Ian’s pulse kicked up a notch as he rode the elevator to his apartment. Since Kate had emailed him earlier that day, he’d pulled his phone out several times to reread their exchange, a smile tugging at his mouth every time he did.
He’d come up with step two in his plot to woo her into his bed. He’d invite her to stay for dinner with him and Jacob, and at some point during the evening he’d casually mention that it might be fun to do something while Jacob was away that weekend with his grandparents.
He wasn’t used to putting this much work into the planning stages of a seduction. For most of his adult life he’d relied on “Can I buy you a drink?” and “How about we get out of here?” to achieve a pretty impressive closing percentage.
Of course, living with Jacob had put a crimp in his social life. He had to either plan ahead for a babysitter—something he didn’t like to do too often, since he spent so much time away from Jacob because of work—or limit his dates to the one weekend a month Jacob went to Philadelphia to see his grandparents.
The truth was, he hadn’t really minded the change. He tended to avoid serious relationships, and casual dating had begun to pall even before Jacob had moved in with him. In the past year he’d been out only a handful of times.
But his attraction to Kate felt different. He was never sure what she would do or say next, and her determination to resist him brought out some primitive male instinct to conquer that felt like a shot of whiskey in his veins.
It had been a long time since he’d felt this alive around a woman.
Part of that feeling came from the times he’d gone to her rescue. Even though Spike wasn’t real, Ian had found himself at home in his skin. There was something cathartic about being able to say exactly what he felt, not to mention showing his tattoos to the world.
He’d been an executive for almost ten years, but the truth was, wearing a $2,000 suit to a board meeting could feel more like playing a part than taking Kate home on a Harley did.
And it didn’t feel nearly as good.
Bridezilla had had it all wrong when she’d told Kate that a man felt better standing next to a petite woman. Standing next to Kate—especially when there was that spark of challenge in her eyes—made him feel more vital and powerful and masculine than he ever had in his life.
As he turned the key in his lock, his anticipation rose, and he felt a surge of electricity the moment he saw Kate in the living room. She was curled up on the couch with a book, and when she met his eyes and smiled slowly, he felt it in his groin.
“Well, hello there,” she purred, and for one heady moment he thought he might not need a seduction plan after all.
Then he saw the coffee table.
So much for feeling powerful and masculine. In a flash he was reduced to the gawky thirteen-year-old he’d once been, playing Dungeons & Dragons for hours with like-minded eighth-graders.
Doing his best to ignore Kate’s grin, he dropped his briefcase on the floor and went to look over the display. Then he sat down in an armchair across from her.
“I might have known you’d find this stuff. Did you use some kind of geek radar?”
“It just goes to show you should never make assumptions about someone,” Kate said. “In a million years I would never have guessed you had this in your past. And in case you were wondering, I didn’t snoop. It was on a shelf right out in the open.”
He shook his head. “I should have destroyed the evidence years ago.”
Kate was still smiling at him, and he found himself smiling back. The sun had set, but Kate had turned on only a few lamps. She looked beautiful in the soft light, her skin impossibly smooth, her hair as bright and shiny as a copper penny. Her elbow was resting on the arm of the couch, and her cheek was pillowed on her hand, her head cocked to the side. She looked comfortable, her feet tucked under her in her favorite sitting position.
He liked seeing her look like that—like she belonged in his apartment.
He glanced down at the miniatures she’d arranged on the coffee table. So what if Kate knew he’d once played Dungeons & Dragons? Considering how proud she was of her own geekdom, this could actually work in his favor.
“I want to hear about your days as Galahad,” she said. “And you were a Dungeon Master, too, weren’t you?”
He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “I thought you wanted to hear about my tattoos.”
“I want to hear about that, too. Basically, I want the story of your life.”
“Really.”
“Yep.”
He nodded thoughtfully, letting a beat go by while he pulled off his suit jacket and loosened his tie. “I tell you what. If you stay and have pizza with Jacob and me, I’ll give you the story of my life afterwards. Some of it, anyway.”