It annoyed me that the sniff had been directed at Hazel. She had a backbone. She just had to use it.
“All right,” she said, sipping the champagne. “You’ve practically taken me hostage to get me here, so I’m assuming whatever it is you have to say is important.”
“You assumed correctly, though I wouldn’t flatter myself if I were you. Hostage?”
“You manipulated me,” she said. “You gave my dad a documentary to watch.”
I grinned at her. “He said he didn’t want to watch She’s the Man again.”
“Hey! That was one time.” Hazel pointed at me and a couple of the other diners looked up from their meals. Her cheeks pinked.
I couldn’t help but chuckle. Christ, she was gorgeous when she blushed, and being here with her reminded me of what’d it been like back in high school. We hadn’t come to fancy restaurants of course, but the conversation had always flowed.
She was too smart not to have a comeback for everything I had to say. Hazel excited my brain more than anyone I’d met before.
“You need a refill?” I asked, gesturing to her glass.
Hazel set down her empty champagne flute. “Not for now. I need to take a break.”
“You’re nervous.”
“I’m sitting across from you, Damien. Of course I’m nervous.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you’re the devil. Wearing a suit and tie. Why wouldn’t I be nervous?” She tossed back that golden-caramel hair, and I caught a whiff of her coconut shampoo. “If you want to talk, it can’t be good.”
“I have a proposition, and I don’t want you to let our shared past put you off saying yes to it.”
She blinked. “I don’t trust you.”
“You don’t need to trust me. You just need to do what’s right for you and your father.”
Hazel stiffened, green eyes blazing. “What’s Dad got to do with this?”
“Calm down and I’ll tell you.”
“Has anyone ever told you that telling a woman to calm down is liable to get you a glass of champagne in the face?” Hazel countered.
“Duly noted.”
“Not that you’ll ever change, right?” Hazel asked.
“I can only do what I do best,” I replied. “If that happens to get under your skin, all the better.”
Hazel pursed her lips but didn’t fling shit back at me for once. “What’s this proposition you keep talking about? The sooner you tell me, the sooner I can get out of this dress and back to normality.”
Out of that dress. Sweet Jesus, I couldn’t think about that.
“You’re in trouble,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Financially. Your father is ill, and you’ve lost the café, correct?”
Hazel bristled like a particularly sexy porcupine. Was that a thing? Shit, it was now. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know that your sister is a financial drain on your family. That she’s borrowed money from you and your father countless times and never paid it back. That she stole money from her ex-boyfriend and that’s the reason they broke up.”
If Hazel had been pink before, it was nothing compared to now. “What?”
“You heard me right.” Time to break out the big guns. “I also know that you desperately want the café back, and that you’re not going to get it without a significant financial injection. Couple that with the fact that I happen to know who bought the café and that they aren’t selling...”
“Are you threatening me?” Hazel asked. “That’s so typical of you, Woods. Get me all dressed up to come out and tell me I’m nothing but a--”
“I can get you the café back.”
That shut her up.
I took a sip of beer and let her stew in what I’d just said for a couple minutes.
“What do you mean?” she asked, cautiously.
“I mean exactly what I just said.” I set my drink aside, focusing all my energy on the plan instead of the desperation in her eyes. “I can get you the café back. I can give it to you, no strings attached. All you have to do is... give me something in return.”
“That’s hardly ‘no strings attached,’ then.”
“Do you know who bought your father’s café?” I asked.
“No.”
Likely she hadn’t wanted to get involved. Perhaps it had hurt her too much. “Woods Enterprises,” I said. “My father’s company.”
She choked on air.
I raised a hand. “Before you accuse me of anything too ridiculous, Hazel, I wasn’t involved in the purchase of your father’s café. But I did find out about it, and I can help you get it back.”
“As if I’d ever trust you to help me,” she snapped.
“Why wouldn’t you?” I asked. “I’m an exceptional businessman.”
Hazel chewed on her bottom lip.
The waiter returned with our entrées, but she didn’t pick up her knife and fork. It seemed a shame to waste such good duck, but I didn’t blame her.
“What do you want?” she asked, at last, the first trappings of defeat in her words.
“I want you to pretend to be my fiancée. My father wants me to become the CEO of his company, and if I don’t do what he wants, he’s going to cut me off. I need a woman to be ‘the one’ for thirty days. All fake, of course, but real in his eyes.”
Hazel opened and shut her mouth like a fish who’d been swept out of water and was struggling against the net.
“So, the deal is, you be my fake fiancée, and I’ll give you the café back. Hell, I’ll even finance your first two years of business. What do you say?”
“You’re a vulture,” she spat.
“Not the reaction I anticipated, but all right. Explain.”
“You think you can invite me here and I’ll just, what roll over and do what you want? All because you can’t stand to live without your daddy’s money?”
“It’s not his money alone. It’s my mother’s too.” That was bitter on my tongue. Memories threatened, but I held them at bay. “And it’s mine.” I’d worked damn hard at my father’s company, all so I could build the
