The restaurant Nate brought Erin to put him in mind of a Hollywood movie, the kind that opens with a swelling Gershwin-like tune and a shot of the New York skyline from beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Looking around the handsomely lit dining room with its Parma gold walls, bistro wicker chairs, fine napery and glassware made him wonder why he’d never been there before. He should see more of the city outside of Manhattan. It might have helped with his growing restlessness over the last few months.
He looked at Erin and stifled a smile as she toyed with the stem of her wineglass. Still wasn’t happy being there, was she?
“Having dinner in silence, are we?” he asked.
Erin looked him in the eyes, then her gaze flickered away. “I thought you might need to rest your ears after being barraged with all the dirt from my childhood.”
“I’ve never met a family that kept photo albums in their workplace.”
“Oh, believe me, if there’s a way to embarrass me, my family will find it.” A small smile flirted with the corners of her lips. “Just be thankful you didn’t pick me up at the house. They have enough home movies to make sure you don’t see daylight for years.”
“Is that why you hide your boyfriends?”
“Actually, you’re the first one I’ve managed to hide.” The irony of the statement seemed to amuse her, and for a brief second she forgot where she was and who she was with and smiled. Then her gaze flickered to his again and she remembered.
It was like the sun disappearing behind a cloud. Teasing it back out immediately became Nate’s mission for the evening. “Stands me out of the crowd the same way you did by Googling me, I suppose.”
Whatever she saw in his face was apparently enough to get her to soften some. One finely arched brow disappeared beneath her bangs as the color of her eyes muted to a mossy green. “Keeping score, are we?”
“You’re determined not to like me.” He made it a statement of fact rather than a question. Not because he was playing hardball the way he did during working hours but because he knew it was true. Underneath her obvious embarrassment when he’d turned up early and spent time talking to her family again, there had been what almost felt like shyness. But the moment she was alone with him, she’d changed again, a combination of caution and suspicion making her study him with narrowed eyes when she thought he didn’t notice.
“There’s no point in trying to like you.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of a waiter, so for a few minutes Erin sampled portions of roasted pancetta-wrapped breast of hen, corn bread stuffing, braised leeks, sautéed spinach, glazed organic carrots and roasted garlic au jus. With an almost reverent respect to each flavor that both amused and fascinated Nate.
“Good?”
The question made her eyes sparkle with enthusiasm. “Mmm-hmm. First taste of early autumn.”
Nate searched his memory for the last time he’d dated a woman who was so appreciative of food. Another first. It was refreshing as hell. And coupled with the way she would take a sip of wine and use the tip of her tongue to slowly savor the last taste of it from her lips, it yelled sensualist at him. Would she show the same indulgence in everything that appealed to her senses?
Now that he could work with…
As if she knew what he was thinking, a flash of awareness shimmered across her eyes. She blinked a couple of times, swallowed the food in her mouth, her moist lips parting so she could draw in a breath that made her breasts rise against the square neckline of her figure-hugging cream sweater.
Every cell in Nate’s body sparked to life the way it had the night they’d danced. When her gaze dropped briefly to his mouth, he smiled a slow smile. She felt it, too.
Searching his eyes, she angled her head and studied him some more. Her eventual conclusion: “You see me as some kind of challenge, don’t you? I ran out on you, and since I’m guessing that doesn’t happen to you very often, it made me interesting….”
“Psychoanalyzing me?”
“Trying to figure out why someone like you would feel the need to pursue someone like me—it shouldn’t matter to you whether I like you or not…”
Shouldn’t, but did. Nate had no idea why. “Don’t go out to dinner often, do you?”
“Not to a place as nice as this, no. Why?”
“When’s the last time a guy sent you flowers? You’re welcome, by the way.”
“I thanked you for the gifts. It was the first thing I said when my mother finished telling you about the time my sister flushed my goldfish down the toilet.”
“No—you said you appreciated the gesture but it was unnecessary and it could stop now.” Nate turned his attention to his food. “And in fairness to your sister, she was four, and it was hardly the first goldfish it ever happened to.”
“Except most of the ones it happened to were already dead.”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
There was a moment of stunned silence and then, finally, a low, “What?”
“That’s why I’m here. And no, I don’t know why. But I intend to find out. Does that answer your question?” When he lifted his chin she was staring at him.
She looked like the proverbial deer caught in headlights.
“Erin?” When she continued staring, Nate lifted his brows.
