Wall Street Titan (Wall Street Titan #1) - Anna Zaires Page 0,24
“I’ll be careful, I promise. I’ll question him about everything and make sure there’s no wife lurking in the bushes. In fact, I’ll drill him so good he won’t know what hit him.”
Kendall looks at me, owl-eyed, and I look back at her. In the next instant, we’re both laughing uncontrollably, and the tension between us dissolves without a trace.
After I return home, I shower, shave my legs, and let my hair air dry to ensure that the curls don’t turn too frizzy. Afterward, I spend a solid hour trying on and discarding various outfits. I finally settle on a pair of jeans, my newish pair of high-heeled boots (only a couple of seasons old and still mostly in fashion), and my dressiest blouse with a sweater wrap over it. I even add a little jewelry and a full layer of makeup, including foundation—which I promptly wash off because it makes me look like a clown. I end up with a little mascara to darken my auburn lashes, a light dusting of powder to make my freckles less visible, and a simple application of lip gloss—my usual first-date look.
In fact, everything about the way I look tonight is my usual, though I’ve spent double the amount of time it took me to prepare for the date with Mark. I don’t know what I was hoping to achieve with all my primping, but after I’m done, I look the way I always do, just maybe a shade more polished. I’m not one of those girls who has the skills to transform herself with a few strokes of a makeup brush; whenever I try, I end up with a clown look, like I did earlier. Normally, it doesn’t bother me, but tonight, I wish I knew how to shade and contour, how to make my eyes look huge and my cheekbones more prominent.
Tonight, I want to look pretty for him.
Stop being pathetic, Emma. Just stop it.
Even as I tell myself this, I know it’s useless. The jittery high that prevented me from sleeping last night is nowhere near abating, the mixture of excitement and nervous anticipation making me unable to sit still for longer than a minute. I have to proofread a short story for a client, but whenever I sit down and try to focus on it, the words dance on the page, and all I see are his cool blue eyes staring back at me.
Great, just freaking great. This is why I should’ve said no. Maybe Kendall is right, and I tend to go for safe guys, but that’s how I like it. This unsettled, insecure feeling—this desperate desire to please a man—is not something I enjoy. In college, when all my friends were going crazy for jocks and bad boys, I dated nice, quiet guys—like Jim, my last serious boyfriend. With him, I never had to worry about dressing up; he liked me as much in my dorky pajamas and house slippers as in skirts and high heels. In fact, he often couldn’t tell the difference between the two; to him, a girl was a girl, regardless of what she was wearing. We ended up breaking up because he became too clingy, demanding my time and energy to an exhausting degree, but until then, dating him had been like being with one of my friends: easy and comfortable.
Staring at myself in the mirror, I see a pink flush on my cheeks and fever-bright gleam in my gray eyes. This dinner with Marcus is not going to be easy and comfortable, I know that much.
It also won’t be cheap. The restaurant Marcus chose is at the upper limit of my budget, so I’ll be skimping on groceries for the rest of the week. I should’ve insisted on going to Papa Mario’s, but I was afraid Marcus would hate it, so I caved—something I wouldn’t have done with Jim or any other guy I’ve dated.
For a moment, I wonder if it’s too late to back out, but then I chide myself for being a coward. I can survive one dinner with a man who makes me feel like this. If what Kendall says is true, it should actually be good for me, get me out of my comfort zone and all. Besides, it’s not like anything long-term would come from it. Whatever Marcus’s reasons are for asking me out, I’m sure he’ll realize right away that we have very little in common, and it’ll end there.