Romantic Acquisition Page 0,32
another subject, barely giving her time to think. When he asked about security, she couldn’t answer his questions and he turned around and glared at her. “Why don’t you know?” he demanded, his eyes shooting fire at her.
Kate was tired of his snappiness. She was tired from waking up too early and starving, having not eaten breakfast. It was now well past lunchtime and her stomach was starting to violently protest her lack of food. She put her hands on her hips and turned to face him. “Because I’m in charge of purchasing, remember? When did that ever include security?” she snapped right back at him, not caring about the store employees that were witnessing their argument.
Carlo wasn’t letting up. “You seemed to know all about it at the other stores we went through. Are they exclusive to your world? You just ignore everything outside the Washington, D.C. area?”
“I knew the answers to your questions because I’d worked in those stores,” she shot back. “I’m not in charge of the entire chain so I’m not privy to every aspect of the operations in the site stores. If you want someone more knowledgeable, I’ll be happy to go back to Washington and you can find a better person to answer your questions.”
“If you don’t know the answers, isn’t it your job as the appointed liaison to find them for me? Or is your mind too focused on getting back to Ed that you can’t focus on the current task.”
Kate’s eyes widened and she gasped in shock. “You think I’m thinking of Ed? Are you nuts? With you around,” she poked him in the middle of his muscular chest, “how in the world can anyone think of anything else?” she snapped back, then turned on her heel and walked away. She went out into the mall and found a small sandwich shop, fuming over his tirade and unjustified anger towards her lack of security knowledge.
She ordered a sandwich and grumbled about the highhandedness of a particular male. “Who does he think he is?” she asked the empty chair across from her. “Ed indeed!” she mumbled.
Unfortunately, the object of her fury sat down across from her. He smiled to the waitress who instantly came running to him. That just irritated Kate further since it had taken the waitress several minutes to acknowledge her when she’d sat down. The waitress gushed over Carlo, offering suggestions for lunch, flirting outrageously at him.
Once he’d finished ordering, he sat back in his seat and smiled.
“What’s so funny?” she snapped, her arms crossed over her chest as she glared at the object of her frustration.
“You have a temper.” He said, laughing out loud as her eyes narrowed.
“So do you, apparently,” she replied, throwing it back at him.
He raised his hands in the air and nodded. “I admit it. I was jealous.”
Kate rolled her eyes at his admission. “Why on earth were you jealous?”
He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table and stared right into her eyes. “Because the idea of some other man doing the things to you and with you that I want to do drives me nuts,” he said intensely.
Kate’s mouth fell open.
His head tilted slightly as he looked at her shocked expression. “This can’t be a shock to you. I’ve been trying to get you to go to bed with me for weeks. Hearing that there might be a reason why you won’t, or more to the point, someone who is keeping you from doing so, possibly doing it himself…well, that was a whole different issue.”
“But I haven’t seen Ed for a long time. And we weren’t dating for a long time before that,” she explained.
“Good to hear,” he replied and leaned back as the waitress brought their lunch.
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to fall into bed with you,” she grumbled and took a bite of her sandwich.
He shrugged his shoulders. “You will, eventually. I’m a patient man. And very persuasive.” He winked at her before he bit into his sandwich. After that, he was all business, discussing some of his observations from the morning with her and asking her opinion about some other issues.
Kate fell into the business discussion easily. It was the personal ones she was wary of. The day progressed easily after that. They spent the rest of the afternoon in Nancy’s office going through receipts and accounting reports, asking questions and reviewing sales records. Nancy was very thorough and knew all the answers to Carlo’s questions.
The evening was wonderful as