Seoul Survivors by Naomi Foyle Page B

was trying, at least.
    “Sorry I didn’t text,” she muttered as she filled her plate from all the small banchan dishes. “I had to take my Gotcha off for the shoot and I lost track of the time.”
    “Hey, whatever—I missed you, that’s all. It’s not often I spend all day without my sexy baby.”
    Yeah right. He didn’t want her to have her own life, more like it. “I was just working.” She tossed her head. “Everyone’s got to work.”
    “Sure, but you don’t want to overdo it. You’ve got plenty going on with the lipstick contract and the night job—plus I might have a big money number for you in a month or two. I’m driving a hard bargain with the client right now.”
    “Big money?” That sounded interesting. “How big?”
    He leaned over the table. “As big as that hard-on I sent you today,” he whispered. “Did you like that, huh?”
    Now was her chance.
    “No, it was gross !” But he was twinkling and winking at her, wagging his eyebrows, and she knew he wasn’t listening. “I’m not a porno star, Johnny,” she persisted. “I’m a fashion model—a soon-to-be top fashion model, Jin Sok said so.”
    A shadow passed over his expression. “Is that right? But you’re my private turn-on, aren’t you? My little porcelain doll-face?”
    “Don’t keep calling me that!” she blurted out. “I’ve told you, it bugs me!”
    “No need to snap,” he said, coolly.
    Neither of them spoke for a little while. Sydney picked up her chopsticks and turned over a piece of beef sizzling on the circular grill. Nearly done. Glancing enviously at Johnny’s lager, she took a sip of her water. Across the aisle, a lone goldfish was swimming aimlessly in a huge aquarium. Otherwise, the restaurant was buzzing with Koreans: big groups of office workers flashing metal chopsticks and slapping their knees; families squabbling; little kids roaming unchecked between the tables, playing “stick ’em up” and Grand Prix racing, making the Korean versions of “pow pow” and “vroom vroom” noises.
    “It’s not suits tonight; it’s soldiers,” she said finally, “so what’s the rush? They always stay out ’til dawn on their nights off.”
    “In fact, it’s soldiers in suits you’ll be dealing with: top brass. And they will want to get their beauty sleep.”
    “Great. Leaving me fighting off the farm boys. Johnny, I am getting so tired of ass-wipes slobbering all over me at two a.m., telling me about their dead mothers and their dope-addict dads and how the army gives them self-discipline—I mean, talk about a bunch of losers. No wonder America isn’t running the world anymore.”
    Johnny slammed his fork down on the table. It skittered across the laminate surface and clattered to the floor. “What the fuck has got into you tonight?” he demanded, his cheeks scarlet. “Do you want to pick the mother of all fights, or what? I’m telling you, Sydney, you don’t want to make Johnny Sandman angry!”
    Her own cheeks blazed, her stomach dropped away and suddenly, scarily, she thought she might piss herself. Fuck, what was happening to her? She clenched her pelvic floor muscles and stared at Johnny over the grill. There was no way she was going to let some guy who talked about himself in the third person freak her out. Deliberately, she turned her attention to the table, picking up a piece of lettuce with her fingers and squishing a spoonful of rice into the leaf. Then, with chopsticks, she plucked a nicely curling strip of beef from the grill and thrust it into the rice. This she followed with a grilled garlic clove and a big slab of kim chi : a gorgeous hunk of pickled cabbage dripping with raw garlic, ginger and red pepper sauce. Finally she wrapped the furly lettuce leaf around the tasty bundle and popped the whole thing into her mouth. She met Johnny’s gaze again.
    Now he looked a little hungry himself—and not for kalbi , either. “Look, babe,” he said in a low voice, “I don’t like