Page 18 of Pretend I’m Yours
From the little that I’d learned about him over the course of the past week, it didn’t sound like he came from a lot of money. I hoped that he could see that was okay. Money didn’t make a man, that was for sure. I knew plenty of scoundrels with money, and Drake was quickly proving to be the perfect gentleman.
I’d given him a ring to wear to help officiate the look, and I was sporting a nice rock of my own on my left hand. We certainly looked the part.
Just act natural and be you. He’ll feed off your energy and fit in. Just give it a bit of time, I thought.
The restaurant was bustling with people, and we were lucky to get to the table that we did. I knew we should have made reservations before arriving, but I hadn’t wanted to go through the trouble. I preferred just seeing what was available and taking it if we could.
After all, I wasn’t opposed to leaving and going somewhere else if there was no room for us. I wasn’t like my parents. I wasn’t going to demand the best of the best if I was going to eat somewhere. I could wait with the rest of the world, or I could go somewhere else.
“Yours looks good, too,” Drake said, cutting into my thoughts.
“Thanks,” I said. “I found it in one of the boxes in my room when I moved in. It probably belonged to my mother or grandmother or something.”
“You could always ask her,” he suggested, and I shook my head.
“I don’t really care to know. Shoot, if I did find out it belonged to one of them, I probably wouldn’t want to wear it anymore,” I said with a laugh. “I don’t really have much more to do with them than what is absolutely necessary.”
“It happens,” he said with a shrug. I wanted to ask him about his parents, but I bit my tongue. By now, he had to know that I really didn’t have the best relationship with mine, though I didn’t talk about it often and I was grateful that he didn’t push. Drake, on the other hand, never brought up his family. Or really his past at all. I knew it had to be hard to talk about his time in the Navy, so I really didn’t ask about it. Plus, I didn’t want him to feel as though I was prying into his personal life.
This was a business arrangement, after all, not something that we were going to be best friends over. Silence fell over our table and I glanced around the room. There were a lot of other couples, many of them looking a lot like us. Drake had certainly done a good job of looking the part of the rich.
I’d even venture to say that he looked like he fit in as well. If he was nervous, he wasn’t showing it. He merely sat across from me, giving me most of his attention, but looking about the place from time to time as well.
Reading body language was something that I’d studied extensively in school. Working with at risk youth meant I was going to have to read the things that they weren’t saying verbally. So, I would practice on the rest of the world as often as I could.
And what I was getting from Drake was that he was clearly trying to mask what was really going on in his mind. I figured it had to have something to do with the fact that he and I came from two different worlds. But then, I didn’t want to make any sort of assumptions about him. If I was going to hold firm to my belief money didn’t make a person, then I wasn’t going to assume that he felt one way or another being surrounded with people who either were wealthy, or who were living like they were.
“What did you tell them?” he asked suddenly.
“Who?” I replied, surprised he was actually digging deeper beyond conversing about what was right in front of us.
“Your parents. You said the other day that you had talked to your mom. I was just wondering what you told them about suddenly being married,” Drake said. He approached the topic carefully, clearly erring on the side of caution. He didn’t want to overstep his bounds any more than I wanted to overstep mine.
We would both be careful with each other. Careful not to offend, careful not to dig too deep. Skimming the surface, that would keep the relationship safe. And that was exactly what I would do in response.
I shrugged. “I handled it. Don’t worry. They aren’t going to come after you for anything. My father did mention that he might be throwing another gala in the near future, though.”
