Mr. Big(8)

He was waiting for her when she got there with a bouquet of red roses in his hands. As she walked toward him, his face lit up and he smiled widely at her, giving her a hug and handing the roses to her.

“These are lovely,” she told him as she happily buried her nose in the blooms. “Thank you so much.”

He watched her with no shyness whatsoever. “They pale in the shadow of your beauty,” he said softly, gazing at her face and into her eyes. She blinked in surprise and thanked him again, and they were escorted to their table.

All throughout the evening he asked question after question, not discussing much about himself, but seeming to be fascinated with getting to know her. At the beginning of their dinner, it seemed as if everything was the fairly standard “getting to know you” part of a first date. It was a part of the date that she had gotten fairly good at, having been on so many first dates. By the end of the evening, she felt as if she was being interviewed for a position, and she wasn’t pleased about it.

They walked out of the restaurant and he looked satisfied with how their night had gone. She was slightly annoyed, but she had had a good time most of the evening, and he was handsome, well off, and a new client, so she smiled up at him as they walked out onto the street.

“Thank you. It was a fun evening,” she told him simply, her mind more on the taxi she would be hailing in moments than on the goodbye she was giving him.

He grinned. “It was fun! You’re quite a lady,” he told her, stepping closer to her.

With her mind on the taxi, she wasn’t paying quite enough attention to Logan, and she was a little startled when he wrapped his arms around her and swept her up into an embrace. She lifted her chin suddenly to look up at him and in that moment, he pressed his lips to hers, kissing her softly, moving his mouth over hers tenderly as he pressed her body to his. She was caught completely by surprise at first, and didn’t respond right away, but the longer he held her and kissed her, the more curious she became, and she kissed him back, though with a little less enthusiasm than he kissed her. At long last he let her go, his eyes slightly glazed over, his mouth parted, and his lungs breathless.

“Wow! You are something else, Mia.” He breathed heavily.

He moved his hands to her shoulders and she turned the corners of her mouth up slightly and stepped backward, subtly freeing herself from his grasp. He gave her a naughty grin and she turned and waved to hail a cab. One pulled up to the curb right away.

“Thank you Logan, you have a good night,” she told him with a wave of her hand and a parade queen smile. He stepped forward and reached for the cab door as she slid into the seat.

“Well, I’ll call you. We should do this again really soon,” he said, still breathless as he held tight to the cab door.

She nodded and reached for the door handle and he reluctantly let go of the door, pressing it closed between them, watching her as if there was nothing else in the world but her, sitting in the back of a big yellow car. She turned to the driver and gave him her address, and the cab sped off into the night.

***

The next morning she ignored three phone calls from Logan and smiled when a delivery person brought a huge bouquet of roses to her office in SoHo. The card attached to them was sweet. He thanked her for their night and hoped to see her again soon.

Mia put the roses on her desk and went back to work. She was intently working when her office phone rang two more times, and the caller ID showed it to be Logan. She ignored both calls as she focused on her work, and an hour later she discovered two emails in her inbox from him.

She sighed and frowned, wondering if going to dinner with him had perhaps not been the best idea. At four that afternoon when she locked her office door, she had still not responded to any of his attempts to contact her, save for one email back, thanking him for the evening and the flowers.

At six, she was seated in Carly’s waiting for her friends to arrive, and they showed up as she expected them to. Liam and Maddie arrived within two minutes of each other, and Ava was ten minutes late. She cited rush hour hassles and they smiled at her and hugged her. Kisses and hugs out of the way, they sat down and ordered their drinks, and Mia launched into telling them about Logan. She had waited long enough, and she wanted to dish a little on him. She took a sip of her cosmopolitan and then looked around the table at them.

“So I met with a new client yesterday morning. He is a heavy hitter on Wall Street, so I was really hoping to land his accounts, but I wound up landing a date with him last night as well,” she began. Her friends’ eyes grew wide and Ava giggled and gave her a wink.

“Did you spend the night with him?” she asked hopefully. She loved steamy gossip.