“WE’RE EATING HERE?” Nicky gasped, her tone conveying only half her disbelief. “A greasy spoon?”
He shook his head. “Not a greasy spoon. The greasy spoon. Don’t you remember?”
She frowned out the broad windshield of his Corvette, thinking hard. One by one the pieces fell into place. First there was the tux, then the corsage. Next came this car with the engine he’d rebuilt. Course, back then it had been a Chevy, but the concept was the same. And now they were pulling into very same “restaurant” they had gone to after her ill-fated senior prom.
“You’re reliving high school,” she said, equal parts charmed and appalled.
“Sort of,” he said as he leaned forward in the seat to look directly at her. “Look, I’m happy to take you to the best restaurant in town. I can afford it and you more than deserve it.”
“But…” she prompted when he fell silent.
“But this is where our story should have started. I should have asked you to prom, rented a tux and taken you to…well, a better restaurant—”
“But this is what we did. So you’re re-creating that night with minor alterations. Why?”
“Because there were things I should have asked you back then. Things I should have done. Look, I’m not trying to go back in time. I’m just trying to reframe our story now.” He flushed slightly and looked out toward the diner’s neon Open sign. “I guess it was a bad idea.”
“No,” she said slowly. “It’s unusual, but I’m willing to go with it. But if you start wanting to dance to the Backstreet Boys, I’m outta here.”
“No Backstreet Boys. I swear.” Then he pushed open the door and rushed around the car.
She was more than capable of opening her own door, but in this tight skirt she was grateful that he gave her a hand stepping out. And charmed that he did it with elegant machismo.
“You are very handsome in that tux, Mr. Ray.”
“I borrowed it from the Magic Man.”
She glanced shyly at him, feeling a little outclassed. “Genius engineer, performing magician/hypnotist and restorer of classic cars. Anything else about you that I should know?”
He pretended to think about it. “Good in bed?”
“I can’t speak to that. I don’t think we’ve ever done it in an actual bed.” Then she laughed at his abrupt frown. But he didn’t say anything, since they were walking into the diner.
The waitress, fry cook and two cops did a double take when they entered. All four were grinning by the time he handed her into the booth. A bubble of laughter worked its way up her chest, but she didn’t release it. She was happy to hold it inside, feeling an absurd amount of joy at the situation. And when she looked at his eyes across the table, she saw an answering delight there. The waitress greeted them and offered them menus, but Nicky just shook her head. She’d bet anything that Jim knew just what she wanted.
He did. “Two double cheeseburgers and sundaes for dessert. Pistachio ice cream.”
Nicky grinned. “You got it in one.” Then she opened her paper napkin and set it carefully in her lap. But before long, the silence needed something: questions, answers, first-date stuff. But who was going to start first?
She looked up and found him watching her intently. She flushed, slightly embarrassed by his intense stare. “You’ve known me for years,” she finally said. “What could you possibly find so fascinating about me?”
“You mean besides beauty, discipline and excellence…um, out of bed.”
She arched a brow. If this was going to descend into the back and forth of sexual innuendo, she was going to rapidly tire of the conversation. She already knew they had chemistry on that level. She’d thought this date was about finding what else they had in common.
Fortunately, he was a step ahead of her. He leaned back in the booth and smiled. “So tell me about college. Where’d you go, what was your major—”
“The personal résumé,” she said, nodding. “You looking for the whole schpiel, including ex-boyfriends?”
He shuddered. “God, no. I’m already jealous of the men who touched the virgin goddess, and I made them up. Just give me the path from high school to executive.”
She took a moment to answer. It wasn’t what he was asking that threw her. It was his offhand comment about jealousy. He was a multimillionaire, for God’s sake. And he was jealous of men—made-up men—who had touched her?
A shiver of delight skated down her spine. She knew it wasn’t PC of her, but she liked his flash of possessiveness. So she rewarded him with a warm smile and an “accidental” brush of her foot against his calf. His eyes shot wide, but she had already shifted away. Let him wonder if she’d done it on purpose or not.
