An Irresistible Bachelor(42)

She waved. "Same here."

When the lights dimmed, she looked up in surprise. Jack came over, lit the candles on the table, and offered her some wine. She decided to hold off on the alcohol until his friend arrived. Suddenly, the intimate atmosphere seemed a little overwhelming and she wanted to keep sharp.

This was not about her and Jack, she reminded herself as they sat down. He had a fiancée and she was waiting to be introduced to his friend. This was absolutely not about the two of them.

"You're really going to like Gray," Jack said. What followed was a long list of the man's attributes, including some anecdotes about Jack's college days that had her listening more for clues about Jack than anything about his friend.

"And I told him all about you."

"What did you say?"

"That you are smart and—” He cleared his throat. "And that you're beautiful."

She slowly lifted her eyes to his face. He was staring at the deep red wine in his glass, swirling it around so it caught the light.

"So, how are you and Nathaniel getting along?" he asked brusquely.

"Fine." She was more than happy to talk about work. "It's taken me a while to finish the overview, but it's important to be precise during the documentation part of the project. I took pictures of him today and I'll start working on the canvas tomorrow."


There was a brief silence and then she asked, "What was your day like?"

Jack smiled and started to remove his cuff links. She heard one hit the table with a solid sound.

"Not all that good." He took off the other one and started rolling up his sleeves. The backs of his arms were covered with fine, dark hair and she had to look away. "The blood brothers are still driving me nuts, I think interest rates are going to go up, and my assistant gave notice because she's going to start business school in January. On the other hand, one of my main competitors got indicted for fraud. How's that for a day? The best thing that happened was I got to picture someone I dislike in horizontal stripes. Oh, but my brother's coming for a visit soon."

She fiddled with the silverware in front of her, turning the knife over and over. "Really? Tell me more about him."

"We're twins." He laughed as she glanced up. "I didn't mean that. Well, we look nothing alike if that makes any sense. He's a hell of a cook, as I mentioned. Thomas taught him the basics and then, after he graduated from Harvard, he went to CIA."

"He was a spy, too?"

"Culinary Institute of America."

"Ah." She smiled. "You two must be close. Or at least I've heard that about twins."



"We are, even though we don't have a lot in common." Jack's voice took on a hard edge. "Although our father didn't like either one of us, so that's something."

Callie frowned, trying to imagine how a parent couldn't be proud of everything Jack had accomplished. Ten billion dollars was a lot of money for one man to be able to throw around. "But why?"

He shrugged. "I was too aggressive, Nate was too laid-back. In retrospect, I think my father got along better with women his whole life. He probably would have been easier on daughters."

The phone rang and Jack reached over to the wall. When he hung up, he looked out of joint.

"Gray's not coming. He said to tell you he was sorry and that he's looking forward to meeting you."

"Oh."

Jack frowned for moment, but then went over to the stove, where he put some pasta into two bowls and ladled on the sauce. After he'd served her and sat down with his own food, she thought it all looked too good to be true. The candlelight. The steaming bowls of pasta.

Him.

"Wine?" he asked.

Yes, she could certainly use a drink right about now. "Please. But white, if you don't mind. My head doesn't like red."

Jack went over to a wine refrigerator and pulled out a bottle. As he opened it at the table, her eyes lingered on his hands, tracing the thick veins that ran down his arms and into his fingers. She thought of what he'd looked like after returning from his run. All sweat and muscle.

"Is it hot in here?" she asked abruptly.

"You want me to open the window?"

She shook her head as he poured. When he was seated, he raised his glass in a toast.

"To Nathaniel."

"To Nathaniel." Their glasses met. And then their eyes did.