“Tell me more about the Loma Prieta quake on the way there.” His voice had turned raspy, and he cleared his throat before continuing. “If that’s okay. I lived through it, and I should understand how and why it happened.”
“Really?” She raised a skeptical brow. “Because you don’t need to humor me. I’m not offended if you don’t want to hear more about geology right now.”
“Really.” Casting aside his public persona, at least for the moment, he dug deep and let the right words—the true words—emerge. “I, uh—I’m interested in lots of things, actually. I listen to nonfiction audiobooks all the time, especially when I travel.”
Stupidly, his cheeks had gone hot.
He had never, never known what to say. Who to be. How to act.
How not to disappoint.
But he had to give hersomething, something real and true, since appearances alone didn’t interest her. Even their undeniable sexual chemistry wouldn’t be enough to keep her, not if she didn’t see anything inhimworth keeping. And maybe their years of online friendship weren’t enough to entrust her with a career-destroying secret, but they were enough to entrust her with this little hidden corner of his heart.
So he forced himself to continue. “One of my favorite thingsabout what I do”—his tongue was so damnablythickall of a sudden—“about—about acting, is how it pushes you to learn new skills. Like, this one terrible pilot taught me the basics of sailing.”
In his peripheral vision, he could see her face turned toward him. Her absolute attention focused on him and him alone.
“The series was supposed to be calledCrime Wave. Because I was a crime-solving dude on a boat? It wasn’t the world’s best concept.” No network had wanted to touch that pilot. It had rightfully sunk beneath the surface of television history without a trace—except when it came to his sailing skills. “A complete flop of a rom-com helped me learn how to handle a chef’s knife and chop like someone who knew his way around a professional kitchen.”
“I saw that!” she exclaimed. “Julienned by Love, right? And your love interest was actually named—”
“Yes. Julienne. Julie. My plucky sous chef, who thought she was dying but wasn’t, and who eventually became famous for her jambalaya-cheesecake fusion dish.” He winced. “I apologize. I’m more than happy to refund your money personally.”
Her laugh echoed in the expansive space. “Oh, I didn’t pay for it. I streamed it during a free trial, just out of morbid curiosity.”
That sounded about right.
“ForGates, I studied ancient shipbuilding and military tactics. Swordplay too, like you said the other night.” He fixed his eyes on the signage ahead, awkwardly scratching the nonexistent stubble on his jaw with his free hand. “If you, um, ever wanted to hear about that. Maybe it could help with some of your fanfiction?”
When he fell silent, she slowed until he turned back toward her.
Then she eyed him up and down in frank assessment and appreciation, her teeth sinking into her lower lip, andJesus. Flickinghis hair and flexing hadn’t bought him that kind of interest, that heat in her gaze. Not once.
“I do want to hear about your swordplay. Trust me.” Her fingers tightened on his. “In the meantime, though, if you want to know more about the Loma Prieta earthquake, ask and ye shall receive.”
So she told him as they walked, and she was so fuckingsmart, and made things so damnclearandinteresting, without an ounce of condescension.
Shit, it was sexy. Which wasn’t actually what he’d wanted from a discussion about a deadly earthquake, but there it was. Therehewas, tugging down the hem of his henley to ensure it disguised his reaction to her.
“So it was an oblique-slip rupture,” she explained, reclaiming her hand so she could gesture gracefully with her arms in illustration, and he both grasped—at long last—what that actually meantandwanted to grasp one of those blunt fingers and slip it into his mouth. Sink his teeth into the pad of her thumb and watch those alert brown eyes turn hazy.
When her tongue wrapped around a technical term, he wanted that tongue wrapped around him too. Anywhere. Everywhere.
His desire to have his mouth on her, hers on him, wasn’t oblique. It was direct. And yes, he was certain that didn’t make a lick of sense in seismological terms, but he didn’t care, because he wanted to lickher.
In the end, the planetarium was packed for their particular showing, so he behaved himself, despite the way she rested her hand proprietarily on his thigh. Hisupperthigh.
In person, everything he’d come to adore about Ulsie online seemed impossibly more intense. Her plainspoken pragmatism and calm, her kindness, her intelligence, her easy humor, her self-confidence—they all radiated from each gesture, each word, and the glow was as blinding as the lights in the planetarium when they came back up after the show.
The only time she seemed hesitant, unsure of herself, was after lunch, when they exited the museum and lingered outside the entrance in the spring breeze.
“Was this... okay?” A strand of her coppery hair had worked free of her ponytail, and it fluttered against her cheek. “I know it wasn’t exactly a water park, but...”
Carefully, he took hold of that silky lock, moving it away from her face.
“I told my parents I hated museums,” he told her. “I refused to go, after a while.”
Her head bowed. “I’m sorry. I should have—”
