Speaking of magic, the dress was the mother of all illusions. It had been driving him crazy since she’d opened her apartment door and magically drained all the blood from his head and shot it directly to his groin. He was a sucker for black, short and plunging necklines. All that pale, creamy skin against and beneath the black silk was a turn-on of epic proportions.
“Did I mention that you look incredible?” he said, watching her studiously avoid eye contact by gluing her gaze to the menu.
Several beats passed before she lowered the menu and met his eyes. “You did, actually. Or words to that effect. Thank you. You, um, you look very nice, as well.”
Aren’t we formal now? Again he thought it was cute. So was the way her gaze sort of lingered involuntarily on his mouth before sliding to his chest, then gliding slowly back to his mouth again.
“So, do you see anything you like?”
Her gaze snapped to his.
“On the menu,” he clarified with a grin.
There was that blush. The one he loved to fire up. The one that told him that she hadn’t been thinking about food when she’d been checking him out but that there might have been hunger involved and that it embarrassed her to be caught whetting her appetite, so to speak.
“I’m not too knowledgeable on French cuisine,” she said, sounding self-conscious.
“That’s what Claude’s for,” he said, wanting to set her at ease. “Let’s ask him what’s good when he brings our drinks.”
He watched with interest when she did just that, leading the waiter through a series of questions, both polite and businesslike in manner, until she finally settled on whitefish in wine sauce.
“Make mine beef, make it red and make it big,” he said when it was his turn. “And I’ll have whatever the lady’s having for side dishes.”
“You will enjoy.” Claude scooped up the menus. “The lady has excellent taste.”
And then they were alone. If you didn’t count the discreetly hovering army of wait staff—one who placed ice in their water glasses with sterling tongs, another who dropped in a wedge of lemon and yet another who finally got to the task of pouring the water.
Her expressive eyes relayed her amazement over all the fuss about filling a water glass.
“Not exactly the Royal Diner, huh?”
“Not exactly.”
“It’s a little pretentious,” he agreed, “but the food’s great.”
“It’s a beautiful place.”
Ritzy is what it was. Valet parking, white linen tablecloths, red roses in crystal vases on every table. Women liked it. Besides the great food, the part he liked was the candlelight—something he’d never really paid much attention to before tonight.
Tonight the lighting seemed the perfect accompaniment to the woman sharing his table. It also played into a little fantasy that had been growing in size and scope since the blonde in black had opened her door and rocked his world.
He’d been anticipating staid, stodgy and subdued. The last thing he’d expected was sexy with a capital SEX. And again he felt that niggling sense of unease that he wanted to discount as nothing more than pleasant surprise. Oh, yeah. Had she ever surprised him.
“Are you having a good time?”
“Is that what this is about? Me having a good time?”
It didn’t take much to put her on the defensive. His fault. He’d done little more than give her grief for five years. He wasn’t even sure why he’d changed the game plan now. “Well, I would hope so. What did you want it to be about?”
“Jess Golden’s things.”
“Ah. But I don’t want to talk about that yet.”
A frown brimming with rebuke crinkled up her forehead.
“Later,” he promised. “I want to talk about you first.”
Clearly she hadn’t been prepared for that.
“Jacob—” she began to say, a clear preamble to another roadblock.
“Jake,” he interrupted. “My friends call me Jake. And for once don’t argue, okay? Let’s enjoy the evening.”
He sat back in his chair, toyed with the stem of his water glass and watched her face. It didn’t hide her emotions nearly as well as it hid her secrets. She was uncomfortable. It was one thing for him to put her on edge with a little good-natured teasing. It was another for her to feel discomfort because she thought she was out of her element, which is what he suspected was going on right now. And he wanted to remedy that situation ASAP. “How about we start with something easy? Do you like your work?”
“I do. Yes,” she said without hesitation—and with a noticeable lack of elaboration.
Okay. So he was going to have to pry every snippet of information out of her. “Why a respiratory therapist? And yes,” he insisted at her doubtful look, “I really am interested.”
“My freshman year of college,” she said at long last, “I was awarded some work-study money. My assignment was at the university hospitals and clinics. Cleaning rooms, if you really want to know. I rotated between several floors and got interested in respiratory therapy when I was working in that unit.”
“Work-study? So you worked your way through school?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“What other types of jobs did you have?”
Their bread came about that time, so she busied her hands with it and seemed to let down her guard a little in the process. “Too many to count. Let’s see…I tended bar, worked the night shift at the front desk of a couple of motels, cashiered at a convenience store. Whatever it took to make tuition and board.”
His admiration for her kicked up a couple more notches. “Sounds tough.”
She shook her head, not an ounce of regret registering on her face. “Sometimes, yes, but for the most part I enjoyed it all. Appreciated every job I had. Without them, I wouldn’t have gotten my degree.”
“Your family wasn’t in a position to help?” He broke off a chunk of bread and picked up his butter knife.
What little reserve she’d let down jumped back up with a vengeance. Instead of answering, she asked her own question. “And what did you study in college? I don’t recall ever seeing any courses in oil-well firefighting on any course catalogs.”
All righty, then. Talking about her family was off-limits. Since she’d struggled to make her own way through college, he had to figure one of two reasons was the cause. Either her family was very poor and she felt self-conscious about it or she was estranged from them, and that just made him more curious about what had precipitated the break.
Regardless, it explained—at least in part—why she was such a serious Sara all the time. She knew hardship. She knew if not poverty, at least slim pickings. He supposed if he’d had to work as hard as she had to get his education, he’d have a tendency to take life a little more seriously too.
He would have liked to press a little harder about her family, but he took his cues from her and let it drop. “Actually I majored in business management with a minor in accounting.”
“Oh, well,” she said, buttering a piece of bread, “I can see how that would make a natural transition into fighting oil-well fires.”
His smile at her little joke was slow. “So she does have a sense of humor.”
“When motivated, I can be funny,” she said, sounding a little defensive.
“Well,