“Good, because I’m starving.”
While he wrapped meat and veggies in his own tortilla, she asked, “If these are groupies, what are beach babes?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Just pretty girls in bikinis. And while I’m sure you’d look fabulous in a bikini, you’re also interesting.”
She hadn’t been in a bikini in years, and, in DC, she couldn’t turn the corner without running into a lawyer. “Again, perspective. Where I come from, I’m not the least bit interesting.”
“There’s a lot going on beneath that suit.” He paused, considered. “And the glasses.” Ian put the fajita down, dusted off his hands and lifted them toward her face. “May I?”
Surprised, she leaned away, but his fingers gently closed around the arms of her glasses, and they slid off her face. With the fajita in her hands, she couldn’t grab them back. “What are you doing?”
He was staring—that was what he was doing. Staring…and smiling.
Sensation hiccupped through her chest—excitement, fear, angst, frustration. Setting down the fajita, she reached for her glasses, “Let me have them.”
He pulled them out of reach. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why? They’re glasses. They help me see. We can’t all be as perfect as you or all these groupies.”
“I think they help you hide.”
When he set them on the bar to his right instead of giving them back, Tessa slid off the stool and reached for them. Ian’s hand closed on her forearm, strong enough to stop her but gently enough to shoot tingles up her arm. Her gaze skipped back to his, making her realize how close she’d gotten. Close enough to see the dark ring around his irises. Close enough to feel his charisma mingled with his heat. Close enough to smell his freshly showered scent. Way, way too close.
“You’re really pretty.” His soft words sent a current across her shoulders. “What’s your first name, Miz Drake?”
“Tessa, and I’d say thank you, but you’re being an ass.” She didn’t put any heat behind the words, just enough emphasis to relay the fact that she didn’t like this game. “Give me my glasses. Please.”
“Tessa.” He repeated her name with a hot little grin. “Nice. It fits. Are you nearsighted or farsighted?”
“What difference does that make?”
“Because if you’re nearsighted, you don’t need these to eat.”
She smirked. “I’m farsighted.”
He lifted the glasses to the
light and peered through them, then grinned. “Nope. What you are…is a liar.”
She huffed. “Come on.”
He set the glasses down again—well out of her reach—and picked up his fajita. “You should eat that before it gets cold.”
She was too tired to argue with him. She rarely wore her glasses, but she’d opted for the glasses today to give her eyes a rest after too many late nights wearing contacts. And, yeah, probably to help her hide. Maybe. A little. Her transparency annoyed her. That saying, “smart people have no common sense,” wasn’t exactly true in Tessa’s case. But she did have quite a few—what her secretary, Gordon, liked to call—“blonde moments.”
Tessa dropped back to the stool and picked up her tortilla. “You’re lucky I’m hungry.”
He laughed again. God, he had a great laugh. If she was a different kind of woman, she would make a move on him. A woman with the self-confidence she pretended to possess every single day. The confidence to take this sexy man to bed. Her imagination strayed to whether he had as much confidence in the bedroom as he did in a bar. And how his heavy, hard body would feel against her own. Lord, it had been a while since she’d had any male companionship beyond work buddies.
She refocused on her food. She’d had to force herself to eat during the last few months of Corinne’s illness just so she had the energy to continue to go to work every day, care for Sophia and Corinne every day. And over the last week, stress had stolen her appetite. But with Zach running around LA somewhere, it didn’t look like that stress would let up anytime soon. For now, with Sophia safe and happy, Tessa allowed herself the small pleasure of the moment.
“Okay, not a studio exec, not an accountant or reporter.” Ian finished his fajita and started rolling another. “Teacher, cop, librarian, pffft. Let’s see…who would be involved in the personal business of a—” His gaze darted to hers. “An agent? Did he fire his agent and hire a new one?”
She smiled, shook her head, and picked up her wine.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “I’ll get it.”
She finished off her fajita and fourth glass of wine—oh, such a bad idea—laughing while each of his assumptions grew more ludicrous than the last: personal trainer, acting instructor, hairdresser, bookie, drug dealer… He offered mini tales about each profession—someone he’d worked with, some story he’d heard from a friend—amusing her. The combination of wine and Ian were heating her from the inside out. While he kept guessing, Tessa slipped off her blazer and hung it over her stool, then sat again, anchoring the jacket beneath her.