“Oh.” I tried not to look disconcerted.
He chuckled. “I’m kidding. We’re having manicotti, green salad, and focaccia bread.”
“That sounds much more appetizing.” I followed him into the kitchen as he took a pan of bubbling pasta and cheese out of the oven. “Did you make it?”
“No, sorry. Ordered it from a restaurant downtown. I can’t seduce you with my cooking.”
“You don’t need cooking to seduce me,” I said without thinking.
Wow. Where did that come from?
Dean flashed me his gorgeous, hint-of-wicked grin. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
After he showed me where the utensils were, I set the table in the dining room while he finished getting the food together. I moved an open shoebox from the table to the windowsill, noticing that it was half full of various types and lengths of string.
I picked one up. It was a worn piece of white string, the frayed ends tied together in a knot. Why would anyone have a shoebox filled with loops of string?
Dean came in with the plates and put them on the table.
“What’s this for?” I asked, holding up the string.
“String figures.”
“What?”
He took the string from me and looped the ends around his middle fingers, then did some quick maneuvers with his other fingers, tucking them under the loops and pulling the string taut. He extended his hands to reveal a pattern of three triangles between two parallel lines.
“It’s like the game cat’s cradle,” he explained. “You make figures and patterns with a loop of string.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s…” …about the dorkiest thing I have ever heard.
It also made me like him even more.
“… interesting,” I finished. “Where did you learn to do that?”
He shrugged. “Practiced a lot when I was a kid.”
“Kind of a different hobby,” I remarked.
“Yeah.” He unhooked the string from his fingers. “Spent a lot of time in my room. String figures and the knights of the Round Table.”
“You were into medieval history even as a kid?”
He nodded. “The King Arthur tales anyway. Excalibur, Mordred, the Holy Grail, all that stuff. Guess that planted the seed.”
I had the sudden sense he’d just revealed more about himself in those few lines than anything else he’d told me so far.
“Did you have a favorite knight?” I asked.
He gave me a wry smile. “Galahad, of course. Proclaimed the greatest knight ever.” He tossed the string back into the box. “I’ll show you how to do string figures one day.”
“Can’t wait.”
He chuckled at my less-than-enthused tone, then went to retrieve the food before we sat down. My nervousness eased a little now that I had a bit of insight into his childhood. Still a polar opposite to mine, though. At least he’d had a room to call his own.
Over dinner our conversation flowed comfortably—I told him about the classes I was taking, he talked about his research, we discussed the different things to do in Madison and Chicago.
We went back to the sofa for coffee and chocolate cake. As Dean put a cup on the table in front of me, he reached out to push a stray lock of hair behind my ear. His fingers brushed my cheek, and a tingle skimmed through me.
My reaction to him was both exciting and unnerving. String figures aside, he was experienced in ways that were foreign to me, his confidence born of an assurance I couldn’t imagine and didn’t know if I could handle.
And still, I wanted to try.
“So.” I pleated the folds of my skirt. “You don’t have a girlfriend?”
“Yeah, I have a girlfriend,” Dean said. “She’s just out of town right now.”
He grinned when he caught the look on my face. “Liv, of course I don’t have a girlfriend. And I’m very glad I don’t because otherwise I wouldn’t be here with you.”
“Oh.” A blush warmed my cheeks. “That’s nice. Thanks.”
He still looked amused. “You’re welcome.”
I gathered my courage and pressed forward. Better to know now what I was getting into. “But I’m sure you’ve had a lot of girlfriends, right?”
“I’ve had girlfriends, sure.”
I certainly didn’t expect a different answer, but my heart still shrank a little at his admission. “Any serious ones?”
“Depends on what you mean by serious.” He sat across from me. A shuttered darkness concealed his eyes. “There was a woman in grad school. Helen. She was a close friend of my sister’s. Still is. She also became close to my mother. They stay in touch.”
“Was that how you met her?” I asked. “Because she was a friend of your sister’s?”
“I’d known Helen for a couple of years through my sister. Then we both ended up at Harvard for grad school. She studied art history.”
“How long were you together?”
“About three years.”
“Why did you break up?”
“Different goals.” A tense undercurrent threaded his voice. “Among other things.”