“Thank you,” Rowan said. He reached for Vera’s hand and led her to the restaurant.
The light jazz tune wafting from invisible speakers was muted beneath the buzz of multiple conversations spiced with laughter. Attractive women in cocktail dresses sat by the bar, displaying perfectly straight, white teeth in dazzling smiles. Their hands, tipped with perfect French manicures, rested possessively on the arms of their male companions as they chatted over martinis and appetizers. Their eyes, however, roamed the room. Vera did not miss the way a dozen or more women flicked appreciative glances at Rowan. The men were much less subtle; Rowan drew as many assessing male stares as he did calculating female ones.
Rowan apparently noticed neither. “A table for two, please,” he told the hostess.
She smiled at him. “Yes, of course. This way, please.”
Rowan turned and ushered Vera ahead of him. At the table, they opened their menus and discussed wine, appetizers, and entrees. She found out he loved mushrooms and hated artichokes, and he preferred beer to wine. Over the ten-minute conversation on random food topics, Vera realized one amazing fact. He did not take his attention off her. Not once did his gaze flick through the room or rest on anyone else.
“You really are quite remarkable,” she told him after they placed their orders.
“How so?”
“Your attentiveness. You make me feel like I’m the only woman in the room.”
“You’re the woman I’m with, which makes you—as far as I’m concerned—the only woman in the room.”
Vera’s smile wavered. How many clients had heard that sentence from him? How many other women had he made to feel special?
He shook his head. “You get this little frown between your eyes when you’ve been thinking too hard. Tell me about you. Why do you volunteer at the Family Health Center on weekends?”
“Because I work during the week.” Vera shrugged and reached for her drink. “I’ve volunteered there one day a week ever since graduating from medical school, though I cut back for a few months when I was pregnant with Allison.”
“How old is Allison now?”
“She just turned two.” Vera smiled. “Started thinking she owns the world about a month ago; she’s officially the boss now.”
“Do you have pictures?”
Vera found recent photographs on her cell phone and handed it to Rowan. A warm, genuine grin eased across his face as he flipped through pictures of Allison. “She’s a champ. The ass-kicking grin says she’s more troublemaker than angel.”
Vera laughed. “No, you’re right. The halo is held up by her little horns.”
“The blond hair must come from her father.”
She tensed. “Yes. Darren and I divorced nine months ago.”
Rowan’s eyes narrowed. “She was hardly over a year old? Why?”
“Why?” Vera’s voice trembled. She fisted her hands in her lap. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be here with you on a Saturday night, wondering how to dust off the ruins of my fourteen-year marriage.”
“I’m sorry.” Rowan placed his hand on the table and waited until she reached for it. His fingers closed around hers. “I was being intrusive.”
“No, you have a right to be curious. Heck, I’m curious too. The closest I can figure is the marriage was falling apart for a long time, and Allison was just the nail in the coffin, so to speak. I don’t regret her,” Vera said hastily. “Not for a moment. She’s amazing, and the funny thing is I think Darren feels the same way.”
“Then she’s a lucky girl with two parents who love her.”
Just not each other. Still, Rowan was right. In the grand scheme of things, she supposed that Allison had made out far better than most children in broken marriages.
Vera and Rowan fell silent as the waiter appeared and set their appetizers in front of them. Vera waited until they were alone once more before asking. “Would it be terribly rude to ask how you got into your line of work?”
“No, you have a right to be curious,” Rowan tossed the words back at her. “My sister and I were in our first year of graduate school when my parents passed away in a car accident. Funds got tight after that, so I started working on the side to help with tuition. Turned out I had a real talent for this kind of work, and the money was good, so I dropped out of school and went full time.”
“How long ago was that?”
“About seven years.”
Which made them about the same age—thirty. Vera’s mind glossed over that fact and latched on to the one that made her head spin. “You’ve been doing this for seven years?”
He nodded. “And I’ve got many years yet before I age out of my prime.”
Vera dropped her gaze. Only willpower kept her from reaching up to cover her cheeks, which she was sure were red. “I can imagine.”
“Can you?” The grin he gave her made her heart race.
“Do you ever think of going back, to school, I mean?”
“Not particularly, at least not to do what I’d started out. Regardless, at some point, I’ll have to do something else for a living.”
“Like what?”
“A talent scout, perhaps.”
Vera’s jaw dropped. Was that street-speak for a pimp?
The wicked gleam in Rowan’s amber eyes stopped her before she went ballistic on him. “You’re baiting me, aren’t you?”
“Perhaps I am, but you’re an easy target.”
The laughter bubbled out of her before she could fix a stern expression on her face. “Is that all I am to you, someone to laugh at?”
“I think the best relationships are built on a healthy sense of humor and an ability to laugh at the other without giving offense. You can laugh at me; I don’t mind.”
Vera waited until the waiter cleared away the appetizers and set their entrees in front of them. She picked up her fork and poked it into a scallop nestled in a bed of pasta. “It’s hard to laugh at someone with your kind of confidence.”
He merely tilted his head and looked at her as if she spoke a foreign language.
“It’s true,” she continued. “You don’t see it. I do. The way you walk into the room as if you have nothing to prove to anyone. The women are staring at you, but you don’t look back.”
“That’s because I’m staring at you.”
“But that’s just my point. You don’t care that you’re not with the prettiest girl in the room. You’re still treating her like she is. It’s amazing, what you do.” To her horror, her voice quivered. She picked up her napkin and covered her nose and mouth. “Excuse me.” She stood up and dashed toward the restrooms.
In the quiet, enclosed space of a toilet stall, she slumped on the seat. Had she actually gotten choked up because a man—an escort, of all people—was paying her attention and treating her like she mattered? It was just his job. He dated and had sex with women for a living; no doubt he was very good at it.
Still, his attention had seemed so natural, his warmth so genuine. Perhaps he actually liked her.
It’s just his job. She had to remind herself of that fact. She could not allow herself to be swept up in the imagined romance of their date.