Chapter 4: Breaking The Ice

She tore her eyes away from his face, swallowed, and asked,

"How did you know my real name? We've never met before this afternoon and I don’t use it on my website."

His smile widened and when she tugged on her hand to remove it from his grasp, he let her go.

"I asked," he answered simply. "I live and work here in Silver Lake.” He paused, watching her, then went on. “Look, I really don’t mean to make you uncomfortable and I know my behavior must seem a bit odd, but I couldn't resist telling you again how great I think your writing is. I'm only at this event because of you...I wouldn’t have come otherwise. But when I saw that you were the keynote speaker and one of the award winners, I couldn't stay away."

He took a breath, as if to give him the needed strength to continue. Lola braced herself for whatever else was going to come out of his mouth. He was like no other man she had ever met and she had no way of knowing what else he might say or how outrageous it would be.

"I’d really like to talk to you about Captain Clarke,” he said. “I have questions. Will you have dinner with me? We can go wherever you like.”

He stopped speaking then, his eyes watchful, as though he were waiting on her answer with bated breath. It seemed like an eternity before he moved away from her, enough so she could take a breath and try to find her center beneath the onslaught of his unexpected attention.

There was nothing frightening about him, though she knew her best friend might find his forwardness disconcerting. Maybe she should be concerned, but she wasn’t. At most, this was very inventive flirting on his part. Her internal radar said he was harmless and it was never wrong, especially about men. Still, she stepped away from him, prepared to let him down. She wasn’t sure she should reward his persistence with politeness, but she had to respond, to be kind in the face of what looked like pathetic desperation.

"Mr. McCallum, thank you for your interest in my work, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’m sorry."

Lola stepped around him, fighting to avoid inhaling the spicy scent of his cologne. He was all man, even though she could tell that he was younger than she was by a few years. She wasn't in the market for men just now. And until she could protect herself against the charm of a player, she intended to keep it that way. No matter what her friends said or how her body ached with need, she was in control. Nothing would make her open herself to anyone again, especially not to someone she didn't know. She hadn't managed to take more than a few steps when his voice stopped her again.

"I can't blame you for being unnerved. But if you'll just give me a chance, I think you'll find I'm a pretty harmless guy with a decent job and very little time for more than reading. Just your average Joe, wanting to get to know a woman he probably wouldn't ever have the chance to meet otherwise, just because her words stir him up." He moved close to her again, and stood waiting for her to speak. When she said nothing, he continued. "Please, at least have a drink with me."

Lola inhaled deeply and decided that a drink wouldn't kill her. She didn't have to go anywhere further than the bar with this man and when he left on his own, things would go back to normal. She nodded, strangely unable to speak, and went ahead of him back into the crowded reception hall. She felt his hand lightly touch her back, urging her to move through the crush of people to the bar. She tried not to react to the feeling of his broad palm on her body or to the fact that it was big and radiated heat up and down her spine.

She put her reactions down to all the years that she had gone without a man to ease the growing lusts that sometimes rocked her to her core. Her stories had become increasingly wilder and more erotic as her need had grown. The last one, the one she suspected that Scott had read and left his provocative comment on, had been particularly arousing.

"What would you like?"

His deep voice broke into her musings, a sensual stroke over her sensitized nerve endings, reaching deep inside her where she hid from the world, and making her want to scream in agitation. She couldn't have been more attuned to him if he had been touching her, which he no longer was.

"A glass of wine, please," she answered, infuriated that her voice was a husky whisper.

"Red or white?"

The question was straightforward but the vibrant tone of his voice was insistently sensual, the press of his sex appeal a relentless stroke of pleasure in her ear, on her skin, in her deepest core. She was humiliated that her unmet needs had led her to a place where simply hearing a stranger speak could reduce her to a mass of shivering awareness. She needed to escape, but she had committed to one drink, so she steeled herself to being in his company for another few minutes, while she racked her brain for a way to leave without either embarrassing herself, offending him, or alerting him to her inexplicable and unsettling attraction to him.

"Red, please!"