Royal Opposites Read Free

her what she wanted to hear. Unless he was a complete drama queen, he seemed to believe something else was behind his treatment from earlier. She didn’t know where it came from, but she had the undeniable urge to reassure him.
    “I could be wrong, but I don’t think you’re the first customer who’s been cheated out of money by that bank.”
    He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”
    Joan dropped her gaze to study the dark polished wood of the table between them. Did she dare tell him about her stupidity?
    That would make a great impression on the sexiest man she’d ever seen in her life. Who was she kidding? Great looking guys didn’t go out with frumpy chicks like her. Stupid or not. “I haven’t figured everything out, you know, with all the running away and stuff, but I’ve had the same conversation with them almost word for word.”
    He leaned back in the booth with a frown marring his prominent brow. “What did you do? Did they resolve it?”
    Joan snorted a humorless laugh before she could stop herself. “It was resolved alright. I was there to make the final eight hundred dollar payment on the loan I had to take out to resolve the situation.”
    “I see.” He sat forward again and laced his long fingers together on the table. “How often were these payments?”
    Becoming more and more uncomfortable with the line of questioning, Joan thought about refusing to answer while rolling her glass between her palms. Considering what he was about to go through, she figured it was only fair to warn him. “Every month for the last two years.”
    He gave a low whistle. “How much were you overdrawn?”
    Joan bristled at the question. That part was none of his business. She was already embarrassed at the hole she’d dug herself. She didn’t need to lay out the gory details for a complete stranger. The man must be a mind reader. He reached out and covered both her hands with his. The heat from his hands contrasted with the iciness of the glass and claimed her full attention.
    “I don’t mean to pry. I’m just trying to get a handle on their game.” Joan relaxed. Well as much as she could with his gentle touch warming her to levels she didn’t quite understand. “One hundred eighty-‐-six dollars and twenty-‐-four cents.”
    Because their hands were linked, she felt him tense before she noted the tight lines that framed his mouth. “Eight hundred for twenty-‐-four months?” His brows shot up. “So you paid them over nineteen thousand dollars when you owed under two hundred at the beginning.”
    Joan shook her head. “Nineteen…? No. I doubled up on payments to get rid of the debt faster.” She wanted to grin from ear to ear at his nod and look of approval. Somehow, she managed to keep her expression neutral. “It was a little under seventeen thousand to pay them off.”
    The tight lines around his mouth returned. “Almost a fifty percent interest rate. How do they manage to get away with that?
    Maybe ten or fifteen percent of what you owe, but not fifty.”
    “Now that I think about it, I’m not positive I owed the two thousand to begin with. It’s a ludicrous amount of money and it would take me ages to spend so much. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I think they held my deposit on purpose.”
    She watched his lips quirk like something had just amused him, but she couldn’t for the life of her imagine what. Before he could share what he was thinking, the waitress interrupted. The woman was all smiles and with a trim figure that Joan could only imagine for herself. And that was if she were having a good day.
    She wasn’t sure today qualified.
    The woman placed a glass of what appeared to be cranberry juice in front of the man and refilled Joan’s glass. She smiled at their linked hands on the table and winked at him. “It’s about time you brought in a dining companion. I was beginning to worry about you.”
    Joan felt her face flush and tried to pull out of his grip.