“Ha, ha,” he retorts, mimicking my actions. “I know I come off as kind of dumb sometimes, but if I gave away all my secrets too soon, I’d feel bad for the other guys.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what? Are you a super genius or something?”
“You know it. I’m the complete package. Underneath all this muscle is a giant heart and even bigger brain. Ask me anything.”
At first I think he’s teasing. Until he stares at me waiting for me to give him a pop quiz. Either he’s completely full of himself or he’s smart enough to back up his statement. Only one way to find out.
I shoot off a couple of random questions I know the correct answer to, and he answers without pause. Pulling out my phone, I do a quick search for harder ones and listen in awe as he spouts off the right answers without much thought.
“Holy shit! You are really smart.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” He smirks, leaning in close. “Well, unless you like the cover. Go ahead and judge away.”
Cocky.
Smart.
Handsome.
I have a feeling the book he wants me to judge is him.
Not a bad combination if you can overlook the fact he’s aware of how amazing he is. To each their own.
Unsure what to say, I steer the conversation back to a safer topic.
“So what do you do with all that knowledge up there?”
“Electrical engineer.”
“And you like it?”
“Yeah. It keeps me thinking, hones my skills.”
“What made you want to do that?”
Milo lets out a chuckle before launching into his story. Changing his major. Stealing textbooks so he could read them, on the toilet of all places because he knew no one would barge in on him and call him out. Until one day someone did. “So if I hadn’t met my roommate my freshman year, I’d be wasting all this talent by working some office job with a general business degree.”
I laugh because even though he’s still full of himself, he has a point and the story was funny.
“What about you? What do you do with your beauty and brains when you’re not trying to fall in love on TV?”
Rolling my eyes at his comment, because I could say the same about him, I explain what I had hoped to do with my degree when I graduated, the epic failure of my plan, downplaying Wren’s part in fucking me over.
“So, what now? You just give up? No more plans to take over a hotel empire?”
“Not at the moment. I mean, once this is over, I’ll start looking again.” Even I can hear the sadness in my voice at losing the perfect job. The job I had been dreaming of since I started pursuing my degree. The same job Wren dangled in front of my face only months after meeting him.
God, I was stupid.
I should have known better. I mean, hell, I met Wren at the hotel, during a conference for school. He was there with his father, presenting the material. His father was the CEO of the worldwide chain, but the host hotel was his home base, so he obliged the university by hosting the conference.
When I saw Wren across the room, my heart skipped a beat. So attractive, he stood out in his perfectly tailored suit. A head taller than most of the students he was talking to, his presence commanded respect. Then our eyes met, and I stumbled in my heels. After I righted myself, I spotted him walking in my direction.
I’d like to think the rest is history. A perfect love story of him sweeping me off my feet, treating me like a princess. Planning our future together as we celebrated our one-year anniversary. If we had a happily ever after, it may have been the most romantic book I’d ever read.
Nope. He had to go and fuck that up. Literally.
“Tell me about him,” Milo encourages, shattering the horrible memories of Wren in bed with another woman.