Five Dates with the Billionaire - Alyssa J. Montgomery Page 0,18
she his employee, but Mia remained a total conundrum. For the moment, he’d give her the benefit of the doubt. But his instincts warned him to be on his guard.
Chapter Seven
Prince Charming.
In a complete about-face, Connor was the gentleman Mia had always expected he’d be: opening the car door for her when they parked down the road from the restaurant and behaving with such courtesy that he’d give Prince Charming a damned good run for his money.
There was no sign of the hostile man who’d confronted her hours earlier.
Mia wanted to believe that his remorse had been genuine—that her admiration of him for all these years hadn’t been misplaced. It was easy to see how his earlier rudeness and suspicion could’ve been a knee-jerk reaction caused by his concern for Violet. Sheer pragmatism told her to give him the benefit of the doubt so they could get through this as pleasantly as possible.
When they were seated opposite each other and had given the waiter their orders, their gazes met.
A woman could drown in the ocean-blue depths of his eyes.
‘Tell me about yourself, Mia.’
Uh-oh. ‘Let’s talk about work instead. I think it’s a safer topic.’
‘Safer?’
‘Wiser,’ she amended hastily in response to his sharp look. She’d have to be on her guard. ‘Violet and work are the only two things you and I have in common.’
‘That’s not what Gran told me. She insisted we have a lot of shared interests.’
‘Right. Like our love of tennis.’ Mia rolled her eyes. ‘You don’t like tennis?’
‘Oh, I love tennis but I think it’s safer for me to be a spectator rather than a player.’
‘There’s the word again—safer.’
‘Safe is good.’
‘You don’t think life would be more fun if you lived dangerously?’
Refusing to dwell on all the reasons why her very life was a prime example of living dangerously, she gave a small laugh. ‘Believe me, life is definitely dangerous when I have a tennis racquet in my hand—not for me, but for others.’
‘Have you had lessons?’
‘A few. I’ll probably never be allowed on the court again after a particularly embarrassing incident last weekend.’
He leaned forward. ‘You can’t leave me guessing. What happened?’
‘A ball I hit went sailing out of my court, into the one next to me. It gave a boy a huge lump on his poor little forehead.’ She felt her cheeks grow hot at the memory.
‘He might be rethinking his lessons, too.’ Connor smiled and for a moment her breath hitched in her chest.
Lord but he was gorgeous.
‘Anyway, I think we’ve established that Violet’s trying too hard to sell these outings to us,’ she rushed, trying to stop thinking about how handsome Connor was. ‘From what I’ve heard she was an incredible CEO, but she obviously isn’t aware of the first rule of marketing.’
‘Which is?’
‘Don’t oversell your product.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ he told her with an easy smile. ‘Do you enjoy your job?’
‘Immensely.’ Coming up with innovative marketing plans was exciting and rewarding.
‘What do you love about it?’
‘Looking at a product with fresh eyes.’ Satisfaction welled in her chest. ‘The product is like a clump of rock. In marketing, I hold it up at all different angles until I find the precious seam of gold. Then I have to work out the best vantage point so that when I hold it aloft, everyone else can see the gold too. I want them to be able to focus on the gold to the point where they’re not even aware of any surrounding rock.’
He sat back in his chair and a little thrill shot through her veins as she saw the respect in his eyes. ‘That’s quite an analogy.’
She shrugged. Passionate about what she did, it was hard to stop talking about it once she started. ‘When I was at university I had some stand-up arguments with some of my lecturers about the ethics of marketing. It can be an unscrupulous field and I’m glad I’m working for your company.
‘I know any product we’re selling from the Stewart Corporation is good, but I still need to tap into consumers so the gold is precious to them. I don’t want them to take one look at it, dismiss it as fool’s gold and walk away. They need to see it and believe it’s the genuine thing—the thing they want. The thing they need to have.’
As the waiter arrived at their table and poured their wine, Connor said, ‘I’ve never heard anyone speak so passionately about marketing. If you didn’t work for me I’d headhunt you.’