“A very wealthy someone,” he replied easily, not allowing her to bait him into raising his voice.
“All the more reason for me to not want to be here. Do you think I don’t know how out of place I am with the Max Longotti types? You think I intentionally want to throw myself to a pack of rich wolves who’d tear me apart because I don’t know a salad fork from a dessert fork?”
“They’re interchangeable, unless they have distinct triangular points at the ends of the outmost tines,” he explained, not even thinking about it. “Then it’s a salad fork.”
Silence. He glanced at her, seeing her staring at him as if he had two heads. “Gag me,” she finally muttered.
Troy bit his lip to hide a grin, entertained again by her forthright personality. He couldn’t make sense of the woman, who outwardly appeared very open and sometimes shockingly honest. That just didn’t gel with the image of a deceptive con artist.
They rode in silence for a few minutes. Then, stopping at a traffic signal, he finally turned to meet her stare, forcing himself to focus on what she was up to, not the way she looked—not the pale curve of her cheek, the fullness of her lips or that tantalizing hollow in her throat.
He stiffened, mentally ordering his body to stop reacting to her when his mind didn’t trust her one bit. “You must admit, money is a large motivation for a lot of things, Ms. Messina.”
She held his eye, not turning away or blushing. “I’m not after Max Longotti’s money, Mr…. Vice President!”
Her reaction was different than when the money issue had come up before. So either he’d misread her earlier, or else she’d better prepared herself to answer the question. He honestly couldn’t say which he believed more. “My last name is Langtree.”
She snorted. “Figures.”
He was almost afraid to ask. “Why?”
“Because it sounds rich and uptight. Like you.”
“I didn’t seem too uptight for you up on that balcony when we met,” he said softly, daring her to disagree.
“No, then you were oily and pompous.”
He couldn’t prevent a small laugh from spilling across his lips. The woman was damned stubborn and fiery as hell. Surprisingly, he found himself liking the combination, even when she was hurling insults at his head. “So,” he asked, “which was I when we kissed? Uptight, oily or pompous?”
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