“Tell me you can’t picture me in a tanning bed,” he pleaded.
She wasn’t even sure what a tanning bed involved beyond absurd self-involvement. Nudity? She could feel a blush that was going to put that pink camellia to shame moving up her neck.
“So, what can I do for you today?” she asked, all brisk professionalism.
“Say yes,” he said, placing both hands and his elbows on the counter, leaning over it, fixing his gaze on her.
“You haven’t asked me anything yet!” Except if she could picture him on a tanning bed, and she was not saying yes to that! Even if, despite her best efforts to stop it cold, a sneaky picture was trying to crowd into her head.
“I know, but just to surprise me, say yes.”
“Is it your birthday?”
“No.”
“Then I have no occasion to surprise you.”
“Would you surprise me if it was my birthday?”
She was hit with an illuminating moment of selfknowledge. She was coming to love these little conversational sparring matches. She only pretended to hate them. She only pretended to herself that she wanted him to keep on running by her door. In some part of her, that she might have been just as content to keep a secret from herself, she would be devastated if he stopped popping in.
He was delivering what she needed most, even if she wanted it the least: he was delivering the unexpected; he was shaking up her comfy, safe little world; he was making her want again.
Dylan McKinnon was a born tease, a born charmer. He had a great sense of humor and a delightful sense of mischief. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, these spontaneous, unscheduled interchanges added spark to her day, brightness to her world, a lightness to her step. Not that she would ever let him see anything beyond her aggravation.
“No, I wouldn’t surprise you even if it was your birthday. I’m not the kind of person who does surprises well.”
She knew, even if he wouldn’t admit it, that was the biggest surprise of all to him. That anybody could say no to him. Some days it was all that gave her strength. Knowing if she ever weakened and said yes, it would be the beginning of the end. Before she knew it she’d be getting the equivalent of the fourth bouquet—the nice-knowing-you bouquet.
“Au contraire, Katie, my lady, I think you are full of the most amazing surprises.”
His voice had gone soft, his gaze suddenly intent, stripping. He did this—went from teasing to serious in the blink of an eye. It left her feeling off balance, unsettled. Alive.
“I assure you, I am not full of surprises.” But hadn’t she just surprised herself by acknowledging how she was coming to look forward to his visits?
He shrugged, unconvinced. “Do you want to know when my birthday is?”
He was back to playful again, and he wagged his eyebrows at her with such exaggerated hopefulness she had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing.
“If I did want to know your birth date,” she said, struggling for composure, “I could find an old baseball card, I’m sure. Just think, I could find out all kinds of interesting information about you. How much you weigh, how tall you are, all your baseball stats. I could be just like all the other girls.”
“No you couldn’t,” he said, serious again, quiet. “You could never be like the other girls, Katie.”
She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, and she was not going to let him know she cared by asking!
He sighed, looked at her with aggravation, then smiled as if he’d hit a home run. “What would you think about hitting opening day at the Ice Hotel, in Quebec? Coincidentally, it coincides with my birthday. Approximately.”
She scowled at him. Looked over his shoulder. Today was the first day it had been warm enough to leave her door open, spring warmth creeping in, full of promise. It was not the kind of day that normal people thought about ice hotels.
She had seen pictures of the Ice Hotel. It was magnificent: every piece of the structure, from walls, to floors, to beds, to vodka glasses carved out of ice. Seeing the ice hotel was on her list of one hundred things she wanted to do someday, right along with swimming with dolphins. How had he managed to stumble onto something from her list?
She eyed him suspiciously. He was a man driven. He probably broke into her apartment when she wasn’t there and found her list.
Then she sighed. How much easier all this would be if she really could believe the worst of him. That he tanned. That he stalked. But no matter how badly she wanted to believe it to protect herself, she had that sense again, of knowing him.
She had a weird kind of trust in him even if he had spoiled the Ice Hotel for her.
Somehow, now, knowing she would be seeing it alone, when she had been invited to see it with him wrecked it for her. She would never be able to see those caribou-skin-covered beds now without wondering—
“No,” she said, and her voice sounded just a teensy bit shrieky.
“Hey, it’s not until next year.”
“Dylan, you strike me as the man least likely to plan for something a year in advance.”
“Not true. I mean, okay, I might have a slight problem with birthdays, but other than that I’m quite good at planning ahead. The next line of Daredevils jackets, for instance, will come out a year from now. If we can ever decide on a design.”
“Well, the answer is still no.”
“Ah,” he said with a sad and insincere shake of his head, “Shot down again.”
“Dylan, I wish you’d stop this.”
“No, you don’t,” he said softly, suddenly serious again.
She folded her arms firmly over the bright pink peonies on her chest, but it didn’t matter how she tried to hide those peonies. That was her shameful truth. She didn’t really want this to stop, and it was nothing but embarrassing that he saw that so, so clearly.
If she really wanted it to stop, after all, she’d just say yes to something. Anything. Motorcycles or rollerblading or dinner and dancing. And then this whole thing would follow a very predictable pattern, the age-old formula for every story. It would have a beginning. A middle. And an end.
An end, as in stopped. Over. He probably wouldn’t even drop in here anymore.
“I’m not going out with you, Dylan,” she said. “Not ever. You must have better things to do with your time than pester me.”
“Ah, Katie, my lady, oddly enough I’ve come to adore pestering you.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said solemnly.
He laughed. His laughter was beautiful, it twinkled through his eyes, showed the whiteness of his teeth, the strong column of his throat. He laughed from his belly, with sincere enjoyment, a contagious joie de vivre. But his laughter just made her more aware of how much she stood to lose the moment she said yes.
Sitting at his desk, throwing foam basketballs at his net and missing with heart-wrenching regularity, Dylan McKinnon was struck by inspiration.
He realized he had been going about this the wrong way. He’d asked Margot to find out for him what girls liked, and gotten more than what he bargained for when their answers had poured in. He’d tried to talk Katie into doing what he liked, but with the same result.
But he had always known she wasn’t like any other girl he’d ever met. Her ability