by Meg Maguire
Of course she shouldn’t care what Kristy thought of her...but wouldn’t it just be heaven, turning up to her wedding with a specimen like Dylan Benedetti on her arm? That probably made heaven a petty place...but who cared? After years of psychological warfare, Steph—the gangly carrot-top wannabe ninja—could make an entrance. With an enviable figure and a stunner of an escort. She’d been impulsive and RSVPed plus guest. Please, please, please, let it be plus hot doctor.
“Which made me laugh,” Dylan was saying. Steph had completely lost the thread.
“I’ll bet,” she hazarded.
“The waiter thought the guy was ordering for the whole table! I’ll say that about you pro athletes—I’d kill for your metabolism.”
Ah, must be some Bruins anecdote. “I bet I’ll kill to have my former metabolism back a year from now,” Steph said. “I’m already getting soft.”
“Be prepared to gain five pounds tonight—I’m ordering us at least six courses.”
The drive took less than ten minutes, and he dropped her in front of the restaurant and told her to go ahead and order them a bottle of wine while he trolled for a parking spot.
The restaurant was beautiful—dim and intimate, at once rustic and sophisticated. She felt pretty as she shed her coat and handed it to the hostess. Steph gave Dylan’s name and was led to a table by the front windows, complete with candles and napkin rings. It was warm and she was happy to ditch her sweater. The little cleavage she possessed looked great with the dress’s draped neckline.
For the wine selection, she exploited her only scrap of knowledge—that red wine went with red sauce—and picked a mid-priced Chianti whose vineyard she stood a chance at pronouncing. Dylan arrived just as the bottle did.
“This is all right?” he asked, rolling up the sleeves of his crisp gray dress shirt.
She nodded, glancing around appreciatively. “It’s beautiful.” The waitress handed her a splash of the wine to taste. Was this good? She didn’t have the first clue. Dylan tasted his own sample.
“Lovely,” he declared. “Perfect choice.”
The waitress filled their glasses and left them alone with the leather-bound menus.
As it turned out, Dylan’s threat of six courses wasn’t idle.
Steph would’ve been content with the delicious bread—crusty and steaming, dipped in seasoned olive oil. But Dylan started them with calamari, then grilled zucchini, then big slices of decadent sausage with a spicy marinade, then roasted mushrooms. He made her dominate the first hour’s conversation, peppering her with questions about MMA, ones that made her feel exotic and accomplished.
She groaned as they split the final mushroom. “That was amazing.”
“For the main course,” Dylan said, picking up his menu, “I’m leaning toward the stuffed peppers. How about you?”
“Oh God, there’s a main course still to come?” She laughed, scanning the choices. “You’ll have to roll me out in a wheelbarrow.”
“That would be my pleasure.” Oh, that smile. Goodness, he was handsome. As handsome as an actor. She hoped she looked nice enough to match him.
She settled on one of the cheaper dishes—an upscale incarnation of chicken parmesan. She guessed this was all on Dylan’s dime, but if it wasn’t... The wine alone would’ve blown her usual dining budget, and at this rate there was definitely going to be dessert.
As they relinquished the menus he leaned in, smiling that perfect smile. “You look really lovely.”
“Oh, thank you.”
His dimples deepened. “I like how you blush.”
She grinned, knowing even the slightest embarrassment stained her red from her neck to her hair.
“You have beautiful skin,” Dylan added, eyes dropping to her décolletage with appreciation, not seediness. “That color really suits you.”
Damn, this man was smooth. “That color suits you,” she countered, nodding to his collared shirt, as polished as his haircut and tidy nails.
“So enough about me. What was your childhood like?” she asked, wondering if his smoothness was the product of a privileged upbringing, or if a person really could learn to be this effortlessly urbane.
Dylan gave her the gist—he’d grown up middle-class, in New York State, and his parents were still married, both retired college professors.
