“How old were you?”
“Seventeen. Prom night my junior year. He threw up on me later.”
He grimaced. “I promise I will never do that, sweetness.”
“So were you one of those computer geniuses who started their company in a dorm room?”
“Not exactly. In college I was all about seeing what I could hack into for my own amusement, regardless of how risky or stupid it was. But I knew before I graduated that the corporate track wouldn’t be a good fit, so I came up with a way to channel my superior hacking skills into a revenue stream. It took hard work and some extremely long hours, but I have a one hundred percent success rate in penetrating any system I attempt to hack into. If a company needs a white-hat security firm, my name is always at the top of the list.”
“And what name would that be?” she asked, leaning toward him with interest.
“Ian Merrick.”
“Your last name is Merrick?” Well, that was easy.
“No. But Ian Merrick is the name I use for my business. I got tired of trying to convince clients they didn’t need to know my full name. So I made one up.”
“Oh.” She looked down at her menu, flipping through the pages to hide the disappointment on her face.
He reached across the table for her hand. “It’s not that I’m not telling you my last name. I don’t tell anyone.”
“It’s okay,” she said. There was obviously a reason behind his reluctance to share his last name, but considering they’d been together for such a short time, it was no surprise he wasn’t quite ready to divulge it.
“Are you sure?” He gave her hand a squeeze.
She squeezed back and smiled. “Positive.” It wasn’t that she had doubts about Ian as a boyfriend, or even a person. Once they’d put their rocky start behind them, he’d been nothing but kind and generous. A true gentleman. But if one of her girlfriends had announced she’d met a great guy but he wouldn’t tell her his last name, Kate would have told her to run. She’d give Ian some more time, but if he didn’t eventually open up to her, she’d take her own advice. She only hoped it would happen before her heart got too involved.
Thankfully their waitress interrupted any further discussion when she appeared to take their order. They asked for bowls of wild rice soup to go along with their sandwiches.
“It’s definitely soup weather,” the waitress said. “It’s supposed to get down to ten below with the windchill tonight.”
“That is way too cold for my thin Texas blood,” Ian said when she walked away.
“You went to college in Massachusetts. Are you telling me you failed to acclimate to single-digit temps, ice, and snow?”
He shook his head. “There’s a reason I don’t live there anymore.”
“Tell me again how you ended up in Minneapolis. You said you were just passing through.”
“I’d spent the summer in Winnipeg and was making my way south when the Shelby broke down on I-94 right outside the Twin Cities.”
“Canada is awfully far north for an Amarillo boy,” Kate said.
“I have a friend from college who lives there now. He talked me into coming. Said the fishing was great.”
“You like to fish?”
“You sound so surprised.”
“It’s very outdoorsy.”
“I’m outdoorsy. Do you not remember our afternoon in the park?”
“I stand corrected. You are very outdoorsy.”