywhere else?” I ask, trying to keep the conversation light even as I inhale his cologne, which the breeze takes right under my nose.

“Sure, New Orleans, Atlanta, Vegas.”

“How do you meet them?”

“Um… The first few were through Jared.” Slipping off his glasses he avoids my gaze, obviously uncomfortable talking candidly about his best friend with me.

“Look, today is off the record. Okay? Maybe we can start over.”

“Okay.” He nods and takes a sip of his coffee, glancing at my mouth. I wonder what he is thinking about, because I find myself reliving that kiss every time his lips touch the rim of his coffee cup. Was he thinking about it too? He continues, “Should we start when you slipped into my office? Or on the couch right before you bolted? I vote the couch.”

He is teasing me again. It feels good. “You want to go back to where you were taking advantage of me on the couch?”

“You took advantage of me,” he says. “You knew what you were doing when you put on those glasses.”

“Excuse me?” I frown. “You are insinuating that my very functional reading glasses were a ploy for your attention?”

“Those glasses scream hot for teacher. It’s a fantasy for most, if not all, men.”

“As in that ’80s song?” Taking my glasses from my purse, I slip them on and fluff my hair. Then I turn to him with a coquettish look. “Like when the teacher comes out in a bikini and strips on top of her desk? This is one of your fantasies?”

“Yeah,” he says, causing his dimple to appear.

I shake out my hair. “Is this making you feel hot? Should I dance on the bench?”

“Please do.”

“Have you had sex with a teacher?”

“Is this off the record?”

“No,” I joke.

“I plead the fifth,” he says with a light in his eyes.

“You have,” I accuse. “You’ve probably screwed all your teachers.”

“What?” He feigns offense.

“Off the record. Be honest. Are you a man-ho?”

“No.” He says it like I’m crazy.

“Who was the Spanish girl that called you a pendejo?”

He lets out a sigh and hangs his head. “My date for the night. A friend set us up.” He shrugs. “But I was also working, and she got angry that I wasn’t paying more attention to her. She stormed out. But she came back”—he leans in—“or so I thought.”

“Very interesting,” I say in my professor voice. We are distracted by kids playing a few feet away, and I put my glasses in my purse.

“Done?” he asks, his chin jerking toward the coffee cup cradled in my lap.

Evan walks our cups to the trashcan a few feet away, and I feel free to eyeball him. He has a smooth, powerful gait that accentuates what could only be described as
swag
. A few scantily clad joggers notice too, their heads turning on their way past. I roll my eyes. He has swag—in spades.

I feign a sudden interest in the birds nearby when he turns toward me. The bench dips momentarily when he sits a little closer to me. My pulse jumps.

“Now what?” he asks.

“Well, I am going to jump on a cable car and just see where it takes me.”

“How about an air-conditioned Mercedes?”

I mask my excitement with a cool frown. “Don’t you have plans today?”

He leans forward, his eyes clear blue and his hair slightly mussed from the breeze. “My plans are later, and I’d like to enjoy a sun-filled afternoon before I start adopting vampire hours.”

It’s a sweet gesture but out of place as we are virtual strangers. I wonder if he is just doing this so I don’t write the article. Before I know it, he is on his feet, holding his hand out to help me up. He puts his hand gently on my back as we walk, and my mind races to the
10 Signs He’s Interested
post that I’d seen on a competing website. Number six was:
He leads you by the arm or with his hand at the small of your back
. Apparently it’s a way to mark your territory to other men. The idea of being marked as his territory gives me a secret thrill.

We walk through Japantown, where Evan’s hand finds my back several more times, drive to Fisherman’s Wharf for a walk along the bay, and continue on to see the architectural beauty of the civic center.

But my mind is blown when he shows me the graffiti art and colorful murals that adorn the streets of the Mission District. Hispanic music wafts into the streets from restaurants, and I bask in the creative warmth of my surroundings. Evan does too, I notice. He leads us down alleyways that are a little scary but eventually open into courtyards that hold larger-than-life artistry.

“How do you know about this?” I ask as we slip through another dark alley.

“Josie Vasquez grew up here. She, Jared, and I would run these streets as teenagers. We were all friends back in the day.” He grins fondly. “She and I dated for a year or so in high school, but it wasn’t serious. Then college came for Jared, and I and Josie went to LA. Enter Josie Pink.”

“Did you three always keep in touch?”

“Yeah. Josie likes to surface when there is trouble. And there is always trouble.” He says the latter under his breath, inspecting our surroundings.

“It must be different to come here now,” I say, stopping myself from going any further about Josie. I promised.

“I still come here often. It changes over and over again. The architecture is alive.”

Alive
. Like his facial expressions as he explains the area’s Mexican history. He takes my hand during our exploration, and I let him keep it. We stop on a street corner by a popular restaurant and stare up at the graffiti-covered building.

I turn to him. “Evan, are you a closet artist or something?”

“No, I don’t sketch much anymore.” His expression darkens. “I used to want to be an architect.”

I stay quiet, giving his hand a small squeeze as he continues.

“When my father left us, my mother took on two jobs to support my sisters and me,” he says. “Enough money was scraped together to put me through college. My uncle had a small law practice and offered to give me a job right out of school. It was a sure thing. Creative arts weren’t encouraged.”

I hate the sadness in his voice. Or is it regret? I want to console him the way I would a lover. Kiss his lips and rub his back, tell him his creativity can’t be taken away by a law degree. But I shake it off, reminding myself that we
aren’t
lovers. That technically I have a boyfriend I haven’t quite broken up with yet, and I’m supposed to write a gossip story about Evan’s very good friends. Instead I offer up something of myself.

“No one cared what I went to school for. My parents passed away when I was a kid. My father’s mother raised me, and her goal for me was to meet a husband and have babies.” I take his arm, and we begin a slow pace down the street, which is darkening as the sun begins its set into the hills.

“I could have gotten a degree in underwater basket weaving for all she cared.” That gets a chuckle out of him. “I came out of school with the husband, but that didn’t work out.”

“How long were you married?”

“Just a few years.”

“Any kids?”

“No.” I swallow, wondering why it’s always so hard to admit that.

After a short pause, he speaks. “I’m sorry about your parents.”

“Thank you,” is all I can say as we fall into our own thoughts and only the crunch of our sneakers remains.

I look down at our feet stepping in unison: his black high-tops and my silver ones. I gaze at our locked arms—my brown fingers snake around his white arm. Maybe all the art has gone to my head, but I notice that he and I are full of contrasting colors that act as a complement when set against each other. My mouth goes dry when I think of all of him laid out next to all of me. When I glance at his face, I am surprised to see him watching me. Caught, I smile an apology and quickly look away.

We stroll a few more blocks to a heavily populated area filled with music and restaurants. Evan keeps me close as we thread through the crowds. We stop in front of what looks like a small shack with a cardboard menu posted outside. In perfect Spanish, he greets the man and woman at the counter, who seem happy to see him.

“Hungry? These are the best tacos in the city,” Evan says.

“Mmm, let’s do it. I love tacos,” I say, slipping away toward the menu. My body is pulsating, and I need some distance. I don’t want to want him so much. Caring about him will interfere with what I know I have to do.

Evan comes up behind me as I read the menu. “Are you sure you are okay with this?” he asks. “It’s not a place I usually take a date.”

“Why?” I ask over my shoulder. “The music, the people; there is romance here.”

“The last girl I brought here didn’t think so.”

“Let me guess. She was a model slash actress, and her stilettos got stuck in the street cracks.”