“My mom taught classics and my father taught micro-biology. Didn’t offer much overlap, not unless you got them talking about the Bubonic plague.”
Steph smiled dryly. “Don’t think you get to just gloss over the whole New York issue. Lay it on me—Giants or Jets?”
“Busted. Giants.”
She sighed dramatically. “So if this goes well, things could get ugly on Sundays.”
“Does the fact that I rehab your hockey players not earn me some kind of pass?”
“I suppose it should...but still. Prepare yourself.”
“You said you have a brother?”
She waggled two fingers.
“Oh dear. So I’m doomed. I’m never winning your family’s approval.”
She blushed anew to hear him talk about something so advanced on the first date. Her hopes for wedding-date redemption soared. “You’ll be a hard sell. But I promise I’ll defend you.”
They chatted through their entrées about sports, about who’d grown up with more sadistic winters, about current events, about everything but the three topics Jenna had forbidden—politics, religion and exes.
It was, without doubt, the most perfect first date ever. All that was missing to seal that distinction was the most perfect first kiss ever.
Dylan relented on dessert, and they decided to nurse the rest of the wine in its place. He handed the waitress his credit card before even requesting the check, giving Steph no chance whatsoever to help pay. She tried to open her mouth to offer to tackle the tip, but a firm and pointed look from Dylan shut her down. She smiled. She could get used to this treatment.
When the final plates were cleared, he shifted the glass candleholder to the side, and reached across the tablecloth, opening his hand in invitation. Steph swallowed nervously and curled her fingers around his, surely red as a fire hydrant from the pleasure.
“This was really great,” Dylan said earnestly.
She nodded. “For me, too.”
“I wish I could ask you out for a drink, but I have an early morning.”
“That’s fine—I’m opening the gym at six.”
He grinned.
“What?”
“You have the coolest job,” he said.
She laughed. “If you say so.”
“I’d love to give you a lift home.”
She nodded. Dinner had lasted close to three hours—Dylan was surely fine to drive. They bundled into their coats and braved the four icy blocks to his car. The cold leather upholstery shocked her thighs.
They spoke very little on the way, and she bet he was preoccupied with the same questions she was. Would they kiss? Yes, of course they’d kiss. They’d kiss and kiss and kiss and it would be as perfect as the rest of this date. But would she invite him up?
There was a free space right in front of her building—a sign. All he had to do was switch off the car and come upstairs with her.
They turned in their seats and she said, “I’m under strict orders not to invite you upstairs on the first date.”
“And I’m under strict orders not to accept such an invitation.”
“Jenna’s probably got spies watching us right now.”
“I think I’m allowed to kiss you, though,” Dylan said, smiling hopefully.
Her middle fluttered. “I think you are.”
He put the car in neutral and moved in.
Patrick. He flashed across her brain, unbidden—a far different man leaning across those two armrests, wanting a kiss to cap off a far different kind of date. She shoved him aside and shut her eyes.
Dylan’s lips were firm...too firm, too thin. But he was nervous, surely, same as Steph. She angled h
er head, softened her own mouth, hoping he’d do the same. But his lips only seemed to come with that one dry, tense setting.
It wasn’t a bad kiss, even. Just...tidy. Much too tidy.
Patrick’s mouth. Patrick’s soft, full lips, capable of shifting from shy to sensual to filthy at her faintest signal.
No no no. She coaxed Dylan a bit further. Maybe he was good at making out, just not this chaste kind of kissing... But when they got there, more of the same. And his tongue was too wet, unwieldy, not matching the hardness of his lips at all. Nothing like those smooth, dirty sweeps Patrick had given her, the exact right balance of slick and hungry and utterly controlled, those qualities that made a woman think of nothing but sex.
Feel something, she commanded her body. Dylan was ninety-eight-percent perfect. His voice and his kisses didn’t get her hot, but in light of everything else...so frigging what? Feel something...
