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“I’m Graham.” Hotness extended a hand.
“Tess.” She tucked the pen and pad into her purse and took his hand. It was damp but warm. “Nice to meet you.”
Now that they’d introduced themselves she definitely wanted to keep the conversation flowing but couldn’t come up with a topic. Maybe more baseball?
“Hey, there. I’m Angela,” a woman drawled from behind Tess.
Graham spun on his stool. “Oh, hi.”
The woman who’d earlier tucked her hair and put on lip gloss stood behind them with a gleam in her eye. Like a predator.
Graham pulled at his tie.
“Would you like to join me and my friends? We’re celebrating a promotion, and we’ve ordered stuffed mushrooms and smoked oysters.” Angela gave Graham a come-hither gaze that made Tess shift on her stool. Jeez, the woman was good.
Graham looked ambushed and his eyebrows lowered a fraction. Tess could almost hear the wheels creaking, turning, churning, trying to figure out how to respond to the overt invite.
“Well, I’ll take some of those stuffed mushrooms,” Tess joked.
Angela shot her “the look”—the one that said something needed to be stuffed, and it wasn’t the mushrooms.
Graham looked like a man who had swallowed a lemon. Okay, maybe not that uncomfortable or sour, but Tess could tell he didn’t want to go with Angela and couldn’t say so without being rude.
Aw… he was a sweet guy. Tess should help him.
“Actually Graham and I have been catching up,” Tess said.
A few seconds tripped by and finally her handsome stranger nodded. “Yeah, it’s crazy and such a coincidence, but Tess was my blind date to Sadie Hawkins back in high school.”
If Graham said they went to Sadie Hawkins together, they went to Sadie’s together. “Small world, huh? All because he asked Ron to turn to the Rangers’ game.”
Graham gave Angela a small regretful shrug and then gave his attention to Tess. “You know, stuffed mushrooms would be good before we go to dinner.”
Dinner?
Well, all righty then.
“Sure, that sounds good,” Tess said, with a sunny smile.
Angela stood there for a moment, looking unconvinced. Graham turned back to her. “Thanks for the offer, Angela, but I don’t want to crash your girls’ night out. Go celebrate, and I’ll send a round of drinks for you and your friends.”
Angela issued a fake smile. “That’s sweet of you.”
“The least I can do after that nice invite.”
“Send the waitress. She’s been on break for fifteen minutes and we’re empty,” Angela said to Ron before sashaying to her friends.
“Aww…you’re the nice guy my mom’s been begging me to find,” Tess cracked, admiring the way Graham’s dark hair brushed the collar of his white dress shirt. The tugging at his throat had loosened the striped power tie, and he’d unbuttoned the top button showing gorgeous tanned skin at his throat. His five o’clock shadow gave him a rakish air. “But you don’t have to feel obliged to take me to dinner. I’ll take half the mushrooms though.”
“You actually remind me of Ainsley Braddock, my Sadie’s date. And you’ve got a deal on the mushrooms. It’s the least I can do for saving me from whatever they had planned over there.”
For some reason, she wanted the mushroomsandthe dinner. Which was crazy. She didn’t know this man from Adam. Which she always thought a stupid saying because she didn’t know Adam. Okay, she had a cousin named Adam, but—
“I’m good for dinner, too. That is, if you’re free?”
Tess nodded, wondering if it was a mistake to look so eager. Her stomach growled and she decided dinner was dinner. And if it was with a handsome stranger, she’d have news to share with Gigi when she called her later. There was something appealing about being spontaneous, something exciting about having dinner with Graham of the power tie and wing tips. “A friend was supposed to meet me after work but couldn’t get off. I haven’t eaten yet so… that sounds fun.”
Graham lifted his glass and clinked it against the one she held in her hand. “Then it’s a date.”
