“You saved their wedding.”
“Let’s say it was a team effort.” McKenna shook her head. “I can’t believe I pulled it off.”
“Are you fishing for another compliment?” he teased.
“Certainly not,” she said, her voice filled with sarcastic outrage.
In the church, when she’d focused on him in front of her at the balcony, he swore she saw into his soul. But then she possessed an uncanny knack for seeing through him to the truth. But this was different. She saw him. Not his face. Not his body. She saw the man inside, and the fact sent fear coursing through him. No woman had ever done that.
Then she started singing. The pure, captivating sound reached inside him, and he glimpsedhersoul. That might have scared him more. Her honesty, courage, determination, and integrity encouraged him to want more. Be more. To be worthy of her.
He took a long drink, the cool champagne failing to dampen the desire pounding through his veins.
McKenna toyed with the stem of her glass. “Today reminded me how much I enjoyed singing. I may join the church choir, and who knows, I may be brave enough to sing karaoke at the Horseshoe.”
“It’s a date,” Zane tossed out and then realized what he’d said. “Not a date, as indate. There’s your rule, but I might show up to see you.”
Shut up. You’re making it worse. How can a man with so much experience with women sound like a blubbering idiot?
He refilled their glasses and took another big drink, hoping to cover his embarrassment. Damn. He hoped he wasn’t blushing, because his face and ears sure felt warm.
“I know what you meant. We could both go to karaoke night, but not gotogether. But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t sing together.”
Now that would be playing with fire.
Though he didn’t expect her to answer, he pounced on the opportunity to ask a question that had been driving him nuts. “Speaking of dating, what’s the deal with your rule?”
“I’ll answer your question if I can ask you one.” After he nodded, she said, “My parents met one summer when my mother worked in the purchasing department of my grandfather’s computer components company. Before the fall arrived, my dad was laid off and my mother was pregnant with me.”
“That’s rough. A baby on the way with no job. But how do you get from there to your rule?”
McKenna emptied her glass and held it out for him to refill. “You need to know how they met to understand. My father’s like you, so handsome every woman noticed when he arrived. Whenever they went to a party, women were all over him, and he thrived on the attention. My mother would spend the night sitting alone in a corner. She said if she were prettier, or if my grandparents hadn’t disowned her, she could’ve held Dad’s attention. They divorced when I was in college.”
He stared at her dumbfounded. How could the most confident, assertive woman he knew think she’d allow people to treat her the way her mother had? “I can’t see you hiding anywhere, and no one would run roughshod over you. I know that firsthand.”
Her eyes widened in surprise and she giggled. “You do, don’t you?”
“That’s rhetorical, right?” She laughed again, and he continued. “Then there was how you stood up to Hurricane Campbell. If anything, the world needs to worry about you browbeating it.”
“But those situations had to do with my career. I’m different in personal relationships, and I’ve discovered looks matter.”
Come clean about the bet. You’ve cleared the air about other mistakes. Take care of that one, too.
“Looks aren’t the only thing that makes for good chemistry. Confidence and intelligence play a part.” Those could make a woman damn sexy. Made McKenna damn sexy, and with her, there was her voice. He lacked the words to describe what it did to him.
“I thought that once. There was an attractive guy in my English lit class at Texas. I was shocked when he asked me out. Our first date was to an out of the way restaurant. We also went to a couple movies and for drinks afterward. Again, on the opposite side of town from campus.”
What had this guy done to her? Zane had suspicions. None of them good. “That’s not unusual with Sixth Street and other hot spots in Austin,” he said referring to the city’s iconic music-bar area.
She stared into her champagne glass. “We didn’t go there. We went to a bar where the average age was forty. After that, I suspected something was up, but when he asked for help with his paper, I said yes.”
Damn. He’d figured that was where she was headed. Either that or the guy had slept with her and dropped outta sight. “He didn’t really want help?”
“He wanted me to write it for him.”
“What did you do when you found out? Did you write it?”
She straightened, smirked, tilted her head to the right, and stared at him. “Is that rhetorical?”
