Dirty Playboy - Alex Wolf Page 0,12

that aside for a bit, and if you would go with me? Not as two friends going out to something together. I want to pick you up, take you to dinner, and drive you home after.”

Literally, none of that came out the way I imagined it. I’m such a fucking moron. I should’ve waited and regrouped when I had my wits about me.

Now, my nuts are on the chopping block facing judgment from a piss-poor date proposal.

Mary takes the cupcakes from me, and I swear her lips curl up the slightest bit, but then mash back into a thin line. “You’re asking me on a real date, after everything that happened last night? This is your timing, when you thought it’d be a good idea to do this?” She glares around, worried someone might actually see us.

Thank God the paralegals around her have headphones on, and nobody has walked by.

I stare down at her. “Yes. Sorry about the timing, but I’ve been planning this for a long time. Will you go out with me? On a real date?”

She considers it for a split second, then shakes her head.

I swear my heart cracks in two the second I see her do it.

Her eyes roam up to mine, and I can tell she’s dead serious. “No.”

What’s left of my heart squeezes inside my chest like a damn vise, and all the air leaves my lungs. It’s totally unexpected. I did the nice guy shit just right, the way they do in the movies. I went through every detail, the cupcakes, the tickets, thought it all out.

I’ve never felt anything like this. I’ve never been rejected.

Did that really just happen? I thought for sure even if I fucked everything up, I still had about a ninety percent chance at success. My blood starts to boil, and it’s not pure rage, it’s a simmering under the surface of the skin. It’s a culmination of the situation, the timing, the sequence of events and circumstances leading up to this.

“No?” It’s the only word that escapes my lips.

“I’m sorry. It’s just not a good time.”

My mouth takes over before my brain can catch up. “You kidding me right now? Do you know what I had to do to get those tickets because I thought you wanted them? No?” I stare at her, wide-eyed, bewildered.

“Have you never been told ‘no’ before? I need to get back to work, Rick. Here.” She tries to hand me the cupcakes back, a rejection of everything, not just the proposal. It’s clear she wants absolutely nothing to do with me.

I shake my head. “Keep them.” The simmering under my skin heats up to an alarming degree, and I don’t think I can control it. I just need to keep my shit together. But to hell with playing nice. If she doesn’t want to do this the normal way, I’ll fucking show her how I get shit done.

“Why? So you can continue to leverage a date that’s not going to happen?”

My jaw clenches and I stare right at her. “Keep the cupcakes,” I say through my teeth. I lean down, so that my mouth is right next to her ear. “And the date will happen.” I damn near growl the last part.

She gulps the second I say it, and her heartbeat redlines in the side of her neck. Good, I can still make her nervous if I need to.

She takes a few deep breaths, and I can’t tell if she’s irate or turned on. Maybe a little of both. “I’m sorry, Rick, but I need to get back to work. And it’s not going to happen.”

Just get the fuck out of here, man. Before you fuck everything up permanently.

I lean back and glare right at her for a few seconds, letting the silence stretch between us. Finally, I say, “We’ll see.” I walk off before she says anything else.

Mary Patrick

What the heck did he mean by that?

“We’ll see.”

He walks off and I sit there, staring at his back as he turns the corner. I bury my face in my palms. Why can’t he just leave me alone? It would be one thing if I thought he was serious, but I know how the real Rick Lawrence is. Everyone knows how he is.

I won’t lie and say there’s not more to him than what he shows people, but still. He’s pretending to be someone else when he’s around me. If he would just be himself, then maybe I could trust the things he