the table by the water. The waiter blushed and immediately took her over to her favorite table, handing her menus and basically ignoring Damon in the process.
He rolled his eyes at the waiter’s attention but opened his menu to look at the offerings. Since you’re obviously a regular, what do you recommend?”
“Anything. The seafood is wonderful, but even the burgers are delicious.”
He quickly read through the options and put his menu down, looking at her across the small table. “What are you doing in this area?”
“Shopping.”
“And before then?”
“Why do you think I’ve been doing something else?”
“Eva, you’re the one who said you wanted to get to know me better. How are we supposed to do that if you’re going to take every question as a challenge?”
She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s just something about you that makes me a bit arbitrary.”
“A bit?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Only a bit. I’m actually a very annoying person generally. You’ll know that once you get to know me better, which will only prove to you that you don’t want to marry me.”
“All the more reason to let me get to know the real person behind the façade.”
She chuckled at his logic but the atmosphere here was just too relaxed to take him very seriously. She ordered a beer and relaxed with the spicy dip and chips that arrived at their table. As the sun set, she talked about various subjects, none of them very deep. No one approached their table, there weren’t any waiters standing off to the side waiting to jump at his smallest request because no one really knew that the man sitting here was Damon Kelopatros. It was a completely different experience being with him tonight and she laughed, talked and joked about politics and investing and families. It seems that both of them seemed to be very careful to stay away from any subject that might turn controversial.
As the sun set over the water and darkness made the world a bit more intimate, she felt a bit closer to Damon than she had since she’d first met him. A part of her told her not to let the night become something it wasn’t, but the other part of her was thinking about how nice it would be to not be this man’s enemy. Dinner had been nice, surely there had to be a way to maintain this kind of friendship with him.
“How about if we play this game a bit differently this time?” she asked softly.
“What did you have in mind?”
She shrugged, trying to come up with different subjects besides the ones she usually brought up, which were why he wanted to marry her – a question he couldn’t really answer to her satisfaction, and what aspects of her personality he decided would be beneficial, which only irritated her. Oh, and his preference, why he terrified her so much, a question which she couldn’t really answer to his satisfaction because she didn’t completely understand her reactions to him herself.
“Can you tell me about the happiest and saddest moment of your life so far?” she asked, watching his face carefully to see if he gave her any important clues.
“The happiest moment of my life? Isn’t that a bit trite?”
“Possibly. But it might give me some insight into what motivates you.”
“Making my first million was deeply satisfying.”
She cocked her head to the side, looking at him curiously in the dim light. “Are you saying you don’t feel actual happiness? Or are you not answering the question by replying with a mediocre point in your life?”
“Possibly both,” he replied, his face a bland mask that didn’t tell her anything. It was too dark to see the color of his eyes and determine what he might be feeling in that way.
She nodded, accepting his answer and storing that piece of information away to examine later. “Okay, so how long ago did you make your first million? And how did you know that you’d succeeded without someone coming along to take it away from you?”
He told her something about his first investments and why he’d gone with certain companies. Eva was fascinated and leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand as she sipped her drink. His intuition on finding ways to make money was truly brilliant.
Their food came and he turned the question back on her. “So what’s your happiest moment?” he asked.
Eva considered several things she could tell him but in the end, she decided to go