It took a hand waved in front of her face before she blinked. Then she shook her head and went back to her food. “I hear they do a really good chocolate marquise here, with a terrine of hazelnut and vanilla ice cream…”
Nate smiled.
* * *
I couldn’t stop thinking about you.
The words echoed in her mind for the rest of the evening, and Erin had only a vague memory of the conversation that followed. Either he was way better at the seduction game than she’d given him credit for, or—
She forcibly plumped the pillows beneath her head. Okay. So she didn’t have a second option. But she was working on it. At least she would have if it wasn’t for one small problem…
She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him, either. It was why she’d looked him up on the Internet, unwittingly starting a chain reaction. First came jealously, which was ridiculous when they hadn’t spoken a word to each other. Next came frustration at her reaction, then anger at her frustration, and when she finally decided to talk it through with her friends, Nate arrived with her cell phone.
Then she factored in how much she’d thought about the kiss. The one that had practically been elevated to fantasy status in her mind. Every time Nate glanced at her mouth over the dinner table, she’d convinced herself she could feel his lips on hers because of that kiss. Darn it!
When her phone rang, she turned over on her bed and answered it, fully expecting to hear Clare or Madison asking how her date had gone. “Hello.”
“You really do have a midnight curfew, don’t you?”
Erin jerked upright and looked around her, drawing the covers up with her free hand as if he was in the bedroom with her. “Are you okay?”
Dumb question. Of course he was. And if he wasn’t why would he call her?
She backpedaled. “Why are you calling me?”
“Because I said I would?”
Yes, she remembered that part. But she didn’t think he’d meant so soon. A part of her had even hoped it was the “I’ll call you” that meant he wouldn’t. Because the instinctual need to run had continued growing exponentially the more she thought about him.
“It’s a long drive from Brooklyn to Manhattan. You can keep me company.”
“They built a bridge, you know.” Erin shook her head, staring into the darkness. “This better not be one of those phone calls…”
“What phone calls?”
“I think you know.” She found herself smiling as she slid back into the pillows.
She imagined she could hear an answering smile in the deep rumble of his voice. “Remind me to ask you for the Web site address where you discovered what a great guy I am. I have a team of people ready to start litigation.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Want to know what I think?”
“Honest answer?”
“I think you should forget what you read…” There was a slight change in the intonation of his voice that suggested he’d turned his head, while the almost predatory purring of his sports car sounded in the background “…and get to know me on your own. You might be surprised. I’m generally loved by children and small animals and I’ve never murdered a goldfish.”
Erin rolled her eyes. “Yep, cute as a kitten, that’s you.”
“No middle ground with you, is there?”
“I’m starting to understand why there are so many pictures of you with different women. They all run away, don’t they?”
“Thought about it again tonight, didn’t you?”
Random babbling and the way she’d pretty much slammed the car door in his face at the end of their date had obviously given her away. The constant hint of a smile on his face throughout dinner should have told her he was on to her. But technically it should be easier to be more like herself over the phone when he wasn’t distracting her with the way he looked, so she took a deep breath and gave it a try.
“Yes.”
“Want to tell me why?”
“Not so much.”
The moment of silence surprised her. He was giving up? Perversely, Erin was disappointed. What did that say about her?
“Okay, then—different question.”
And it was going to be worse, wasn’t it?
“Why are you so quiet around your family?”
Nope, she was wrong, that one she could do. “You’ve met my family. You had difficulty getting a full sentence out. That should tell you something.”
“Yes, but you’ve had your whole life to learn the rhythm.”
“Maybe I’m the shy one.” It wasn’t far from the truth.
But it earned a low rumble of laughter. “Says the girl who kissed a stranger without saying a word to him.”
“I’m told conversation is a two-way street.”
“So talk to me.”
The huskiness of his voice gave his words just enough of a seductive edge to warm Erin’s body and make her settle languidly beneath the sheets. “What about?”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
She chuckled softly. “That’s a long list.”
“Start from the beginning.” The purring engine stopped, the silence increasing the sense of intimacy. “Fill in the blanks the photo albums left out.”
“I have to be up at six.”
“Doesn’t have to be all at once. I’m not going anywhere.”
Blinking up at her bedroom ceiling, she wondered why hearing that didn’t tap in to her need to run. But she didn’t make a sarcastic comment or hang up. Instead she searched her mind for a place to begin.
“Once upon a time in a land called Brooklyn…”
A low chuckle of deliciously masculine laughter echoed in her ear.
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