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What red-blooded American male would react that way to a woman playing footsie under the table? With all the cat-and-mouse games I was dealing with at work, I didn’t have the mental or emotional energy to play games in my social life. “Is something wrong?” I asked.
With the impeccable timing that had to be bred into waiters (the same timing that enabled them to always show up and ask how everything was the moment you put a bite of food in your mouth), the waiter arrived then with our lunches. “See, I told you they were quick,” Ethan said, entirely ignoring my question as he began eating.
There was definitely something wrong, then, and he wanted to avoid dealing with it until after he’d eaten. If he’d been so eager to see me after not having a real date over the weekend that he couldn’t wait until the next weekend, the conversation would have gone totally differently. He’d shown no signs of bashfulness or hesitation when it came to asking me out, so I couldn’t imagine that his behavior came from nervousness about inviting me to go to his place for an evening (and maybe morning) in that weekend. His jumpiness was more appropriate for someone gearing up to propose, and we were nowhere near that point in our relationship.
I remembered something Gemma had once said about how men always seem to break up with you in restaurants. I’d argued that maybe it was a classy maneuver, better than doing it over the phone. Marcia thought it was because they wanted to avoid a big scene with crying and hurling of breakables. In a public place, a woman would feel compelled to react quietly and swallow her tears. She might fall apart later, but he wouldn’t have to watch it.
“This is good,” I commented after taking a bite of chicken. I was glad it had come with mashed potatoes. I suspected I’d need the starchy comfort food.
“Yeah, that’s why I like this place. Good, simple food that nearly everyone seems to enjoy.”
Wow, was this conversation scintillating, or what? I tried to decide what the breakup risk was on a midweek lunch date. I’d hate to think he’d be cruel enough to do anything at lunch that would make it difficult for me to go back to work. The midweek part, though, seemed like he wanted to clear the way in time for him to have moved on before the weekend.
My appetite totally gone, I shoved my plate away and asked again, “Is there something wrong?”
He looked across the table at me, but didn’t quite meet my eyes. “Wrong?” he asked.
Yeah, there was definitely something going on, and I didn’t need magical immunity to see through his illusion. “You’re acting weird,” I said.
“Weird how?”
“Well, you’re not talking to me. You’re not even looking at me. And you’ve sidestepped every effort I’ve made to flirt with you. You have to admit that’s a very weird way to act when you invite someone to lunch. I could see it if I roped you into it or invited myself along, but you called me. Is there something wrong at work that’s distracting you? Because if there is, you should know I wouldn’t have minded if you’d canceled or postponed our lunch.” I made one last attempt at flirting. “That is, as long as you made it up to me later.”
That attempt, like all the others, sailed right over his head. “No, nothing wrong at work,” he said, sounding vague and distant.
“Then do you have a problem at MSI that you want my help with?” I felt like I was grasping at straws, eliminating all the best-case scenarios until only the one reason I hoped to avoid was left.
“No, no problems there. In fact, I’m having fun with work, and it’s generally easy to get on people’s calendars.”
I leaned back in the booth and crossed my arms over my chest. “Okay, then, what is it? I have to be back at work in about twenty minutes, so I don’t have time for guessing games.” I was surprised by how firm and assertive my voice sounded.
He finished clearing his plate, then shoved it aside. “I wanted to talk to you about something,” he said.
“Yes?”
“You sometimes seem a little unnerved about the magic stuff.”
“Do I? I don’t think so, not at work. I’ll admit that I don’t really like it affecting my personal life, especially where my friends and my parents are concerned. It’s not like I’m an anti-magic bigot.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s not what I meant. But yeah, I have noticed that you don’t seem to like it in your personal life that much.”
“If you’d seen the way it’s affected my personal life, you’d understand. Wait until you have someone under the influence of a spell show up while you’re on a date with someone else and sing arias to you—off-key.”
He laughed. “Really? That must have been hysterical.”
“In retrospect, maybe, but at the time it wasn’t funny at all. My date didn’t think so, either. I never heard from him again.”
“Then you didn’t belong together.”
I frowned at him. “What would you think if that happened to someone you were out with?”
“I’d probably figure that it had something to do with a spell.”
“But you know about magic. That poor guy didn’t.”
“The thing is, though, you and I both know about it. We don’t have to keep the secret from each other, so it should be fun.”
What little food I’d managed to eat threatened to come back up. I had a feeling I knew exactly what he was going to say next.
