“Elias.” He got off his stool and walked over to her, his hand extended.
“Cricket,” she responded absently as she took note of his hand. Normally she introduced herself as Cree, because scientists named after bugs didn’t usually garner respect, but this time she had forgotten and introduced herself by her given name.
He had recently had surgery. There was a barely healed incision running from his wrist all the way up the palm of his hand and one along his thumb.
“Do you inspect everyone’s hand you shake so closely?” he asked. It was then she realized that she hadn’t shaken his hand at all—she was holding it with both of hers as her thumb ran along the still-angry incision line.
“You shouldn’t be shaking my hand. Yours is swollen. You should wave, or do that head-nod thingy that guys do.”
“Would a wink suffice?” He took the chair next to her at the four-top.
“Oh, no. Winks can be kind of creepy, don’t you think?”
He smiled at her, fully this time, showing off a set of perfectly white teeth. He became even more gorgeous, if that were possible. “They could be sexy, too. I guess it depends on who is doing the winking.”
“And on the winkee. No?”
“I wouldn’t find it creepy if you winked at me. Is your name really Cricket?”
“Yes. Like the bug,” she admitted with a small sigh.
“That can’t be true.” He laughed. “Your parents must have thought it was a cute name for a girl.”
“No, they thought I looked like a bug, so they named me Cricket. Cricket Moses Warren.”
He slanted a brow at her. “Moses as in part-the-seas Moses?”
“I suppose, but I think I’m named for my great-great-grandfather, who was a conductor on the Underground Railroad. His name was Moses.”
He winked at her. “It’s nice to meet you, Cricket Moses. I am Elias James Bradley.”
“Oh, how normal of you to be called Elias James. I suppose your parents were too unimaginative to name you after a noisy, beady-eyed bug and an ancestor of the opposite sex.”
He grinned at her. “No, I’m named after a soap actor and my father.” He raised his hand to signal the bartender. “A pineapple margarita for my new friend, and another beer for me.”
“Friends now, are we? I don’t even know one embarrassing thing about you, and you know two about me.”
She wasn’t normally so chatty with strangers, especially deliciously beautiful strange men, but she was feeling kind of nervous. “You know I just had surgery on my hand and I have very limited movement in it.”
“Is that embarrassing?”
“Yes. I work with my hands. I can’t do my job now because of it.”
“You work with your hands, huh? Are you an MMA fighter?”
“No.”
“A football player?”
“No.”
“A boxer? Did you hit someone so hard your hand shattered in tiny little pieces?”
“I didn’t break my hand at work.”
“How did you break it? Freaky sex accident?”
“You’re weird.” He grinned.
“I know.” She nodded, not believing she wasn’t censoring herself like she normally would. “I have been my entire life.”
“I like it.” He looked down at his swollen hand and attempted to bend his fingers without much success. “I broke it doing a mud race. I fell from a twenty-foot landing and then had a 250-pound man land on top of me. My wrist snapped.”
“Ouch.” She gently took his large, swollen hand in hers again and studied it. “Your hand should still be immobilized. Judging from the healing of this incision, you’re about a month post-op.”
He frowned at her. “Are you a doctor?”
“No,” she lied—or half lied. She was a doctor, just not a medical one, and according to her mother, her PhDs were little more than expensive pieces of paper. “I just know a little about this.”
“Who’s this man you are meeting?” Elias asked as the bartender set down their drinks in front of them.
“I’m not meeting a man,” she said as she studied the drink she’d allowed him to order for her. It actually came in a hollowed-out pineapple and was very interesting to look at.
“You’re not?”
“No.” She picked up her drink and took a sip. She found it delightful. “Why would you think I was meeting a man?”
“Because you are a beautiful woman sitting in a bar with a nervous look on your face.”
“You think I’m beautiful?” She grabbed his beer and slid it away from him. “How many drinks have you had?”
She was smart. She was creative. She was great at board games, but she had never thought she was beautiful. She tried to look her best. But at most she was pleasant to look at.
“I didn’t even have a sip of my second. I wouldn’t tell you that you were beautiful unless I thought you were. I like your hair and your mouth and your huge doe eyes.”
She tried to ignore the fact that his compliment made her feel warm all the way down to her toes. “That’s why my parents named me Cricket. Because of my eyes. They call me Bug.”
“Do you mind?”
“I didn’t at first, but then everyone in school started to call me Bug, and not in the cute, endearing way my father intended.”
He nodded. “That must have sucked.”
“It did,” she agreed. “I bet you were popular in school.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I’m purely judging a book by its cover. You were a jock. You played football. All the girls loved you because you are so perfectly gorgeous.” She swept her eyes over him again, enjoying how he looked more and more by the second. “You can hold a conversation, so I’m guessing you weren’t just an athlete but participated in something like student council. You were prom and/or homecoming king. How much of that did I get right?”
“All of it,” he said with a grin. “But you missed something.”
“What?”
“I sang in the choir.”
“That is surprising. Did you join to impress girls?”
“I liked to sing.” He shrugged. “You never told me who you were meeting.”
“A childhood...friend?”
“You don’t sound too sure about that.”
“I’m not sure I like her. I don’t think she likes me, either. She always makes little digs at me. ‘I’m seeing the most incredible man. I guess you haven’t found anyone yet. I’ve been promoted at work again. Are you still doing research in that dark little lab of yours? Don’t worry, you’ll change careers when you get up the courage.’ It makes me want to spill something on one of those thousand-dollar handbags she carries around.”
“If you don’t like her, then why do you see her?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s completely irrational, isn’t it? But we grew up together. We attended the same private school. We took violin lessons together. We even