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The rest of the meal wasn’t as bubbly as it had been. Taylor avoided eye contact with Derrick and ate quickly.God, what did I do now?Derrick thought.
Finally they were served dessert—one piece of chocolate molten cake with two forks. Taylor reached for a fork, but Derrick was quicker, and he pulled the whole plate toward him and took the forks hostage.
“What is with the cold shoulder?” Derrick asked.
Taylor rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Give me the cake, Derrick,” she said in her business-lady voice.
“No.”
“Are you really doing this?”
“Yes,” he said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest, the forks sticking out of one hand. He stuck his chin out at her defiantly, like an unruly child.
Taylor glowered at him. “Derrick,” she said sternly.
“Taylor,” he mocked back to her.
Taylor rolled her eyes again and groaned. Then she leaned forward. “What is your problem?” she hissed to him.
Derrick leaned forward too. “You were the one who was talking to me and then,bam, you shut down.”
Taylor scanned with her eyes nonchalantly. “It’s just, you know, it just bothers me to fake it. I hate being fake about this,” she whispered, spinning her ring.
Derrick felt heat fill his face and flared his nostrils. “I am not faking,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Derrick, we—”
Derrick cut Taylor off the best way he knew how—he shoved cake into her mouth.
So now she looked at him disapprovingly, but her mouth was full, and she wasn’t talking, and Derrick liked it.
“That’s better,” Derrick said, smiling and taking a large bite of cake for himself. “You know sometimes you just have to shut a woman’s mouth—”
This time Derrick was silenced with the cake, but it was only because Taylor smashed it right into his face.
And now she was full-on in a fit of laughs.
“That was really hard to do,” Taylor said in between fits of laughter, “because that cake is delicious.”
“Is that so?” Derrick said as he cleaned cake off his eye and watched Taylor clutching her stomach with her head back in laughter. “Well, far be it from me to deny you anything Miss Preston,” he said and pulled her to him, kissing her full-on, smashing cake all over her face.
At first Taylor struggled but then she gave in, kissing Derrick back slightly. And then she broke apart and put her hands on his biceps. “You suck,” she said, trying not to laugh at him.
“I’m not faking, Taylor,” he whispered to her.
“I can’t do this right now, Derrick,” she whispered back. “Besides, I am having a very hard time taking you serious about anything with chocolate cake on your face.”
“Ditto,” Derrick said.
He let it go, and they helped each other clean their faces and then made their way to the exit of the private room.We can talk in the limo, Derrick thought, but then Henry filled the doorway as they approached and stopped them.
“We need to exit through the back. I’m having an SUV brought there—the front of the restaurant has been overrun by photogs,” he said, guiding them quickly through the kitchen and out an alley door to a running Range Rover, where Mick sat in the driver’s seat.
Derrick got Taylor into the backseat and followed her in.
“I will meet you after I am done with work to bring you home,” he said as the car took off at lighting speed.
Taylor nodded and gripped the armrest. “If we live past this ride, you got it.”