Of course I knew better because Kate and I held to the Girl Code that friends didn’t date each other’s boyfriends or, I guess in this case, future husbands. However, if I were someone else sitting across from this guy, she’d be making her play, probably in the form of her panties dropping in his lap. Kate didn’t do anything half-heartedly.
“You don’t have any problems with women.” I turned back around in my seat when I counted at least another dozen women making frequent, if not continuous, looks his way. “So why pay one a million dollars to marry you when I bet half of the women in this bar now would agree to marry you free of charge?”
When I looked at him, I found his stare still leveled on me. I wondered how he could keep that kind of concentration when half the room was giving him Take Me Now eyes
“Commitment is never free,” he answered, looking away for the first time. His gaze landed on the floor. “Believe me when I say a million dollars is a better deal. Twice as much would be a better deal.”
It was the first time I’d witnessed a shadow of emotion from him that didn’t tip the confidence scale. “Why?”
His eyes narrowed for a moment before they returned to mine. They were hardened almost. “Because attraction comes with complications, and I need this to be complication free. I need this to be a business transaction. You do something for me, and I pay you for it. No feelings. No emotions. Simple.”
The server returned with my water. It had ice and everything. I thanked her with a smile. She thanked him with a Fuck Me smile.
“You’re afraid of commitment,” I stated because it was one of the few truths I knew. Men, as a species, were afraid of commitment. Incapable of it. Humans as a species were incapable of it.
“Not afraid,” he said, reaching for his drink for the first time when I lifted my water. “Just know better now.”
I took a drink of my water. “You were burned.”
He finally took a drink of his scotch, that peculiar flash of vulnerability rolling through his expression again. He took another drink. “To ashes.”
The way he said it—the way he looked when he said it—made something in my chest squeeze. I knew that feeling. I’d learned that traits the human condition was trained to lean toward were usually the things we should be leaning away from. Commitment. Trust. Love. All conditions that should be replaced with caution, skepticism, and reason.
When I should have been keeping a wall between us, I found myself on the verge of commiserating with him. His damn good looks didn’t help the confusion either. I might have hardened myself against the species known as man, but I was not immune to them.
“Who was the man just here?” Twisting around in my seat, I searched the room, but he was gone.
“Ezra,” he said.
Waving, I waited.
“I’ve known him for a long time and trust him implicitly, so you don’t have to worry about him turning us in for what we’re discussing. He’s been a friend of my family’s since before I was born and serves as a sort of right-hand man for me now. In all facets of my life.”
“I wasn’t worried. Just wanted to know who he is.” I shrugged casually.
“And now you know.”
“Now I know Ezra’s name. But not yours.” From his accent and the way he looked as though he had descended from some Nordic king, Axel and Sven seemed like plausible options. From his personality, I would happily call him Jackass.
“You know my name.”
“Yeah, your last name.”
He cocked a brow like he was questioning why I needed anything more.
“Since you’re clearly the kind of guy who thinks he can just order a woman a drink and she’ll take it with a smile, let me clue you in on the type of woman I am.” I leaned forward, encouraged by the fresh anger I felt pulsing through my veins. He was less attractive when he was pissing me off. It encouraged me. “Not the kind who’s ever—ever—going to call you Mr. Sturm.”
He swirled his drink, back to studying me. “No?”
“Never.”
He set his drink down and slid it against my cup of water. He was testing me. I knew it, but I kept my water where it was. He could get his glass all up in my glass’s business for all I cared—that’s the only business of mine he’d be getting in.
“Well, Miss Burton, my first name is Max.”
Something spilled down my spine when he said my name like that. Like it was both a promise of something to come and a challenge.
“Max?” I said, not tempering the doubt in my voice.
He was in a suit that probably cost more than most people’s cars. He towered far above the average man. He looked like a fairy tale princess and a Greek God had gotten it on and he’d popped out nine months later. He oozed confidence that bordered on conceit, and I doubted it was the fake kind most men pretended they had. His confidence had been earned. Like hell he was “Max.”
“My given name is Maximilian Hans Xavier Sturm.” He cocked that same right brow at me. “However, my friends call me Max since the alternative is a bit of a mouthful.”
My thumb ran down the side of the water glass. “We just met. I’m not your friend.”
“You’re going to be my wife, so you can call me Max.” His mouth twitched at the same time his eyes flashed. “Or Mr. Sturm.”
“Funny,” I said with a fake smile. “Max.”
When he smiled, it did something to me it shouldn’t. I felt something tighten in my chest, and when his eyes slid back to mine with that smile still in place, I felt something else tighten farther south.
Shit. Not him. Not now. Not ever.
“Now that we’ve met, is there anything you’d like to ask me? Anything you’d like to go over?”
Besides everything?
We’d “met” online through a super-secret site you had to know a friend of a friend of a deity to know about—Kate had been my hookup in this instance. We’d communicated back and forth for the past couple of months, but about nothing too personal. It had felt more like a test of my commitment to following through with this than an actual attempt to get to know me. Other than knowing he was willing to pay a million bucks for a green card and that his emails were painfully formal, Max Sturm was a mystery to me.
Our emails back and forth had been focused on the guidelines and timeline of our “arrangement” instead of the getting-to-know-you facet. All business.