“It’s really not that exciting,” she began. So she told the whole story in more detail than she’d given him before. Yes, she’d gotten her degree, but college had been a lot tougher than high school. College work was harder than high school. Getting a job out of college was even harder. And clawing her way into management had taken an MBA and some serious sweat. She wasn’t a natural genius like he was. She’d had to work damn hard to get where she was now, and she was proud of her accomplishments. “But I just can’t shake the feeling that I’m about to be found out,” she confessed between bites of cheeseburger.
“Found out? About what?”
“Any minute now, someone younger and smarter is going to point out just how many mistakes I’ve made along the way. I’ve missed things. I’m human. All it takes is one smarty-pants, and then I’ll be out on my ear.”
He frowned. “Smarty-pants?”
“Yeah, you know. Someone who understood high school physics without cracking a book. Someone who likes retooling engines in his spare time and who put together a brilliant idea and sold it for millions before he was twenty-seven.”
“You mean me,” he said dully.
“Yes, you.” Then she stole a French fry off his plate. “Well, no, not you specifically. I don’t think you’re planning on applying for my job anytime soon.”
“God, no—”
“But someone like you. Someone with better ideas, a better education, a better brain.” She bit down harder than she intended on his French fry. She hadn’t intended to expose quite so much of her psyche to him. This certainly wasn’t a first-date topic, but that was the beauty of time spent with Jim. They had so much history together even with the ten-year lag. She trusted him. And given that trust, way too much of her inner life spilled out from her mouth.
So she chomped on French fries rather than say more. And he sipped his soda, his prodigious mind obviously churning. She was almost afraid to ask what he was thinking. She didn’t want to hear him say something like, you’re right. You’re a moron and I don’t want anything more to do with you.
Fortunately, she was spared that humiliation with the arrival of their sundaes. Less fortunately, he wasn’t a man to let things slide. Once the ice cream had been appropriately served, sampled and “mmmmm”-ed over, he set down his spoon and took a deep breath.
“I think I’m seeing a pattern here.”
She arched a brow. “Don’t read too much into things here. I’m—”
“Just hear me out. You’re afraid that someone with better credentials is going to oust you from your job. That your boss is going to throw you over the minute someone with a better résumé comes along.”
Her shoulders tightened because, yes, he had just voiced her greatest fear. So rather than speak, she toyed with the chocolate as it dripped from her spoon.
“If I’d worked up the nerve to ask you out for prom, would you have accepted?”
She looked up from her ice cream to blink at him. “That was an abrupt change in topic.”
“Yes, it was, but answer the question. Would you have accepted?”
She looked away. “No, probably not,” she confessed.
“Right. Because I was a geek, he was head of the wrestling team. In high school terms, he had better credentials than I did.”
She winced. Wow, did that make her sound shallow or what? “I don’t think that way anymore, Jim. I think you’re great.”
“Only because you’re looking at different credentials now. I’m smart, a millionaire, and I went to MIT. Good credentials.”
She huffed and set down her spoon. “That’s not how I judge you. You’re also a great guy, you make me feel safe and…” And the sex had been great.
He grinned, obviously guessing where her thoughts were going. “Okay, so you’ve grown. I’ve grown. In high school, you were just the smart volleyball star that I worshiped from afar. I never really saw how determined you are, how strong you can be and yet how…”
“I still have a submissive sex kitten side. Yeah, I know.” Her face heated as she said it. She still wasn’t quite sure what to make of her own fantasies, but then again that was the beauty of fantasies. They weren’t you. They were pretend.
“My point is that you’re so much more than your credentials, Nicky. Your boss has got to see that, too. You don’t have anything to fear.”
She arched a brow. “You assume more intelligence in upper management than I do.”
He shook his head. “You see too little of yourself. Trust me. Everyone else sees more of you than your résumé and your mistakes.”
She looked back at her sundae, wanting to believe what he said. But the truth was so much smaller than what he suggested.
“The truth is,” she said slowly, “that you’re the only one who sees that. Who sees me.”
