The Pleasure Contract by Caitlin Crews (free romance novels .TXT) 📗

the sensation. Notably he felt it in a business environment, right when he was about to close a major deal.

And it only occurred to him then, as she essentially laid bare his entire dating history with such ease, that he hadn’t felt it in a romantic sense longer than he liked to admit.

“I can’t say I like either,” he found himself saying, which was a truth he preferred to keep to himself. Since he couldn’t see how to do anything differently. Not with the life he led.

“You’re too much of a catch, as you say, to like the sensation of being just a paycheck and too aware of the performance of the would-be wives to enjoy it.” Bristol nodded sagely. “That is a quandary.”

Lachlan had never thought of it that succinctly before. This time, he didn’t have to pretend to feel winded. He felt it.

But his cock wanted nothing more than to explore all the ways she could make him feel that, in all the best ways. Less psychological profiling, more sex.

The food began to arrive then, and he found himself irritated that they were being interrupted. Even though he was well aware that this kind of self-referential dining experience was part of the package any woman who wanted to date him had to be fluent in.

He understood that it would be devastating if Bristol March could capture his interest so many ways, yet fail this test. When he normally found these dinners entertaining because, for him, they provided a checklist of ways the women he was with—though they might be marvelous in any number of ways—couldn’t meet his needs to fill this role.

Bristol was right. Though there were many candidates, there were very few who were capable of making him forget what they were really after—a payday or his name.

Lachlan wasn’t sure when it had become, not just amusing, but critically important to him that this woman who wanted neither pass all of the carefully constructed tests his sister had long since told him were appalling.

Try seeing if you like her, idiot, Catriona would say.

But Lachlan couldn’t trust likeability. Too many people put on acts when they met him. He was too well-known. He wanted something genuine. Of course he did. Someday he would look for genuine when he was ready for a real relationship. When he wanted what Catriona and Ben had.

Until then, he had his dating protocol and his tests.

And though the food here was exquisite, he hardly tasted it, so busy was he watching Bristol acquit herself beautifully.

Conversation flowed easily in and around the performance art piece that was the service, and the operatic flair of the food itself. So easily that he had to remind himself to look for all the markers he usually paid such close attention to at these meetings. Like the conversation itself. Talking effortlessly to a stranger was an art that few understood and even fewer could pull off no matter their emotional state. Lachlan was a master at it. He needed his girlfriend to manage it tolerably well, because the circles he moved in required it. There was no place for a trophy in a dinner that might easily turn into the seeds of the kind of regime changes that altered the world for the better.

Bristol March, it turned out, could not only talk about any subject under the sun, but she also seemed genuinely interested in each and every one of them. She was widely read. She listened. She made fascinating connections and did not lapse into monologues or speak only of herself. She was not afraid of sharing her opinions, but had the increasingly rare quality, these days, of not seeming unduly attached to them.

His grandmother, who he and Catriona not so affectionately referred to as the Dragon Lady, would have given one of her severe nods. The sincerest form of flattery she possessed.

By the time the attentive waitstaff cleared the table, Lachlan was busier keeping his hands to himself than marking off items on a checklist. It was harder by the second to do much of anything but pay attention to that driving pulse that beat through him, that endless greedy fascination for Bristol and her frown and her clever face, making him wonder if he could keep his hands to himself.

“Thank you,” Bristol said when their coffees had been carried off. She looked surprised. “I’ll admit, this was far more pleasant than I imagined it would be.”

“I’ll admit that I’m used to significantly more deference and interest on the part of my dinner dates.”

She tilted her head slightly to one side, which he now knew was a telltale sign she was about to be provocative. “I would have thought displays of interest and deference came after the audition. Once the starring role was secured.”

“Some like to show that they’re capable of such things, Bristol.”

“Dress for the job you want, not the job you have?”

“Exactly.”

“Well,” she said, lifting a brow. “I did. You’ll note I’m dressed like a person deciding between professorships and postdoctoral research positions at a number of highly regarded institutions. Not an actress. Or an escort.”

“Is this a strategy? Do you think that if you insult me it will make me want you?” Lachlan was fascinated to find that his temper, so often dormant because he cared deeply about so very few personal things, had engaged. “I would strongly caution you against leaning too far into that.”

He had his answer in the look of shock on her face. She was either the best actress he’d ever encountered...or it had literally never occurred to her to employ a strategy with him in the first place.

Lachlan wasn’t sure which was more lowering.

He reached across the table, taking her delicate hand in his and feeling the kick of it. Watching, perhaps a little too closely, as her pupils dilated once again.

As her breath picked up.

It reminded him that all this architecture—all the panels and the dinners and the conversation, too—was about the chemistry between them. These were