The Bet An Enemies-To-Lovers Billionaire Romance - Sienna Blake Page 0,31
drink, glancing nervously at the tables around us.
“You said you were going to tell me what to do,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth, like we were spies with opened newspapers on a park bench.
I slung my arm over her shoulders again and leaned against her, raising a finger in front of the flickering candle. “Indeed I did.”
Delaney eyed me and then whispered, “Well?”
I nestled closer, leaning my head in conspiratorially. “Well, the waiter is going to come back to take our orders, and I’m going to order for you. Then we’re going to drink our champagne and talk about classy things like bow ties and Scottish terriers, pearls and old bonds on yellowed parchment, raised pinkies and oriental rugs.”
Delaney was clinging to my every word as my eyes scanned the patrons sipping their expensive soups, stabbing their expensive meats, pushing expensive peas around their expensive plates. I grinned and slid my gaze back to her.
“Then,” I whispered, leaning in even closer, “then… Delaney, are you listening?”
Delaney nodded and whispered back an earnest, “Yes.”
“Good.” I brushed my thumb up and down the length of her neck. “Good, good. Then… Remember what I told you… that you all you have to do is listen to me?”
“Yes.”
“That all you had do was exactly what I tell you to do?”
“Yes.”
I practically felt Delaney holding her breath close beside me.
“Then this is what you’re going to do…” I said, dragging out the pause with a long sip of champagne. “Delaney, love, it’s simple: you’re going to slap me in the face and storm out.”
Delaney
“Ex-fucking-cuse me?”
This is what I intended to blurt out when Ronan told me he wanted me to slap him in the face and storm out. “Ex-fucking-cuse me” would have been my precise words had Ronan, putting on a ridiculously over-the-top southern accent, not beaten me to it. Since he took what I was going to say, all I could manage to do was stare at him and stammer incomprehensibly.
“Oui, oui, oui,” Ronan said, dismissing me with a dramatic flutter of his hand in the intimate candlelight. “Quelle horreur. But that is exactly what I, as your all-knowing, all-wise, all-devastatingly handsome tutor, requires of you, love.”
I shook my head, getting ready to protest when Ronan interrupted me.
“You’re going to slap me in the face,” he said, swirling his champagne lazily in his glass. “Hard, if you don’t mind. We might as well both get something out of tonight, and I do love a good slap from a bad woman.”
Ronan grabbed the bottle from the bucket of ice to refill our glasses, mine till it was spilling over the edge and spreading across the fine white tablecloth. He handed me the sticky glass, wrapping my fingers around the stem as I tried to argue.
“But Ronan—”
“You’re going to slap me in the face and then—ah, our waiter!”
I watched Ronan as he ordered our meals, searching his face for any signs that this was just another one of his ridiculous jokes. How was slapping him in the face going to make anyone see me as anything more than trailer park trash arguing with my cousin over a pack of Bud Light?
The moment the waiter was out of earshot once more, Ronan leaned back in and continued right where he had left off.
“So you’re going to slap me in the face—hard, remember—and then, listen carefully, because this is the part you in particular are going to struggle with the most… you walk out silently.”
I could only stare at Ronan with an open mouth, barely noticing that my champagne was spilling. Ronan narrowed his eyes at me, though he was unable to keep that mischievous grin from his lips.
“You do know what ‘silently’ means, right?” he asked. “No talking? Zippy lippy? Mum’s the word? You know, the whole ‘throw away the key’ thing?”
I swatted Ronan’s hand away when he went to touch my lips. “Are you trying to get me arrested?” I asked, suspicion on the rise.
Ronan rolled his eyes.
“Delaney, trust me,” he said, reaching in his breast pocket for his pack of cigarettes. “There is nothing more I’d like than to see you in handcuffs. Handcuffs and a skimpy black bra. Handcuffs and a thong. Oh, oh, handcuffs and nothing at all.”
“Ronan.”
Ronan shook his head and busied himself with lighting his cigarette on the flame of the tall white candle in the centre of the table, drawing dirty looks from our neighbours.