Wall Street Titan (Wall Street Titan #1) - Anna Zaires Page 0,6
face me, and my pulse shoots into the stratosphere.
The person in front of me is nothing like the pictures on the app. His hair is brown, and his eyes are blue, but that’s the only similarity. There’s nothing rounded and shy about the man’s hard features. From the steely jaw to the hawk-like nose, his face is boldly masculine, stamped with a self-assurance that borders on arrogance. A hint of five o’clock shadow darkens his lean cheeks, making his high cheekbones stand out even more, and his eyebrows are thick dark slashes above his piercingly pale eyes. Even sitting behind the table, he looks tall and powerfully built. His shoulders are a mile wide in his sharply tailored suit, and his hands are twice the size of my own.
There’s no way this is Mark from the app, unless he’s put in some serious gym time since those pictures were taken. Is it possible? Could a person change so much? He didn’t indicate his height in the profile, but I’d assumed the omission meant he was vertically challenged, like me.
The man I’m looking at is not challenged in any way, and he’s certainly not wearing glasses.
“I’m… I’m Emma,” I stutter as the man continues staring at me, his face hard and inscrutable. I’m almost certain I have the wrong guy, but I still force myself to ask, “Are you Mark, by any chance?”
“I prefer to be called Marcus,” he shocks me by answering. His voice is a deep masculine rumble that tugs at something primitively female inside me. My heart beats even faster, and my palms begin to sweat as he rises to his feet and says bluntly, “You’re not what I expected.”
“Me?” What the hell? A surge of anger crowds out all other emotions as I gape at the rude giant in front of me. The asshole is so tall I have to crane my neck to look up at him. “What about you? You look nothing like your pictures!”
“I guess we’ve both been misled,” he says, his jaw tight. Before I can respond, he gestures toward the booth. “You might as well sit down and have a meal with me, Emmeline. I didn’t come all the way here for nothing.”
“It’s Emma,” I correct, fuming. “And no, thank you. I’ll just be on my way.”
His nostrils flare, and he steps to the right to block my path. “Sit down, Emma.” He makes my name sound like an insult. “I’ll have a talk with Victoria, but for now, I don’t see why we can’t share a meal like two civilized adults.”
The tips of my ears burn with fury, but I slide into the booth rather than make a scene. My grandmother instilled politeness in me from an early age, and even as an adult living on my own, I find it hard to go against her teachings.
She wouldn’t approve of me kneeing this jerk in the balls and telling him to fuck off.
“Thank you,” he says, sliding into the seat across from me. His eyes glint icy blue as he picks up the menu. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“I don’t know, Marcus,” I say, putting special emphasis on the formal name. “I’ve only been around you for two minutes, and I’m already feeling homicidal.” I deliver the insult with a ladylike, Grandma-approved smile, and dumping my purse in the corner of my booth seat, I pick up the menu without bothering to take off my coat.
The sooner we eat, the sooner I can get out of here.
A deep chuckle startles me into looking up. To my shock, the jerk is grinning, his teeth flashing white in his lightly bronzed face. No freckles for him, I note with jealousy; his skin is perfectly even-toned, without so much as an extra mole on his cheek. He’s not classically handsome—his features are too bold to be described that way—but he’s shockingly good-looking, in a potent, purely masculine way.
To my dismay, a curl of heat licks at my core, making my inner muscles clench.
No. No way. This asshole is not turning me on. I can barely stand to sit across the table from him.
Gritting my teeth, I look down at my menu, noting with relief that the prices in this place are actually reasonable. I always insist on paying for my own food on dates, and now that I’ve met Mark—excuse me, Marcus—I wouldn’t put it past him to drag me to some ritzy place where a glass of tap water costs more than