She laughed, looking back toward the party, watching the dancers and listening to the music. He drank in the sight of her for a long moment, trying to remember every last detail, an inoculation against her absence.
“Let’s dance.” Georgia stood and held out her hand.
He shook his head. “I don’t dance. Two left feet.”
She shot him a pretty little red-lipped pout. “It’s my birthday and I want to dance. That means you can’t say no.” With a grin, she grabbed his hand and pulled him up, tugging him toward the dance floor. He protested but she insisted. She could be very persuasive.
•••
Georgia was havinga ball. It had been years since she’d felt this free. Cole turned out to be a surprisingly good dancer. He seemed to have a strong sense of timing and moved with a contained sort of grace that made it easy to follow him. He made itlook sexy and effortless at the same time. Georgia, however, kept bumping into him, getting distracted by his nearness and forgetting to follow his lead. Was it his pheromones that were making her clumsy or the wine? She couldn’t tell. The band was doing a slow dance number, and Cole pulled her close, surprising her, his arm encircling her waist snugly. She hesitated, then gave herself to the music and the moment, wrapping her arms around his neck and leaning in. He smelled the same, that soap and salt and coffee scent. They were dancing very close together, their faces inches apart.
“I still have at least a dozen questions left to ask in our twenty questions game,” she said coyly, “and since it’s my birthday, you have to answer truthfully.”
Cole gave her an amused half smile. “Is that how this works?”
“Absolutely.” She threw him a flirtatious little smile. “Here’s the first one. Why were you so hostile to me when we first met?”
He hesitated. She saw the indecision in his face. “You have to tell the truth,” she reminded him.
“You want to know the truth?” he said, swaying slowly with the music. He looked resigned. “I was afraid you’d recognize me.”
“Really?” She pulled a face. “Come on. I don’t really keep up with hot nerdy genius award-winning science types. Not really my scene.”
“Not because of that,” he replied. “Because you were right when you said I looked familiar. We’ve met before.” He looked her in the eye frankly.
“What?” Georgia pulled back a little and stared at him. “When?” Her mind was racing, trying to figure out when their paths would have crossed. “I knew it! I knew you looked familiar! But you told me we’d never met.”
He had the grace to look embarrassed. “I lied,” he admitted,spinning them in a slow circle. “We met in Paris about seven years ago. I was being honored by the academic community for some research I’d done when I was studying in France for my PhD. There was a cocktail reception before the awards ceremony, and they’d hired some fancy chefs to make hors d’oeuvres.”
Understanding bloomed in Georgia’s face. “I remember that event,” she exclaimed. She gave him a startled look. “You were there for that? That was a terrible night.”
He nodded. The music and other dancers swirled around them languidly as they kept pace with the rhythm. “It was the first award I’d ever received, and I was sweating through my rented tux,” Cole told her. “And then I saw you. You were making some sort of savory crepe things with a Texas twist.”
“Pork belly barbecue crepes,” Georgia corrected him, grimacing at the memory.
“I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”
“That’s sweet of you to say,” Georgia replied, “but that evening was a disaster. I got fired halfway through the evening because some pompous idiot insulted me and I... responded strongly.” She looked incensed by the memory.
“I know.” Cole winced. “That was me.”
“No.” Georgia’s eyes widened in disbelief. She stepped back, dropping her arms from his neck. “You’re kidding! That was YOU? No wonder I thought you looked familiar. How could you?” Her surprise was starting to melt into outrage.
Cole stopped dancing too and looked mortified. “I didn’t mean to insult you, Georgia. I’d had three glasses of champagne, for liquid courage, which was a stupid idea. This was before I knew Amy. I was awkward around women. I had a bad haircut and a rented tux. I’d been practicing my French all evening justso I could approach you. I just wanted to ask if you’d have a drink with me after the awards ceremony.”
“You propositioned me and called me a crude term for a whore,” Georgia protested, putting her hands on her hips and glowering. “In very bad French.”
Cole looked embarrassed. “That’s not what I meant to say. Some of the tech guys I was with at the ceremony spoke French. They told me the right phrase to say to compliment you. But it turns out they were playing a practical joke on me, and it wasn’t a compliment at all. It was a horrible mistake.”
Georgia looked slightly mollified. “I thought you were just being an entitled jerk,” she confessed. “It happened all the time at those sorts of events—too much alcohol and men think they can get any woman into bed with them. I was so tired of it. You were the fifth geeky science guy who hit on me that night. Your crude and offensive proposition was just the last straw.”
“I guess that explains what happened next,” Cole mused. “I will never forget the look on your face when you took a big spoonful of barbecued pork, leaned over the table, and very carefully shoveled it into the breast pocket of my rented tuxedo.” Despite himself, Cole chuckled. “And then you looked up at me, all wide-eyed and innocent, and said in that cute Texas twang of yours, ‘Bon appétit!’ ”
Georgia groaned, covering her face with her hands. “I got fired immediately for that.”
Cole smiled. “I deserved it. Was it worth it?”
Georgia glanced at him through her fingers with a wicked grin. “Yeah,” she admitted. “It was totally worth it.”