“Believe me, Nicky, everyone sees you on your cell phone. Everyone knows you work weekends and nights.”
“But you’re the one who asked about my fantasies. You’re the only one who knows my fears, too, about being passed over or thrown out because I’m not good enough.”
He leaned forward. “But you are good enough. You’re ten thousand times good enough. You’re the only one who doesn’t believe it.”
She looked him in the eyes, saw the absolute sincerity in there, and knew he believed what he said with total conviction. He saw more than her lackluster college degree and slightly above-average brain. He saw her work, her dedication, and her willingness to go the extra ten miles. And, of course, he’d seen the other side—the skanky side—and hadn’t been repulsed.
Which made him one in a million. More like one in a billion because when he said it, she believed it. She saw herself as competent and valuable, too. Her fears eased, her faith in herself grew.
“You’re a pretty special guy,” she said softly.
“I’m trying hard to live up to your standard,” he returned.
She smiled, her heart melting with his words. She so wanted to jump him right then. But she also was desperate just to spend more time talking with him, learning what he thought, what made him tick.
So she consciously reined in her libido and took a big bite of ice cream to cool her internal jets. It didn’t work, but it helped. And when she finished swallowing, she was able to look back at him.
“It’s your turn now. I want to know everything you’ve been doing since high school.”
“Well, there was college, then career, blah-blah. And then a couple nights ago, I reconnected with the hottest woman I’ve ever known. And get this…” He leaned forward. “She lets me act out fantasies with her.”
“Hmmm. Sounds kinky.”
“And weirdly liberating.”
She raised her eyebrows, inviting him to continue.
“I can pay the bill. We can go back to my place—”
She raised her hand, cutting off his words. “This is a first date, remember? I don’t go home with just anybody. So start talking, and no blah-blah this time.”
He tilted his head. “Isn’t that the first rule of dating—don’t talk about yourself?”
“Not tonight, it isn’t. Really, Jim, I want to know more about you. Where have you lived? What do you do for fun? Everything.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.” And she meant it. With every fiber of her being. “And then afterward, we can see about those kinky fantasies.” She leaned forward onto her arms. “How did you start hypnotizing people?”
He shrugged. “Shy kid. Too many comic books. If I could figure out how to hypnotize people, I could have whatever I wanted, including hot girls. Trust me when I say I’m not the only boy with that particular fantasy.”
“But you’re the only one I know who succeeded. Girl and all.” She propped her chin on her hand. “I never would have pegged you for a stage act.”
He laughed, the sound coming out a little tight and self-conscious. “I got good at magic when I was eight. Spent hours in my room practicing, but I never showed anyone except my brother, Rick. Even my parents were too much of a risk.”
She frowned. “Oh, come on. Your parents? No one is that shy.”
“I was. My dad thought it was all a stupid waste of time and said so often. My mom agreed with whatever my dad said.”
She winced. “That must have been really hard.”
He toyed with the whipped cream on his sundae. “It wasn’t all bad. I had a good home, good food, all the basics. Dad taught me about electricity which led to robotics and engineering. That got me into MIT on scholarship.”
“Which eventually led to your million-dollar idea. But truthfully, what about the hypnotism? The stage act? I can’t seem to make that fit the picture.”
His sundae had turned into a soupy mess, so he set his spoon aside. “That’s because you don’t realize how much a CEO has to speak in public, sell his ideas to investors and the like. Think about your job. How many times do you speak to a crowd?”
She did it every week. Not to groups of hundreds or anything, but there were always reports to the higher-ups, motivational words for her subordinates, the regular ebb and flow of communication in a corporate structure. E-mail was one thing, but she often had to pitch her ideas to her boss, then sell it again to her subordinates. “But that’s not the same thing as being onstage.”
“Very true. But I was really shy. Choke on my tongue, coffee on my lap, falling on my face shy. When the words mattered, I could always be counted on to be throwing up in the bathroom.”
She laughed at his joke, but she could also see he was dead serious. “I don’t remember you being that bad in high school.”
“That’s because I made sure to never say anything important to anyone. The most I did was ask questions. A lot of questions.”
