“I’d take both,” Kendra said. “They’re amazing. All the appetizers here are. And your main?”
“Oh . . .” Jane paused. “Um, just the apps, thanks.”
Levi didn’t know if she wasn’t that hungry or if she was worried about the prices. “Hey, why don’t we order a bunch of appetizers and share?” he asked her.
She smiled. “Okay.”
“Is there anything you don’t like?” he asked, wanting to give her the damn moon.
When she shook her head, he looked at Kendra. “How about one of each of the five appetizers.” And then he added a flight of beer to share, getting Jane to pick the flavors.
“Also, we’ve got s’mores on the menu now,” Kendra said. “You get all the makings for them, which you take out on the patio to the fire pits and create yourself.”
Levi looked at Jane, who had lit up at the word s’mores. “I think that’s a yes.”
Kendra gave him another wink and took off.
“An ex, huh?” Jane asked.
“An ex implies we were in a relationship,” he said.
“Ah. So you were one of those guys, the hot ones who had girls throwing themselves at you. Let me guess, it was hard to resist them all.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Not that either,” he finally managed, trying to lose the smile when she glared at him. “No, seriously, if you’d known me then, you’d get why it was so funny.”
“Enlighten me, Tarzan.”
“I was the science geek.”
“Doesn’t seem like it hurt your game any.”
“I had zero game. Luckily for me, just after I graduated from high school, my best friend told me we were in a relationship.”
“Mateo?” she asked in surprise.
“Mateo’s sister, Amy. They lived on my street growing up, and we were all close. Amy and I got closer that summer after graduation, and she changed colleges to go with me to Colorado.”
“How long were you with her?”
“Until the year after college. I’ve dated on and off since then, but nothing serious.” He really wasn’t ready to explain what had happened to Amy because there was no way to do that without taking the mood to a somber place. He’d spent a lot of time in that state and didn’t want to go there tonight.
Luckily, Kendra was heading toward them with their beer and food. She set everything down and smiled at Levi. “You sure did grow up real nice, Cutler.” She turned to Jane. “So is it true what they say about the geeks? That they only get better with age?”
Jane looked at Levi, and he found himself holding his breath on her answer.
“One hundred percent.”
Kendra laughed, and when she left, they continued to stare at each other for another beat.
“In for a penny, right?” Jane finally said and picked up a sweet potato fry. “Also, there’s no way we can eat all of this. It was sweet of you, but impractical.”
That made him laugh because he was the most practical person he knew. In fact, normally by now on a date, he’d be mentally cataloguing the reasons she’d drive him crazy. It’d been his way of keeping himself emotionally unavailable. It was both funny and horrifying that she was doing it to him. “Impractical?” he asked. “My brain doesn’t even know how to compute that.”
She shrugged. Not her problem, apparently. She took the last sweet potato fry. “Yum. Wonder how they get them so sweet.”
“The longer they sit, the sweeter they get.”
She laughed. “I should have known you’d know. So . . . why did you stop seeing whoever you were seeing last?”
He thought of Tamara, the woman he’d met at a conference a few months back. They’d gone out to dinner and she’d eaten off his plate. Without asking. She’d taken the last of his fries, actually, and the irony of that made him laugh. “We weren’t compatible. And you never told me your most unusual talent.”
“To piss people off, which is self-explanatory,” she said. “Robotic gadgets are not.”
“It calms my brain.”
She cocked her head and studied him. “Yeah, I can see that. You know what calms my brain? Cupcakes.” She picked up a shrimp kebab, dragged it through a mountain of sauce, and pointed it at him. “Now stop trying to distract me with all your sexy nerd hotness. We’ve got a mission, or at least I do. I need to get to know you fast if I’m going to pull this dinner off, and let me tell you something about me—I don’t like to fail.” She went back to her iPad. “Next question—”
“Oh no.” He put a hand over her iPad. “You’re not getting away with telling me your talent is pissing people off. Play fair.”
“But it’s true.”
He cocked his head and studied her. She actually believed this. “You haven’t pissed me off.”
“Give me time.”
He leaned forward, waiting until she met his gaze. “Not going to happen.”
“Maybe . . . but only because I’m going to be gone soon.”
“That seems to be your life motto.”
She shrugged.
“Still not going to happen, Jane.”
“You don’t know. You might disagree with me on stuff. Or not like my opinions, of which I have many.”
“There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing or having varying opinions. I actually like that.”
She looked at him for a long beat. “You’re different.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
Chapter 12
Levi smiled when Jane just stared at him. The air seemed charged with something he hadn’t felt in a long time. And given the suddenly wary look on her face, she felt the same.
All around them were the sounds of people talking and laughing, silverware against dishes, music . . . The table between them was small.
Intimate.
“Pretend,” Jane said, pointing at him. “This is pretend.”
“Are you reminding me or yourself?”
“Both.” She shoved his hand off her iPad and read the next question. “Is a hot dog a sandwich—and why.”
He grinned. “Once again, in the bedroom or out?”
She shook her head. “I walked right into that one.”
He flipped the case closed on her iPad.
“But—”
He crooked his finger.
She narrowed her eyes, but leaned in. “What?”
Their faces were close. Not as close as they’d been the night of the blizzard, when she’d shown him the depths of her courage. Or when she’d shown up at the store and climbed the wall, revealing she also had determination, a sense of adventure, and a willingness to laugh at herself.
“Hello,” she said. “Earth to Tarzan.”
“You’ve got pretty eyes. They’ve got a ring of gold around the irises. When you’re irritated, it turns to fire. I like it.”
She snorted, and he grinned, but let it fade. “You do know that for this to work, we need to know more about each other than how we categorize a hot dog. So ask me a real question, Jane.”
“Okay . . .” She studied him thoughtfully. “You’re clearly smart as hell, successful, and some women might find you attractive . . .”