“Where did you go?” Jessica asked softly, and I realized I’d fallen into my thoughts.
Though I jolted at her words, I tried to hide it by grimacing. “Sorry. I do that a lot.”
“Do what?” she asked, staring up at me from under lashes that were thick and long and seemed to flutter like damn angel wings.
“Zone out.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose, feeling myself start to do it again as I took in the individual lashes that were barely visible in the lights that gleamed into the cab from the street. “It’s just a quirk of mine,” I excused, then heaved a sigh when I heard Mackenzie snort at my words.
“I have those,” she said with a grin. “We all do.”
I’d have downplayed said quirk, but I knew Mackenzie. Knew he’d hang me out to dry the minute I told a white lie. As a result, I was as honest as I was willing to be on a first date. “I know, but mine seem to be more noticeable.” If she heard the dryness in my voice, she didn’t let on.
“I wouldn’t say noticeable. It’s just… I felt like I was at the center of your attention, and then suddenly, I wasn’t.”
My grimace hardened as embarrassment blossomed inside me.
Ah, shit.
Clearing my throat, I murmured, “Sorry.”
“No need to be sorry, I was just curious, that’s all.”
Knowing that I needed to change the subject before I started blushing—for fuck’s sake, what kind of grown man still blushed? I asked, “How are things at the office?”
“Today wasn’t too bad.” She cut me a wry look. “I met this guy who wanted to go on a date with me and wouldn’t take no for an answer.” The words were playful, but once she said them, a tension overcame her.
It seemed to eat away at her, making her freeze in place. Where once she’d sat relaxed against the leather backrest, out of nowhere, a block of ice had taken her place.
“Jessica? What is it?” I asked uncertainly.
“N-Nothing,” she whispered, her eyes dark pools as she looked at me, releasing a shaky breath as she did. “I-I mean it.” Those three words were a little firmer than ‘nothing’ had been.
I wasn’t sure why though.
“I would have taken no for an answer,” I told her smoothly. It wasn’t exactly difficult to put two and two together and to figure out that her words and whatever had happened to her had coalesced into one living nightmare for her. Still, I had to tack on, “If you’d have meant it.”
A bark of laughter fell from her lips. “And how would you have known if I’d meant it or not?”
“If you hadn’t been saying yes with your eyes.” I caught her gaze, held it even as the darkness hid most of her from me, I wanted her to see my resolve. “Also,” I said, changing topics quickly, “I’m a great companion. You’ll have fun. Who wouldn’t want to have fun while having some good food? And to be fair the food’s even better than the company,” I told her cheerfully.
Her lips curved, and I was relieved to s
ee that some of her tension had dispelled somewhat.
“You’re not like how I thought you’d be.”
I cocked a brow at that. “No? How did you think I’d be?”
“Mad, bad, and dangerous to know?”
“I’m certainly not Lord Byron,” was all I said, amused by the reference.
“I’m surprised you even know who Byron is.”
“Had a love of English poets back when I was a strange fourteen year old,” I informed her. “I blame my mother. She had a crush on the lot of them. Byron, Wordsworth, Keats. She drowned us all in the lot of it before we hit ten. I swear, she’d have married one of them if they’d managed to have come back as a zombie.”
Laughter pealed from her and it settled something deep in my heart.
The notion should have disturbed me, but with this woman, it didn’t.