She nodded. She absolutely remembered that. “You asked good questions. And you listened to the answer.” Jimmy had always been a good listener.
He nodded. “But once I had this company, I couldn’t spend meetings throwing up in the bathroom.”
“You could have hired a speaker, a professional marketer.”
He shook his head. “Not in the early days. I didn’t have the money. My mom suggested hypnotherapy.”
“You saw a hypnotist?”
He laughed. “Didn’t have the money.”
Oh my god. She got it. She knew exactly what he did. “You bought a book on hypnotism and tried to do it yourself.”
He nodded. “It’s what geeks do. They read. They study. They learn to do for themselves.”
“Did it work? Were you able to mesmerize yourself?”
He shook his head. “Not in the least. In the end it was Rick who gave me the answer.”
She waited, her own sundae forgotten. “Well?”
“He’d bought his club by then, but it was struggling. Amateur night was a good draw, but he didn’t have enough acts. So he begged me to fill in. Said if I could go onstage and make someone quack like a duck, then I could face down a boardroom no problem.”
“And that convinced you?”
“Hell, no. But he’s my brother. He really needed some help. Plus he offered to pay me half the night’s profit.”
She snorted. “Was there any that night?”
“No, but it didn’t matter. He’s my brother. I’d tried everything else, and frankly, I could hardly be worse than the rest of the acts.”
She could well believe that. “So you did it. You just went onstage and did it.”
“Well, it took a few vodkas to get me up there the first night, but yeah, I did it. And it worked. I survived. I even got better onstage.” He took a big spoonful of his ice cream soup. “I don’t know if you remember, but I’m not that great onstage. I don’t have the charisma or showmanship that’s needed for a great stage act.”
She frowned. She remembered thinking he looked cute in his tux, but she didn’t remember him being especially funny or entertaining. Not until he dropped into his sexy voice and her mind found the way to turn off. “I thought you did fine.”
“Fine for a bar act. And only when someone cancels on short notice and Rick is desperate.”
“But—” she began. He cut her off.
“It worked, Nicky. I got over my fears, and better yet, I happened to be subbing in when an old high school fantasy walked in.”
She shook her head. She didn’t know whether to admire his determination to face his fear or be envious that even crippling shyness faded away under the force of his will. Both, she supposed. He was really smart and really determined. Good things happened to people who had that combination.
“So,” she said, “you got over your fear.”
He nodded. “Which made a real difference when it came time to sell my company. And now I dabble.” He shrugged. “I play with stuff in my garage hoping for my next great idea. And as long as I’m confessing fears, let me tell you that I’m terrified I’ve already shot my wad, so to speak.”
She frowned. “Um…I don’t get it.”
“I’ve been brilliant. I’ve made my fortune. Maybe I’ve used up all my good ideas.”
She blinked. “You’re not serious, are you? I mean, think about what we did a few nights ago. Believe me—”
He flushed. “Those ideas aren’t hard to come by. But brilliant engineering concepts? I don’t know.”
“Maybe you just haven’t really tried. I mean, why would you? You’ve got everything you need.”
He shook his head. “It’s not about need. It’s about…I don’t know. Inspiration? Luck? Maybe I’ve used mine all up.”
“You haven’t. I’m sure of it.”
He looked at her. Then a moment later, he huffed and looked down. “Sorry. I can’t think engineering when you’re across from me. I keep thinking about your legs. And that black seam.”
She laughed, really laughed. The sound was light, and she realized her chest didn’t feel so tight. She wasn’t hypnotized and yet she could breathe. “Well, perhaps you’re just getting a different type of inspiration.”
“How soon can we go home?”
She leaned back, liking their byplay. Despite his words, she didn’t feel pressure to just leap into the car and head to his sex lair. And when he mimicked her relaxed pose, she knew she’d read him right. “Soon,” she finally answered. “But not too soon.”
“Vague, imprecise words. Yeah, that’s just what we engineers love not.” But then he gestured to the waitress and ordered them both coffee and another sundae to share. Hot fudge this time.