Asking for Trouble - Leslie Kelly [42]
Shrugging off my worries, I decided to go downstairs, make a good meal and get Simon out of that damn office and away from that damn computer where he was constantly working. Writing, he’d said, though he hadn’t elaborated.
It was time to get his attention. Nothing was coming of me being quiet, staying out of his way and trying to remain beneath his radar. I couldn’t keep tiptoeing around the house, hoping he wouldn’t notice me so that I could stay and worm my way into his life. And I wasn’t about to lock myself in the attic again and wait for him to rescue me—even for another one of those crazy, hot, sexy, kisses.
Funny. He’d rescued me. When what I so wanted to do was rescue him.
I couldn’t do that if he didn’t let me get close. “So maybe I need to make him let me get close. In a very dramatic—personal—way,” I mumbled.
If I wasn’t going to be the pursued, then I needed to be the pursuer. In the past, during my NYU days, I hadn’t had to do much more than smile at a guy or wear a tight, low-necked sweater to get what I wanted.
Simon…well, he wasn’t some on-the-make college kid. He was a strong, serious man in full control of his desires. Usually. There’d been a few moments—intense, hot ones—where I’d seen a hungry look in his eyes. He sometimes watched me when he thought I wouldn’t notice. The way he’d kissed me told me he was not unaffected by me. Not at all.
So maybe it was time for me to pull out all the stops, go into vamp mode and try to seduce him. Seduce my way into his confidence—and his life—by way of his bed.
Gee. Tough job.
“I’m up for the challenge,” I said, smiling as I shut down the laptop and headed downstairs, going straight to the kitchen. As I dug out some fresh veggies and pasta to make lunch, I thought out my plan for seduction.
It probably wasn’t nice, using a man’s own innate weakness against him. But considering I was every bit as weak as a man when it came to libido, I didn’t consider it beneath me.
My mother would be shocked. She shouldn’t be, though. Because while she’d like to think I’m a lady, I think even she knows it’s a lost cause.
God knows she and my grandmothers had tried to make me a good girl. You know the kid with the funky tartan jumper with the thick, black, patent leather straps that buckled over the shoulders? And the matching black, patent leather shoes? Yeah. That was me. Complete with pigtails.
In eighth grade.
And I’m not talking about the typical school uniform everybody had to wear. Oh, no, they took me out in public like that. I hadn’t owned a pair of jeans until I was fourteen and I’d had to save up the money I’d earned busing tables in the restaurant to buy them myself. Even then, I had to wear them under my skirts whenever I left the house, then tear the skirt off as soon as I got down to the street.
The older women in my family seemed as if they were from the dark ages. Honestly, though, they were just very old-school, second-generation Americans. My grandparents had all come over before my parents’ births, but just because their houses had been on U.S. soil didn’t mean those households weren’t entirely immersed in Italian culture. None of the older Santori females ever wore pants, much less dungarees, as Mama calls them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mother in anything other than a dress.
Clothes didn’t make the girl, that was for sure. Despite everyone’s best efforts, I’d been hell on wheels from childhood on, and my brothers knew it better than anyone. Once when the twins had laughed at me for having to wear a frilly hat on Easter Sunday, I’d pried open the boxes of Raisinettes they’d gotten in their baskets and replaced them with look-alikes from our pet rabbit’s cage.
I’m damn good at getting even.
Which, I guess, confirms that I’ve never been a lady. And I’ve always been willing to fight dirty to get what I wanted.
I wanted Simon. Now it was time to stop goofing around and get him.
“You’re making a real lunch?” a voice said. Simon had entered the kitchen while I was busy planning my seduction campaign