One Blazing Night

When she finally reached their table, Matt stood by his chair, smiling at her as if his early arrival hadn’t ruined her chance to prepare. Damn. She clutched her purse, feeling the two stacks of three-by-five-inch cards she’d painstakingly filled with alternative versions of the speech she planned to make. Version A was simple. A nice but firm message that while it was lovely to see him, she had to put work first, so this would be their only dinner, but before he left Boston, they could meet for a drink. Period. Version B, on the other hand, wasn’t simple at all.

She couldn’t resist Matt’s smile, and her heart couldn’t help jumping with a mixture of excitement and want whenever she was in his presence. If she’d thought he was her dream man when she was sixteen, he was proving to be even more tempting to her at twenty-nine. God, he looked mouthwatering in his linen shirt tucked into worn jeans, with a sports jacket that pulled it all together perfectly. Matt had style coming out the wazoo and she was so glad she’d found her wrap dress still in the dry-cleaner bag.

She thanked the host and took her seat. Pointing to the brochure that sat in the middle of the table, she said, “You brought that?”

“I did,” he said as he settled into his chair. “We’ll talk about it later, if that’s okay. First, you look beautiful. That’s a great dress.”

“Thanks,” she said, willing herself to take the compliment and not tell him anything about the dry cleaner. “I got it for a security conference. I had to make a presentation.”

“I bet you wowed them.”

“It was cool because I was talking to techheads. They got it. When I had to talk to the CEOs...that was tricky. They all got glassy-eyed and kept checking their watches. Interestingly, almost all of them committed to buying stuff when they clearly didn’t understand how it worked.”

“Men are such idiots,” Matt said.

Sam not only laughed but had an instant flashback to learning the art of dry humor from the man himself. Matt had been her gold standard, that by which she measured all humor. Except coding humor, which was always funny.

“It’s so good to hear you laugh. Laughter is like fingerprints, I think. No two people do it exactly the same.” He was quiet for a moment, took a sip of water, then met her gaze. “Although yours has matured,” he said, his voice low and thoughtful. “Like a fine wine.”

“Hmm,” she sniffed. “According to Clark, my whining has become my defining trait.”

Matt shook his head, his eyes on her the whole time. “I never remember you whining. The only thing you ever bitched about was gaming. Or comics. Never work. You loved solving problems.”

So why couldn’t she solve her Matt problem? Now that she was looking at him, it was doubly hard to execute plan A, which was also known as the Parachute Plan. The one that would eject her from the temptation and the turmoil, the nights of guilt-ridden masturbation.

At the mere thought, her cheeks felt hotter. She hid behind the menu, although she might have been too late. “Oh. They’ve changed the menu since I was here last. Did you see?”

“I’ve never been here. But— Never mind.”

She uncovered her face. “No. No fair. Finish.”

“Where’s the waiter? I want some of that concierge beer.”

“Tell me. I’ll just annoy you until you do.”

He laughed. “Good to know some things never change. Fine. I looked up the restaurant on Yelp. And TripAdvisor. And Facebook. And Chowhound.”

She didn’t want to laugh, but of course she did. “What did they say?”

“Eat here. Great oysters, great beer, great lobster roll.”

“And with the addition of their incredible onion rings, you’ve just described what I’m going to order.”

He smiled at her and covered her hand with his. She hadn’t realized that she was leaning forward. Not boobs-on-the-table forward, but enough. He had really nice hands. They were big, with long, strong fingers and neat cuticles. His hands looked much better than hers. But keeping manicures took time. Besides, she rarely had reason to give much of a damn about her appearance.

Not that he seemed to care about her nails. The way he was looking at her, his dark eyes somehow darker even though the lighting wasn’t that bright, plan B—where she had just enough sex with him to get him out of her system—was sounding better and better.

Their waiter, Xander, arrived. He called Matt “Mr. Wilkinson” and put bread and butter on the table before he told them the specials. In the end, the only difference between her order and Matt’s was beer. He wanted the pilsner; she wanted the lager. Of far more importance was the fact that he’d moved his hand from hers, and she wanted it back. Now.

Which was not good. Not good at all. She’d have to go with plan A if she was going to survive his visit. At least she’d still have her imagination and her vibrator.

Taking in a nice deep breath, she quoted verbatim from her first three-by-five card. “It’s been really good catching up with—”

“Hey, I forgot— Oh, sorry.” He nodded at her. “Go ahead.”

“That’s okay. You go.”

“We’re building a new hotel in London. A big one, with over a thousand rooms. There’s an existing hotel but we’re stripping it down to the foundation and starting over. It’s across the street from where they hold London Comic Con. I can’t be any help next year, but the year after that, I can hook you up with a suite and food, even a limo pickup from the airport. Anything you want.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I thought of you when we were putting the deal together. Have you been?”

“To the London con? Yes. Two years ago. I was on a panel for the game I helped design. It’s all about lady dragons. Pretty awesome stuff. But yeah, it was fantastic. My only trip there and I didn’t get to see much of the city at all.”

“I think we should try to fix that. And also, you worked on a video game about lady dragons? That must have been—”

“A dream come true. It really was. It doesn’t do all that well as a story, though, because it’s pretty technical.”

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