Samuel couldn't remember the last time a woman had managed to stay on his mind until the next day without giving him even one concrete reason to remember her.
It wasn't a particularly flattering statement. Nor was it meant to be. For years, he had perfected the habit of separating desire from any expectations that followed. A dinner could be pleasant, a night could be memorable, and still, none of it had to become a promise.
It worked for him.
Or at least it had worked until Eugenia de los Santos.
“Are you going to keep staring at your phone, or are you planning to pay attention to me?” Bárbara asked.
Samuel looked up.
They were at a trendy restaurant, one of those places where the tables were far enough apart to pretend at intimacy and the servers spoke in low voices, as if every bottle cost more than it actually did. Bárbara had chosen the place. She had also chosen the black dress, the long earrings, and the way she crossed her legs whenever she noticed someone watching her.
There was nothing to fault her for.
Bárbara was spectacularly attractive. She knew it and knew how to use it. They had been seeing each other for several weeks, with pauses that had never needed explanation. They had spent two nights together, maybe three; Samuel didn't bother keeping track of things that weren't supposed to carry any weight.
“I am paying attention to you,” he said.
“Then tell me what I just said.”
Samuel glanced at his untouched glass.
“That your coworker acted like an idiot.”
“I said that ten minutes ago.”
“It can still be true.”
Bárbara let out a short laugh. That was one of the reasons he had gone back to seeing her: she wasn't easily offended and knew how to have a conversation without turning every sentence into a test of affection. With her, everything was simple. He didn't have to interpret silences or measure gestures. If she wanted something, she said so. If she stopped wanting it, she left.
Samuel admired that clarity.
It also felt insufficient that night.
“You're distracted,” Bárbara said.
“It was a long day.”
“Your days are always long.”
“That's why I usually drink.”
She picked up her glass and brought it to her lips.
“You're not drinking.”
Samuel smiled but didn't answer.
The image of Eugenia appeared again, with a precision that irritated him. He didn't remember her as she had appeared in the lobby, alongside the other employees, doing her job and explaining the changes to the regional office. He remembered her in the moment after her first response.
She had corrected a figure.
She hadn't done it to draw attention. She hadn't even seemed aware that she could. She had simply heard an inaccuracy, waited for him to finish, and then pointed out the exact figure with a courtesy that did nothing to hide her firmness.
Samuel was used to people agreeing with him before checking whether he deserved it.
Eugenia had checked first.
“Who is she?” Bárbara asked.
Samuel looked at her again.
“Who?”
“The woman you're thinking about.”
He leaned back in his seat.
“You don't know that I'm thinking about a woman.”
“Samuel, you've been smiling for five minutes like you just remembered a conversation you'd like to repeat.”
Bárbara didn't seem jealous. That would have been easier. Curiosity, on the other hand, had a way of demanding honesty without explicitly asking for it.
“I met someone at the regional office,” he said.
“Someone interesting?”
“I'm trying to decide.”
“And why do you need to decide? If she weren't interesting, you wouldn't be sitting here thinking about her.”
Samuel finally picked up his glass. The wine tasted dry, almost metallic.
“She works there.”
“Ah.”
“Don't make that face.”
“I'm not making any face. I'm listening to you try to turn a problem into a temptation.”
“It isn't a problem.”
“Not yet.”
The words hung between them.
Samuel took them in with a mixture of annoyance and recognition. Bárbara knew him well enough to understand that his desires rarely became complicated. She had seen him enter rooms and leave them with the same composure, as if people were part of a landscape he could enjoy without staying to live in it.
He wasn't a cruel man. At least, he didn't consider himself cruel. He didn't promise what he had no intention of delivering. He didn't pursue a woman who had said no. His method was to observe, move closer, offer a way out, and let the other person decide whether she wanted to take it.
His reputation did the rest.
Women knew who he was. They had heard the rumors, seen the looks he received, and understood that Samuel could make them feel chosen long enough for them to agree to enter his game.
He had never needed to pretend he was looking for a wife.
Nor had he pretended otherwise.
“Are you going to call her?” Bárbara asked.
“I don't have her number.”
“That doesn't seem to have stopped you before.”
“I don't know if I want to call her.”
Bárbara set her glass on the table.
“Now I'm interested.”
Samuel watched the lights reflected in the glass. He didn't have Eugenia's number, but it wouldn't be difficult to get it. He could ask the office for it. He could find a professional reason to contact her. He could wait for the report he'd requested to reach his email and use it as a starting point.
He had already thought of three possibilities before finishing the first course.
That was the problem.
He wasn't reacting to an opportunity. He was designing one.
“What is her name?” Bárbara pressed.
“Eugenia.”
The name sounded different when he said it aloud. More intimate than he had any right to make it.
Bárbara tilted her head slightly.
“And what does Eugenia have that I don't?”
For the first time, Samuel looked at her with genuine attention. The dress fit her perfectly. Her hair had been arranged to look casual and had surely taken time. She was beautiful, confident, available in the broadest and least compromising sense of the word.
With Bárbara, he knew what role he was playing.
With Eugenia, he didn't.
“This isn't a comparison,” he said.
“Comparisons appear when someone stops being satisfied with what's in front of him.”
There was no reproach in the statement, which made it harder to dismiss.
Samuel set his fork beside his plate.
“Eugenia isn't like you.”
“That isn't an answer either.”
“It wasn't meant to be.”
“Is she shy?”
“Reserved.”
“Naive?”
“No.”
“Is she interested in you?”
Samuel remembered the way she had avoided holding his gaze and, at the same time, how she had sought it again barely a second later. He remembered the almost imperceptible change in her breathing when he leaned closer to hear her. He remembered the tension beneath her impeccable manners.
“I don't know yet.”
