Come As You Are

She studies me. “Funny, I would have pegged you for model toys, airplanes, and RC cars.”

I bring my hand to my heart, pretending to look affronted. “I’m offended that you don’t realize I’m weirdly practical. I have no interest in things that don’t do . . . anything. But I do love the radio.”

“Do you have your own radio?”

“Of course. Built it from old parts. Listen to it at night. Works like a charm.”

She shrugs playfully. “Maybe you can tune in to little green men on it.”

I wiggle my eyebrows. “One can hope.”

Hope. Just like a sad part of me is hoping this night can keep ticking along in the direction of paisley dresses, cardboard robots, little green men, and cabs hailed hastily. I want to turn on the radio, then turn her on, as sultry music plays and moonlight streams in through the penthouse windows.

She laughs as she lifts her yellow teacup and takes a drink of her beverage. But when she sets it down, a lightning bolt of anger flashes across her eyes. “Wait,” she whispers sharply, and there goes the hope. “Did you know I was going to be covering you? Did Mr. Galloway tell you first?”

I wrench back, getting out of the way of her ambush. “Are you crazy?” I slash a hand through the air in certain denial. The interlude is over. Officially. “I had no idea who you were. I had no clue you were working on a story on me.”

“I was literally just assigned the piece today. My editor told me you knew about it,” she says with narrowed eyes, as if she’s trying to catch me in a fib.

“And you think that means I knew who you were at the party?”

“Maybe you were feeling me out. Trying to get a sense of what I was like.”

I scoff. “Angel, I’m not that nefarious nor so desperate that I need to conduct recon for a magazine article I agreed to do. And I don’t need to sleep with a reporter to try to sway her view of me.”

“Then why did you say you were a VC last night? See? You were trying to throw me off then. I thought you were a venture capitalist. Were you just saying that so I wouldn’t know who you were?”

I hold up my hands. “I didn’t say it. You assumed it.”

“And you didn’t correct. Why?”

I sigh, rubbing a hand across my neck. “Because I didn’t want you to know who I was. Because we were role-playing. Because it was part of the game. I thought you liked the game.”

“I did,” she says, her tone vulnerable once again. “But why didn’t you want me to know who you were?”

“Because I wanted you to like me for me.”

She exhales deeply. “I guess I wanted the same.” She holds up a finger, a sign she has to ask another question. “But if you didn’t know who I was last night, if you truly didn’t know it was me, how did you recognize me as the girl from last night when you came in?”

I furrow my brow as the bartender brings me a pink teacup. It’s a frilly-looking porcelain cup, meant for proper ladies sipping tea. I swear this drink better be as strong as steel.

“This ought to do the trick,” he says, then whispers, tequila.

I thank him and swallow a thirsty gulp of the fiery liquor from the prissy cup. The burn intensifies as it goes down, then it spreads through my lungs. I draw a deep breath, and when that cuts-like-a-knife sensation starts to fade, I say, “Seriously, Angel? Is that a serious question? You think I’d only recognize you if I had planned in advance to seduce the reporter assigned to cover me?”

She lifts her chin, nodding, as if she believes that line of bullshit.

I lean closer to her, raise a hand, and finger a curl of her hair. Her breath catches. “Angel, I recognized you because you’re wearing polka dots, because you said you make your clothes and something about polka dots seems uniquely you and uniquely DIY. I recognized you because your hair is the same gorgeous shade, because I had my lips on your face, on your earlobe, on these pink lips.” A shudder moves through her as I go on. “I knew your voice because it was the same husky, sexy voice that the woman used last night when she begged me to fuck her against a wall. To fuck her hard.” A tremble is her answer. “I knew it was you because you match my mystery girl, and you smell as delicious as she did.” I move back, letting my words linger. “But perhaps I didn’t make a memorable enough impression.”

“You did,” she whispers, her voice wobbly. She doesn’t meet my eyes. She runs a hand over her skirt and crosses her legs. Taking a deep breath, she raises her face. “I swear you did.”

I like her response. Hell, I needed her response. But once it’s voiced, a kernel of doubt wiggles insidiously through me, burrowing into my chest.

What if she’s setting me up?

I throw her question back at her. “But how can I be sure you didn’t know who I was?”

She rolls her eyes. “Please. I already said I thought you were a VC.”

But what if she’s lying? What if she knew who I was and seduced me to soften me up for the piece, like Annie came back to me to try to pry open my accounts? “How do I know?”

She arches a brow and straightens her shoulders. “How do you know? I guess you don’t. You’ll have to take my word for it. All I knew was you were a guy I liked spending time with. I had no idea what you did for a living. I didn’t care. I liked dancing with you. I like talking to you. And I really liked kissing you. I liked that the best.”

Dammit, she’s making my heart roll over, and there’s no time and space for that.

“I liked it too,” I say, but I can’t let myself be fooled. I can’t be Annie-fished again. I need to zero in on boundaries. “But obviously we’re not going to do it again.”

“Obviously.” She agrees almost too quickly. “I don’t sleep with sources, or people I interview.”

She takes a drink from her yellow teacup then sets it down. Her drink has a sprig of mint in it. Mojito. Yeah, she obviously likes torturing the bartender, since those drinks are hard as hell to make. I tended bar briefly after college while working on my first start-up, and anyone who ordered that drink might as well have used me as a voodoo doll. It’s best that I learn now she’s an evil bartender-torturer.

She pushes the teacup away and lifts her chin, her jaw set hard. “And I’m not going to recuse myself from the story.”

“I don’t think you should recuse yourself.”

“Good. Because I don’t need to. I didn’t know who you were when last night happened, so I wasn’t sleeping with a subject then. And now that I do know, we’ll proceed as if it’s business as usual. Plus, I could wind up covering your company or your sector on an ongoing basis for this magazine, or honestly, for any publication, so it’s best if we just move on.” Her tone is all-business, no flirting, and no soft underside.

I nod in agreement because, hell yeah, do I agree. “Business as usual means I also don’t sleep with people I work with.” Though, to be fair, I’ve never confronted a situation where I considered sleeping with a reporter covering my company. Nonetheless, I get that it falls in the same Very Bad Idea category as sleeping with a business partner, investor, banker, or lawyer.

I haven’t done those either.

See? I do deserve a lollipop.

“Besides,” she adds as she lifts her teacup, “I can’t risk this story. I have bills to pay, and I need this assignment . . .” Her voice trails off in a waft of desperation.