Once she left, I gave him a hard look. “What is this? Are you trying a new strategy to seduce me, or something?”

“Why? Is it working?” There was that boyish smile of his, again. Except I saw it in a different light this time. Before, I’d seen it as the cocky smile of a man who had the world handed to him on a plate. Now, I thought maybe it was more the smile of a man who liked to make people happy. He was someone who understood people, and he enjoyed taking care of them. But, maybe that was giving him too much credit. Maybe he was just the man who knew how to push people’s buttons, and he was trying to push the ones that would get me in his bed tonight. Our bed, I thought, considering we were still sharing a hotel room.

“Maybe a little,” I admitted.

His eyes twinkled, but he said nothing.

The waitress set down a bottle of wine and spent a little while doing the fancy routine of uncorking it, asking us to smell the cork–apparently that is a thing–and then pouring our glasses. While she was doing this, another man set down a plate of fresh, steaming bread. He poured oil on a black slab of a plate, minced fresh garlic on a cutting board he set up on a tray by our table, and added it to the oil. He finished by crushing herbs with a mortar and pestle, then sprinkled them in the oil and gave a little bow, wordlessly leaving us with our wine and bread.

“Sheesh,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been somewhere this fancy. If I’m being totally real, I barely ever go out to eat. Manhattan is ridiculously expensive and I barely make enough to cover rent. So I usually just scrape up what I can to cook for cheap.”

“If we hadn’t sworn off dating, this is where I’d tell you how much I would spoil you. If you were mine,” he added.

Those words made a prickle of heat swim across the surface of my skin. “Hypothetically speaking, what would you do if I was yours?”

His smile appeared with agonizing slowness and his eyes flickered with heat. “Are you asking about our hypothetical bedroom encounters, or the other stuff?”

I could feel myself blushing. “Both?”

“Well, I know it would take me several days to think of anything but having you all to myself. I’d keep you in bed until you were too spent to walk. Then I’d bring you breakfast in bed and we’d do it all over again.” His smile had faded to a shadow, and the weight of his words was hitting me with a palpable punch. From the way he spoke, I didn’t think he was bullshitting me. I could hear the desire and longing in his tone. “And when I wasn’t with you in bed, I’d want to spoil you. I would take you wherever you wanted. I’d let you do all the things you’ve wished you could but thought you shouldn’t because of money.”