we going to walk to this place?” Eva asked.
Ames ended his reverie. No point thinking about something that was never going to happen. “We can or take a taxi. It’s several blocks.”
“Oh, walk, absolutely walk. I want to see everything.”
“Fine by me.” He had a new attitude about her boots. Too many women he dated wore heels so high they could barely make it to the end of a block without complaining.
“How long have you lived in the city?” She danced away from him, looking up, turned in a circle, then danced back, not taking his hand again.
“Since I was eighteen and came here to college at NYU from Jersey.”
“Joisey, right. I’m from central Wisconsin, a town just north of Madison. Dad’s a coffee scientist. Mom is an accountant. Does your mom work?”
“She helps Dad with the store. Bookkeeping, mostly.” He turned up University Place, heading for Union Square, then Eighteenth Street and one of his brother’s favorite bars, Old Town. There were a couple of fabulous wine bars in the area, customers of his, but he wasn’t sure they could handle shiny lime-green boots.
Actually...this was New York. They could handle anything. The real question was whether Ames could handle them.
No, not really.
“Brothers? Sisters? Occupations?”
He sent her a look. “Are you going to keep this interrogation up all night?”
“Conversation, Ames, remember?”
“One brother. Mike. A schoolteacher.”
“Ah, so you, the favored son, carried on the family tradition.”
“I was always interested in wine. Worked at the store from age sixteen, read everything about it I could get my hands on.”
“Drank everything you could get your hands on, too?”
“Tasted, then spat.” He snorted. “If I drank every kind of wine I learned about, I’d be in serious trouble.”
“How did you get started at Boyce Wines?”
“Dad used them for years at his store, insisted they were the best. He had a lot of respect for them and their business practices. So I applied, got a job, blah, blah, blah.”
“Do you get to travel to vineyards? Hey, you can visit me in California!”
He wasn’t going to touch that. “Boyce doesn’t sell California wine. Just Italy and France.”
“Then next time you go, I would be happy to come with you. Seriously.”
He shot her a look. “Do I get to ask you questions now?”
“Wait. Wait.” She dragged him out of the flow of pedestrians toward the street and pointed back at a building entrance they’d just passed. “Look at that!”
“What?” He saw a black awning with bowling pins on it. That couldn’t be what had her so excited.
Please, no.
“Come on, let’s check it out!” She grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the entrance. “I think there’s bowling. This will be totally fun.”
“Uh...” Bowling? “I’m not sure it’s my thing.”
“Of course it isn’t. It’s crazy. But how can you resist?”
If he knew how to answer that, he might be able to explain why he was still hanging out with her. Or how she got him inside the place and upstairs, where the place turned out to be some kind of amusement bar, decorated as homage to the preppy frat boy experience, with plaid upholstery, bowling, pool, darts and games of beer pong. Took him back more than ten years to his own college days.
Except he didn’t want to go back there.
He bought two beers, hoping they could down them quickly and leave.
Of course not. In another room, Eva discovered a nine-hole mini-golf course, complete with models of animals—a giraffe, a gorilla, a zebra.... She was clearly thrilled.
Which meant Ames was clearly doomed. “You’re going to make me play mini golf around large fake wild animals, aren’t you?”
“Well, of course!” She hoisted her glass to clink with his. “Why waste such a golden opportunity to enjoy ourselves?”
Playing mini golf? There was no way he was going to enjoy himself doing that.
Over an hour later, he had to admit, he was enjoying himself. Yes, he would have liked a bag over his head in case he saw someone he knew, but there weren’t any offered, and he didn’t see anyone, so what the hell?
Plus, he’d learned two things about Eva. One, she was a killer mini-golf player. He barely squeaked out a win, pure luck, and when he jokingly accused her of throwing the game to save his ego, she insisted they play another nine holes.
On this round, he beat her at the giraffe. She got him at the zebra. He trounced her near the gorilla. She came back at him with everything and in spite of his pure-luck hole in one on the eighth hole, she beat him by two shots.
The other thing he learned about Eva was disturbing. Maybe it was the beer—though they’d only had one each. Maybe he was on the rebound from his disappointment over losing the hope of Chris. Maybe it was that the evening had bounced him out of his usual routine, usual company, usual destinations.
He was hot for her.
Her cheeks were flushed, her blue eyes snapped, her bracelets jangled and she’d spent nearly the whole hour laughing. At him, at herself, at the game, at the bar, at the circumstances. A few locks of hair had escaped the scalp-eating combs. Her sweater had all but slipped off one shoulder, exposing smooth, tempting skin. She moved with a very distinctive careless grace, and when she looked at him, she conveyed an ancient woman-to-man message he understood well.
He better go home and reestablish contact with all things familiar before he did something stupid. Like kiss her. Or more than that.
“Winner buys loser’s next drink. I owe you.” She took his arm and propelled him, not to the bar as he expected, but to return their putters, then out and downstairs to the street, where the chill air and relative silence were refreshing after the crowds and noise.
“Now you can take me to the place we were going before I so rudely made you detour.”
“Actually.” He glanced at his watch, as if he had many important things still to accomplish, when the only thing he really had to accomplish was to avoid falling more deeply under Eva’s spell. “I should call it a night.”
“Oh, okay, sure.” She agreed so readily he felt a moment’s disappointment. Jeez, Ames, make up your mind.
They headed one block west to Fifth Avenue, where Ames hailed a cab. On their way up Avenue of the Americas, he kept the conversation impersonal, pointing out Herald Square, Bryant Park and the back of New York’s magnificent public library. His lecture ended when they turned onto Forty-Third and arrived at his building. Safe and sound.
“Here we are.” He took out his wallet and extracted extra money to pay for Eva’s trip home. Then he turned to smile and kiss her cheek in a platonic good-night.
He almost made it. But the feel of her skin under his lips, her flowery scent... Instead of jumping out of the cab and thanking her for a nice evening, he sat there, gazing at her.
Somehow she’d transformed from attractive to truly beautiful, her eyes large and glowing, her exquisite mouth curved in a smile.
Come on, Ames. Get the hell out while you still can.
“I had fun, Eva.” He reached for the door handle. “Thanks for insisting I come out to—