“Because . . .” she eyeballed Spence “. . . he doesn’t want to be happy?”
Finn snorted and moved on.
“He thinks he’s funny,” was all Spence would say on that. He studied her over their tray of food. “So what’s your three-week plan while you’re here besides writing?”
“Rest,” she said. “Eat. Be a tourist. I made a list of things I want to do.”
“Let’s see it.”
She hesitated, wishing she hadn’t said anything, because there were some really embarrassing things on that list . . .
“I won’t laugh,” he said.
She grimaced. “Yeah, I’d need that in writing first.”
He produced a pen from his pocket and grabbed her cocktail napkin. “I, Spencer Baldwin, hereby solemnly promise not to laugh at your to-do list,” he said as he wrote and signed the napkin. He pushed it toward her. “There. A binding contract.”
She opened her purse to locate the list and had to paw through a bunch of her various notes to do so.
“How do you ever find anything?” Spence asked, not with any censure at all but with actual genuine fascination.
She shrugged. “My purse gets sad when it’s all neat and organized.” She finally got a hand on her list. The first eight items were places she wanted to see in San Francisco. Number nine was learn how to drive, something she’d not been able to do in New York. Nothing all that embarrassing. But number ten. Number ten took the cake. She grabbed his pen to scratch it off before giving him the list, but he put his hand over hers.
“I promised not to laugh, remember? And I don’t break promises, Colbie.”
“Ever?”
There was a rather fierce light in his eyes. “Not anymore.”
That was interesting enough that she let him pull the list from her fingers. She knew the exact moment he got to number ten because he had to fight a smile when he lifted his gaze to hers.
“Ten’s my favorite,” he said and read it aloud—like she didn’t know what she’d written. “A wild, passionate, up-against-the-wall, forget-my-name love affair that makes me weak in the knees when I think about it—but only a very short wild, passionate, up-against-the-wall, forget-my-name love affair because . . .” he paused, probably to control himself, before continuing “. . . I don’t have the time or stamina to maintain that level of sexual activity, much less a relationship.”
She moaned and closed her eyes.
“Pretty detailed,” he said, running a hand over his deliciously scruffy jaw to hide the smile she knew he was fighting.
“I told you!” She snatched back the list. “Shit.”
“Thought you didn’t swear.”
“I don’t,” she said, “but that’s a body function, so it doesn’t really count as a swear word.” She sighed.
Not Spence. He out-and-out laughed, tipping his head back to do it, and it was such a nice sight that she had to crack up too. “You promised not to laugh,” she reminded him.
“I’m not laughing at your list, so it doesn’t count. My grandma used to swear by saying ‘Shiitake mushrooms!’ That was her favorite.”
When he spoke with good humor, or actually whenever he spoke in general, his voice sounded like sex personified and it had her wriggling in her seat, no longer embarrassed but something entirely new now.
She blamed the combo of that sexy stubble with the glasses.
“I like your list,” he said. “But you could do even better.”
She felt some of her bones liquefy. “I’m going to assume you’re talking about items one through eight.”
He just smiled.
Okay, so she was going to pretend he was talking about one through eight. “I got some of those things from Googling what’s a must-see in SF,” she said. “If you can’t trust Google, who can you trust?”
“Google isn’t always the best avenue of research.”
“No?” she asked, feeling a little defensive at that because number ten was still ringing in her head. And also because, well, her pride was injured. Research was her thing. Living in front of her computer had been how she’d built the crazy world that existed in Storm Fever, the series penned by her alter ego, CE Crown. “I suppose you’re going to tell me what is the best avenue of research,” she said.
“You gotta stretch yourself. You could question the people who actually live here, experiencing the city through them.”
“But I don’t know people who live here,” she pointed out.
“Don’t you?” He dunked a piece of fried zucchini into ranch sauce until it was more ranch than zucchini and then popped it into his mouth. When he’d chewed and swallowed, he flashed her a smile. “You know me, right? And I’m an open book.”
That made her laugh. Spence Baldwin was good-looking, smart, and funny, and he had good taste in friends and food, but he wasn’t an open book, not by any stretch of the imagination—and her imagination was good, very good. He had secrets in his eyes, secrets that haunted him.
And so do you . . .
“I can tell you all sorts of things about this city,” he said.
“Such as?”
“Such as it’s seven by seven miles perched on a peninsula of forty-three hills.”
“Wow,” she said. “You’re right. I didn’t know that.”
“I had a crush on Mrs. Stein, my fourth-grade teacher. I used to memorize all the geography facts to please her.”
She laughed.
“All better?” he asked.
She looked down and saw the mountain of bare chicken bones on her plate and had to laugh. “I was starving.”
Spence nudged the zucchini her way and she bit her lip, torn. On the one hand, she was full. On the other, the zucchini looked amazing. She blew out a sigh and ate one. “Oh. My. God.”
“Right?”
“Shh.” She took another while he laughed. And then another. When she finally leaned back, Spence was smiling at her.
“What?” she asked.
“Cute.”
She resisted squirming in her chair because she hadn’t straightened her hair or reapplied makeup, and she knew what she looked like.
Harried.
Tired.
Overworked.
Stressed.
And definitely not cute. “Thanks for feeding me. And for the ice and rice.” She slipped off the stool. “But I’ve gotta go.”
“Where to?”
To get her life together . . . “I still need to find a place to stay.”
“How about right here?”
Chapter 5
#SonOfANutcracker
Colbie had just taken a sip of water when Spence said those words.
“How about right here . . .”
As a result, her sip of water got sucked into the wrong pipe and she choked and very nearly snorted water out her nose. This would’ve been no surprise at all to anyone who knew her, but she was really trying to be mysterious here.
And sexy, a voice inside her head said. Admit it—you want him to think you’re mysterious and sexy.
He handed her a napkin.