And she did. She felt Patrick’s hot, strong fingers at her waist, felt his rousing kisses in place of Dylan’s cardboard ones. She felt the sinful weight of Patrick Doherty pushing her into a mattress, and in a heartbeat, she was wet.
But when her eyes opened and the kiss broke apart, those blue eyes were gone, that handsome face with its honest, Irish features replaced with Dylan’s more angular, sophisticated one. Her date was as attractive and charming as ever...yet a man she hadn’t seen in days, who she’d never see again and didn’t even want to see again... He was the one who’d primed her body this way.
Goddamn him. Goddamn Patrick and every other version of him who’d come before and driven Steph’s libido deep into this one-note rut. Dylan just intimidated her. That was why his kissing didn’t resonate. She was too nervous, too wound up, wanting this so badly to be perfect.
The next time they kissed, it would be perfect.
“Thanks for dinner,” she said. “That was the best meal I’ve had in...ever.”
“I’m glad.” He smiled, looking eager. Looking as though that kiss had been just dandy in his estimation, not awkward or strange at all. Steph’s stomach soured.
That’s indigestion, not intuition. Give this lovely man another chance. He’s everything on your mental checklist and more. And Kristy will die of shock when you stroll into the reception hall with him on your arm.
“I um, I’m free this weekend,” she said. “If you’re in town.”
“I could do Friday, but then I’m heading to Toronto first thing Saturday.”
“I’ll take it. I’m free after seven.” Normally it’d take a team of horses to drag her away from sparring, but she wasn’t going to lose momentum with Dylan.
“Perfect. I’ll call you Friday morning to firm things up.”
Eager, she thought. Like those awful, wooden kisses. Shush. Don’t wreck this.
With a final, sexless press of lips, they said good-night.
Steph hurried inside, going over all the excellent points of her date as she rode the elevator. A zillion wonderful moments, versus one lousy kiss. This would look like a no-brainer, come morning.
She got ready for bed, spritzing her pillow with the clandestine bottle of cologne. A very Dylan-y sort of scent. She’d smell him all night and dream about their amazing courtship. She would see him Friday. She would gently transform him into a better kisser, and then he’d be perfect.
She tossed and turned.
Every time her brain quieted and sleep was nigh...
Patrick.
Her mind filled with the remembered sensation of his body pressed to hers in the lounge, the promises his tongue had made, echoed by the firm length of his cock between her thighs. She punched the pillow, releasing a puff of cologne. It smelled cloying, suddenly. She swapped the pillow with its neighbor, but the scent lingered.
After another ten minutes spent trying desperately to shift her fantasies from Patrick’s body and voice to visions of future Dylan-dates, she tossed the covers aside. Curiosity dragged her to the bathroom, to the sack of toiletries she kept under the sink, filled with half-empty hotel shampoo bottles, lotion packets, shower gel. She found what she was looking for, a tiny travel bar of Lever soap, and tore the paper wrapper open. She put it to her nose and breathed deeply.
Damn it to hell, it smelled right. Somehow smelled even better than an eighty-dollar bottle of Terre d’Hermès. She flung it in the waste basket, cursing Patrick Doherty.
And an hour later, still no closer to sleep, she slunk back out of bed, retrieved the bar of soap, and set it on the adjacent pillow.
She was asleep inside a minute, wrapped in dreams of easy, wicked sex, with a highly inadvisable man.
5
STEPH WOKE the next morning with no clarity, no clue what to do about the Dylan issue.
Thankfully she had a quick consultation scheduled with Jenna during her lunch break. She mounted the stairs, sidestepping yet more construction debris in the foyer—a ladder and boxes that hadn’t been there when she’d unlocked the gym at six. The Spark office was open and she knocked on the frame.
Jenna beckoned her in and wheeled over a chair.
“Lindsey’s out at the moment,” she said as she shut the door. “Is it okay if we chat in here? The meeting room is a mess.”
“Fine by me.”
