She stood there quietly, watching various emotions dance in his blue eyes like colors in a kaleidoscope. Pain turned to irritation. Anger to bitterness. And finally a deep shade of determination.
“I’m a kid, huh?” He chuckled softly. “We’ll see about that.” Before she could reply to that cryptic remark, he spoke again. “Do you have access to the Internet on that thing?” He gestured to the computer sitting on the desk next to the kitchen doorway.
She nodded wordlessly.
“Good. Go boot up the computer while I make a call, will you, Viv?”
“So what exactly am I looking at?”
Josh watched as Vivian studied the photograph filling the computer screen. He’d asked his secretary to scan and email all the photos in the album he kept in his desk and, efficient as always, she’d sent the images in less than ten minutes. It had taken a few minutes to download everything, but now, as he stood behind Viv’s chair and saw her wrinkle her nose, his confidence surged.
A child? He still couldn’t believe she called him that, especially seeing as he’d stopped being a child at the age of fifteen. Immature was the most unsuitable adjective Viv could’ve picked to describe him. And he couldn’t wait to show her just how wrong she was.
But first things first.
“I’ll explain about the pictures in a minute,” he replied. “First we make a deal.”
She twisted in the chair to face him, green eyes wary. Why did she always have that expression on her face when she looked at him? As if it unsettled her just being near him.
“What kind of deal?” Suspicion lined her tone.
“I want to take you out on a date.” He held up his hand before she could object. “After you hear me out, if you still think I’m a kid, fine, I won’t push you anymore. I won’t touch you or kiss you or so much as sneeze around you. But—” he smiled slightly “—if after seeing the pictures you change your mind about me being—what was it?—right, an impulsive, immature child, I reserve the right to take you out. Do we have a deal?”
He lifted his shoulders awaiting her answer. She didn’t seem thrilled at the prospect of the two of them going out, but she didn’t look repulsed, either.
After biting her bottom lip again, she finally sighed. “Fine. It’s a deal.”
“Good.” He leaned forward and put his hand on the computer mouse, catching a whiff of Vivian’s perfume as he bent. She didn’t wear those fruity, flowery scents most females his age liked to douse themselves with. Viv’s scent was more subtle, lemony, intoxicating, the kind of perfume a mature woman wore.
He inhaled deeply, branded the sexy smell into memory, and clicked on the first image. A pig-tailed nine-year-old Ellie beamed out at them, clad in a pink tutu and white ballet slippers. “This was Ellie’s first major recital,” he explained. “It fell on the same weekend my entire junior class went to Los Angeles for the year-end trip. I didn’t go.”
He moved to the next photo before Vivian could comment. “This is my high school graduation.” He cringed at the out-of-focus shot of him accepting a diploma. “Don’t mind the blurriness, Ellie’s camera-challenged, but see all those students standing there with me?”
Vivian nodded. “Yeah.”
“To this day I don’t know any of their names. I graduated with them a year early instead of with my friends. I was sixteen.”
“Josh, what’s the point of all this?”
He moved the mouse. “Okay, me graduating from college, blurry again thanks to my sister. I was twenty.” He paused. “You know I never went to a single party in college?”
“Why not?” she murmured, her face fixed on the monitor.
“I spent days attending classes and nights helping Ellie with her homework. Weekends I’d drive her to ballet.” He chuckled. “I don’t think my aunt even knew Ellie and I were living in her house. She was out day and night, doing God knows what. She was living off my uncle’s life insurance, so she didn’t have a job or any discernible responsibilities to take care of. She certainly didn’t take care of us.”
He absently skipped a few of the images, mostly Ellie at recitals, and clicked on one of himself and a pretty redhead. “Me and Cynthia, my first serious girlfriend. This was taken at a bed and breakfast we went to for one night while Ellie stayed at a friend’s.”
“You look exhausted.” Vivian touched his face in the photograph and ran her index finger over the dark circles under his eyes.
“I was. I’d stayed up the night before cramming for the LSATs, then spent the morning taking Ellie to the dentist, ballet practice and then to her friend’s house.” He offered a wry grin that Vivian didn’t see with her back turned to him. “Can you believe I fell asleep right in the middle of sex? Needless to say, Cynthia dumped me the next day.”