Bárbara smiled.
“Then you are interested.”
Samuel didn't answer.
For a long time, he had confused interest with the desire to get a response. A woman who was difficult to impress became a challenge; a woman who held her boundaries became a more gratifying conquest. The impulse wasn't new. He knew it well. It came from confidence, boredom, and the certainty that sooner or later, almost everyone revealed what they wanted.
But Eugenia hadn't seemed to want anything from him.
Not his approval, his money, or the access he could offer her. She had been nervous, yes, but her nervousness hadn't looked like admiration. It was more uncomfortable. More honest.
She had seemed affected by him and determined to resist that effect.
Samuel wanted to know how long she could keep it up.
The answer gave him immediate satisfaction, followed by something less pleasant.
“You're having fun,” Bárbara said.
“A little.”
“No. You're measuring yourself against her.”
Samuel raised an eyebrow.
“Excuse me?”
“You want to know if you can make her give in.”
The word seemed unfair to him. It was also accurate.
“I don't need anyone to give in.”
“Of course not. All you need is for her to open the door, and then you call it a choice because you were the one waiting on the other side.”
Samuel fell silent.
Bárbara didn't usually argue. Maybe that was why he hadn't realized before how much she noticed.
“I'm not going to hurt her,” he said.
“You don't know that.”
“I'm not a predator.”
“I didn't say you were. I said you have power. And that you like using it when you want something.”
The conversation was no longer light. Samuel looked around the restaurant: couples leaning over their tables, hands reaching for each other between plates, conversations protected by the clatter of silverware. Everything seemed orderly, pleasant, under control.
He had built much of his life on that appearance.
He had learned to leave before a relationship could ask him for a version of himself he didn't want to give. To remain courteous even after he lost interest. To offer enough attention that no one could accuse him of indifference and enough distance that no one could demand he stay.
Being single wasn't a deficiency to him. It was a position.
It allowed him to travel when he wanted, control his nights, and answer to no one. He could seduce without lying because he had never promised to belong. The women who approached him knew the risk; the ones who stayed did so because the risk had its rewards, too.
That's what he told himself.
And until Eugenia, it had been enough.
“Do you want to leave?” Bárbara asked.
Samuel watched her. The question could mean many things, and on another night, he would have chosen the interpretation most convenient for him.
“Do you want to leave?”
“I'm asking you.”
There was the difference. Bárbara expected a decision. Eugenia, on the other hand, seemed to expect him to figure out what decision he was trying to force on her.
Samuel paid the check when they finished dessert. Bárbara didn't mention Eugenia again, but her silence was no longer comfortable. In the car, the city passed beyond the windows as a succession of lights and façades. Samuel drove with one hand on the wheel and thought about the regional office.
About Eugenia.
About her understated blouses, her tied-back hair, the figure her clothes couldn't quite conceal. About the way she had spoken of figures as if precision were a form of dignity. About the look she had tried to hide and that, precisely because of that, he had noticed.
“What are you thinking about?” Bárbara asked.
Samuel was about to say nothing.
Then he realized that, through omission, he had already lied too much that night.
“That I want to see her again.”
Bárbara looked at him in profile.
“To sleep with her?”
Samuel tightened his hands slightly around the wheel.
The easy answer was available. He knew it. He could say yes, smile, and turn the matter into an anecdote before it became a concern.
But he didn't want to see her again only to take her to bed.
The realization was so clear that he had to slow down as he approached a traffic light.
“I don't know,” he said.
Bárbara didn't answer.
When they reached her building, Samuel said goodbye with a kiss that lacked the familiarity of other nights. Bárbara lingered for a few seconds in front of the car door, as if waiting for him to change his mind. Samuel didn't. He watched her walk away without feeling his usual impulse to call her back.
He went up to his apartment and left his keys on the entryway console. Silence greeted him with the impersonal cleanliness of a hotel. There were no family photographs in sight, no shared belongings, no second cup forgotten beside the sink. Everything was arranged so he could leave without leaving a part of himself behind.
He poured himself a whiskey and walked over to the window.
From there, the city seemed to obey a reasonable order: lights on, cars moving forward, people returning to places where someone was waiting for them. Samuel studied his own reflection in the glass. The man looking back at him was the same as always: confident, well-dressed, accustomed to other people's desire confirming his attractiveness.
Yet that night, he didn't feel confirmed.
He felt challenged.
He thought about requesting the cost report personally. The reason was valid. Eugenia worked with the chief accountant and had shown that she knew the expansion's figures. If he wanted to speak with her, he didn't need to invent anything.
What he still didn't know was whether the legitimacy of the reason changed the nature of his intention.
Samuel set his glass on the table.
He had spent years making women his for a night, sometimes for a few weeks, always under rules he knew and controlled. Eugenia, with her prudence and silence, had managed something none of them had tried to do.
She had made him want a second conversation before he had even gotten the first.
Samuel picked up his phone and opened the office email.
He wrote a message to his assistant, deleted it, and wrote it again. This time he was more precise: he wanted to receive the regional office's cost report personally and speak with the chief accountant's assistant about a few details.
He didn't mention Eugenia's name.
There was no need.
Before sending the message, he stopped.
Prudence had never been his favorite virtue. But he knew how to recognize a boundary when he saw one, especially when the boundary belonged to someone else.
Eugenia wasn't an employee he could approach like anyone else. He held a superior position. Any approach from him could carry more weight than he intended. If he wanted to discover what existed between them, he would have to give her a real way out, not an invitation disguised as an order.
Samuel sent the email.
Then he turned off the screen and looked back at the city.
The decision seemed professional.
The anticipation wasn't.
And for the first time in a long while, Samuel De La Hoya wasn't sure who had started conquering whom.