Jenna sat, peering at her computer screen, opening files. “The construction should be on hold until the lunch hour’s over, so this’ll be fairly private.”
“Minus all the guys from the gym who wander by and see me consulting with you,” Steph teased, nodding to the windows that looked into the foyer.
Jenna’s eyes widened. “I didn’t even think of that.” Before she could get up and flip the blinds, Steph dismissed her panic with a wave.
“Everyone knows I joined Spark. Rich saw to that.”
“If you’re sure...”
“Positive.”
“Right. Well, welcome to your first official consultation!” Jenna folded her arms atop her desk, eyes glittering. “I know you and Dylan had to reschedule, so how did that work out?”
“We went to dinner last night. He was...perfect.”
Jenna beamed. “Excellent.”
“He was handsome and polite and generous, and he asked me out for tomorrow night.”
“That’s wonderful!”
Steph’s smile faltered and Jenna spotted it with the precision of a sniper.
“It is wonderful, right?”
“Technically, yes.”
Jenna slumped. “But?”
“But nothing, really. He’s absolutely everything I want. It’s just... This’ll sound dumb.”
“I’ve heard it all, trust me.”
“Our good-night kiss didn’t really...do it for me.”
Jenna frowned. “Ah.”
“But that could’ve just been my imagination, or my nerves, right? I definitely want to see him again, and be sure.”
“Sounds wise. Was it a formal date?”
“I’d say so.”
“Maybe for tomorrow, ask if you can do something more casual. More relaxed, so if it is nerves, maybe you won’t run into that problem.”
“That’s a good plan.” Steph leaned back in her chair, relieved to be told that maybe it hadn’t been the kiss of death, that chemistry-free smooch. Just nerves. Of course.
“And if it doesn’t work out with Dylan, I’ll find you another guy,” Jenna added. “That’s my job, after all. But I’m so happy to hear the date went well, over all.”
“Oh yeah. I wasn’t even sure they made men like him anymore.”
Jenna seemed to try to suppress a grin and failed, clearly putting a mental gold star on Dylan’s client file.
Steph bit her lip. “Can I ask whether or not my thinking on something is way off base?”
“You can ask me anything.”
“So, I have to go to this wedding in a couple weeks. My cousin’s wedding.”
“Okay.”
“And she was horrible to me when we were growing up. So my questions are, A, is it evil to
want to bring a super handsome man with me to rub in her face? And B, how many good dates do I need under my belt before I can ask a guy to come to an event like that, where he’ll be meeting my family and everything?”
“Is it a big wedding?”
“Yeah, at least a hundred and fifty guests, I think.”
“Well, the bigger the guest list, the less pressure on the date. If it were an intimate family gathering, I’d say that’s boyfriend territory.”
“Right.”
“Ditto the rehearsal dinner, if you’re in on that.”
“I’m not.”
Jenna considered a moment. “I’d say it all comes down to the guy. Some men might get over-thinky about a wedding invite from a woman they’re not exclusive with. But a guy with a close family who’s hoping to move forward with you that way—he might be delighted. But this is a capital-B Big Date. So don’t ask unless you’re confident that you guys might be heading toward boyfriend-girlfriend status.”
“How would I know that?”
Jenna smiled. “Great question. Ideally, because one of you will ask the other, ‘Would you like to be exclusive?’”
“Oh man, like, ‘Do you want to go steady?’ This is so middle-school.”
“I know, it never stops being awkward, negotiating this stuff. But if it’s the right match, it’s worth all the stress of asking.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“As for your other question,” Jenna said, “about whether or not it’s evil?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s only evil if you’re using the guy without actually having any designs on him. If you like him, I’d say the whole rubbing him in your cousin’s face thing is just a happy side effect.”
“Oh, good. Because I would love that.”
“I’ve actually set people up on first dates going to one of their high-school reunions. A family wedding might be pushing it, but I’ll make a note in your file in case I run across a guy who might just love that kind of over-the-top first-date adventure. When is it?”
