Free The Proposal by Lily Zante Page A

paper.
    "If you'll excuse
me," she said coldly and was gone, almost vaporized into thin air.
    "What
happened?" asked Ethan, tilting his head and assessing her slowly.
"If I didn't know you any better Ms Stefano, I'd think you were starting
to loosen up."
    Nadine squirmed in her
seat. With a throwaway gesture of her hands she answered, "The look of her
made me so mad."
    "Mad because she was
with me?"
    "Oh don’t flatter
yourself!"
    "I’m not."
    "She’s not your type
anyway." Nadine retorted, turning in her seat to face Ethan.
    "What makes you
think that?"
    "I just know."
    "You think you know
me?" asked Ethan slowly.
    "I know she's not
your type."
    "So what is my type then?"
    Ignoring the question
completely Nadine continued, “I'll bet anything that she hooked you into having
lunch with her." And when Ethan didn't reply, “She did, didn’t she?” her
eyes blazed angrily. She knew Sandra was always looking for opportunities to
trip her up on. Nadine knew that Ethan was her Achilles’ heel. She couldn’t
risk Sandra finding out about her and Ethan’s arrangement.
    Having lost his appetite,
Ethan replied, "I give up Nadine. You obviously know your colleagues very
well. Now tell me why did you kiss me the way you did? You said this
was-," he lowered his tone, "purely platonic, remember?" 
His face was serious again as he waited for her answer. He knew why he had responded the way he had. Nadine had been on his mind the whole morning,
from the moment he had helped her with her earring. He had been unable to get
her out of his mind. Now, he could see in her eyes that the feeling was mutual.
He could sense the subtle feeling of mutual attraction between them but he
wondered if Nadine was still in denial about it. He waited patiently; he needed
to hear her say that she felt the same way.  But she said nothing.
    He double tracked,
reaching across the table to hold her hand. "I'm not complaining. It's
just that, I'm very confused now. I don't know what you want."
    The problem was, neither
did Nadine.
    She had never done
anything like that before and she put it down to tiredness from the night
before and a mixture of resentment towards Sandra, who she felt was
meddling in her affairs. Ethan had aroused feelings of desire in her. So
much so that everything had come together the moment she saw him sitting with
Sandra – anger, lust and envy and she had responded to her bubbling emotions by
kissing him. But he had kissed her back.
    Yet this arrangement of
theirs was just that, an arrangement. Nothing more could ever come of it.
Pulling her hand away from his she said matter of factly, “I wasn't sure what I
was doing, Ethan. Don't worry. It won't happen again."
    "I didn't mean it
like that," he started but Nadine interrupted.
    "I've got meetings
all afternoon and then we have dinner at eight. I'll see you down here for
cocktails at seven thirty, just like yesterday." She gave him no chance to
speak, nor did he interrupt.
    Ethan simply nodded his
head in acquiescence. "Whatever you say, Nadine."
    He took a deep breath
after she had gone. Going on dinner dates as an escort was easy compared to
this. As an escort, he only had to listen. Many women just wanted to talk and
had no-one to listen to them. Ears were what he provided and never anything
more than that. He liked their company and he found it intriguing, the stories
some of these women had to share.
    But this thing with
Nadine, he had never ever done anything like that before. He had women who
offered to pay him to go on vacations with them but he always turned them down.
He knew they wanted a bit more than company. But with Nadine, he had even
surprised himself by agreeing to be her boyfriend for this weekend event.
    There were no two ways
about it, he was starting to fall for her. She had caught his eye and
fascinated him from the moment he had met her at her sister’s hen night.
    But he had broken his
number one rule: not to get involved with clients and he knew that