He was smart, too. She liked that.
She leaned back and looked at him. “Do you have an investment portfolio?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. With the high income a successful model commands, I imagine you do as well.”
“I do. And I know exactly where my money is going.”
“See? I knew you were a smart woman, Katrina. Smart and beautiful—a lethal combination.”
She couldn’t help but appreciate that he mentioned the smart part before the beautiful part. Too many men never paid attention to the fact she had a brain. All they saw was her face and body and never even wanted to have a conversation with her. Which was why she didn’t date. She didn’t have time for men who were that superficial.
Grant seemed … different. Yes, there’d been that spark of chemistry at the photo shoot today, but so far all he’d done was talk to her. He hadn’t sat down to ogle her or hit on her. It was kind of refreshing.
Not that she had any interest in dating him, but when was the last time she’d spent time talking with a man she wasn’t connected to in the industry? She wasn’t going to bed with him, but there was no harm in sharing conversation and having a meal with him, was there?
“Okay, fine. Let’s see what’s on the menu for dinner.”
TWO
FOR SOME REASON, KATRINA AGREEING TO DINNER felt like he’d won some kind of battle, that she didn’t do this type of thing all that often. Grant would take that as a victory, even a small one.
“How long have you been a model?” he asked her.
“I was signed by an agency when I was seventeen. Close to my eighteenth birthday. So almost ten years now.”
“That’s a lot of your life. Ever want to do anything else?”
She shrugged, and took a sip of water. “I make good money, and modeling isn’t something most of us do all our lives. I’ll do something else later. Since I started modeling early, I didn’t get a chance to go to college, so that’s one of my long-term goals for after the modeling career is over.”
“College is a good goal, especially since you didn’t get to it after you graduated high school.”
“Unfortunately, no, I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been an option for me anyway.”
“Why not?”
She stared at him for a few seconds, then waved her hand back and forth. “Not an interesting story. Forget I said that.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge about what’s interesting or not? Why wasn’t it an option for you?”
Their waitress brought dinner, so she didn’t answer him. But he got the idea she’d said something she wished she hadn’t. Now he was curious and wanted to know more about her.
“Are you going to make me guess in a twenty questions kind of way, are you going to tell me, or will you just tell me it’s none of my business?”
She lifted her gaze from her plate. “What?”
“The reason you couldn’t go to college.”
“Oh. That.” She hesitated. “It was nothing.”
He wasn’t buying it, because if it was nothing, she would have just told him. Like something inane to talk about over dinner. “So you did jail time and had to put your college career on hold?”
She laughed. “No.”
He waved his fork at her. “You’re an international spy?”
That made her laugh harder. “Nothing that exciting, I’m afraid.”
She went back to eating. Her way of dropping the subject.
“You’re really not going to tell me. This makes me think you’re harboring a deep, dark secret. Maybe I wasn’t so off the mark about the spy thing. Or maybe you were held prisoner in a foreign country during your formative years.”
She laid her fork down and gave him a direct look. “My mom died and I had a younger brother and sister I had to take care of. Around the same time, I got the offer from the agency and started booking modeling jobs, so it all worked out great. That was the reason I didn’t go to college. Sorry, nothing nefarious or exciting.”
She made it sound so matter-of-fact, when it must have been a nightmare for her. “Katrina. I’m sorry about your mom. You were seventeen, right?”
“Yes.”
“That must have been so hard for you. Your dad—”
“Was not in the picture. It’s just me, Leo, and Anya.”
“Leo and Anya are your brother and sister?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about them. How old are they?”
“Leo is fifteen. Anya is seventeen.”
Having finished his fish, he pushed his plate to the side. “They’re young. So they must have been really young when your mom died.”
“Yes.”
“Who took care of them after? Did you have aunts and uncles?”
She laid her fork on her plate. “No. It was just me. We had no other family.”
This story kept getting worse. “Jesus, Katrina. You raised those kids? And worked full-time as a model?”
“You make it sound like it’s a big deal.”