Blind Date Disasters & Eat Your Heart Out

He looked a little surprised. At the water’s edge, he sat on a large rock, then pulled her down beside him.

They stared at each other.

“Hell,” he said after a moment. “I was really hoping you knew what this thing is all about.”

“You mean the thing that makes me want to both kiss you and smack you at the same time?”

A laugh escaped him. “Yeah. That’s pretty much the thing I mean.”

“I haven’t a clue. It scares me, you know,” she admitted. “Not just because I gave up men, or that we work together. But because when it comes right down to it, I know nothing about you.”

Leaning back, he tucked his hands beneath his head and studied the sky. “What do you want to know? I’m an open book.”

“Yeah, right,” she said with a laugh.

“No, really. Ask away.”

“I don’t want to be nosy.” But then she decided to take him up on it because curiosity won out over being polite. “Okay, tell me this. Why is everything so casual for you?”

“Meaning I’m your opposite because you’re so serious?” When she nodded, he said, “I take plenty of things seriously, Dimi.”

“Such as?”

“Such as…my bike. I’m serious about my bike.”

“Name something really important.”

“My bike is pretty important.”

“See?” she said, frustrated. “You’re not taking me seriously at all.”

“Okay.” His smile faded. “How about life? I take that pretty damn seriously.”

His jaw had tightened. His body seemed to, as well. And the part of herself she’d always held back from a man softened. Opened. “What happened, Mitch? Did you…lose someone?”

“Yeah.” His voice was gruff. “My brother, Daniel. He died from an aneurysm on his twenty-ninth birthday.”

“You were close.”

“Close? We were both too busy working eighteen-hour days to spend any time with each other. In our family, work was everything. Everything. Now he’s gone.” He turned his head and pierced her with a look of such loss and regret, she felt her throat tighten. “Sort of takes the edge off ambition, a loss like that.”

“I imagine it does,” she said softly. “But you still seem pretty ambitious.”

“No. I walk away from the job now when the day is done. No stress. I just happen to be good at what I do.”

“I have to agree there,” she said with a little smile. “I’m so sorry about your brother, Mitch.”

He ran a finger over her cheek. “You look so relaxed out here, not so serious at all. What is it about work that makes you that way?”

“You.” She winced. “Well, not just you. It’s everything. The show, the people that rely on the show. It’s all such a huge responsibility. I…I don’t like to fail.” She lifted a shoulder. “And we were. Before you came along and saved us.”

“But why resist the changes so much? You’re such a natural at what we’re doing now. So down to earth, yet utterly, completely sexy. Why did you hide that for so long?”

“Are you kidding?” she said with a laugh. “It’s not natural. You must have heard the stories, Mitch, and they’re all true. I’m pathetic when it comes to…guy stuff. I mean, look at my track record of relationships.”

“I think you were looking at the wrong guys.”

She listened to the water hit the rocks for a moment. Watched the sky, which at their high altitude was more brilliant than anywhere she’d ever been, though admittedly she hadn’t been very many places.

Unlike the man next to her, who’d probably seen and done it all.

A flash lit up her small corner of the night, and she straightened, excited, forgetting herself for a moment in the beauty that surrounded them. “Did you see that falling star?” she whispered in hushed awe, wanting him to experience her world, wanting him to know there was more to life than his city. “Did you?”

“Yeah.” But he was looking right at her, not up. “You know what that means, don’t you? A falling star?”

“That a sun just exploded?”

“That you have to kiss the first person you talk to after you see one.”

She didn’t mean to smile, darn him, but she did. “Really?”

“It’s a law,” he said very seriously.

“Ah.” Watching his mouth, she felt the heat explode inside her just as the star had exploded, wondering if he felt a fraction of the excitement she was feeling, deciding he probably didn’t and-

“Stop thinking,” he commanded softly, slipping a hand beneath her hair to caress the skin at the base of her neck.

“I can’t help it, I analyze everything.” Her lips were so close to his she could feel his warm breath. A frisson of something electric zapped through her, making her shiver with delight. “I can’t seem to help it. It’s just a part of my personality. Like the fact I love chocolate.” She couldn’t stop talking. It was nerves, but she couldn’t shut up. “They’re both just there, and-”

“Dimi?”

She gulped in a deep breath. “Yeah?”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

She laughed. “I’ve never kissed a man while I was smiling before, Mitch.”

“You haven’t kissed me yet.” His fingers tightened in her hair, pulling her closer, and she leaned in, giving him a short, to-the-point kiss.

“How was that?” she asked calmly while the pulse pounded in her throat, in her chest, in her ears. Surely it was just the mountain air making her blood hum and body sing. Sure, she could just-

She leaned forward and kissed him again. She couldn’t stop herself. More stars exploded in her eyes, bright points of pleasure at the feel of his mouth against hers. A moan of deep, dark pleasure resounded in her ears, hers, she realized with shock, locking her arms around his neck so tight he returned the deep, dark sound, but only because she was choking him.

“Sorry!” she gasped, backing up, horrified at her ineptness.

But he didn’t let her go far, instead sliding a thumb over her frustrated frown. “It’s okay. Breathing is optional,” he assured her.

One second Dimi sat there staring at him, humiliated to the core, and the next she’d garnered her courage to try again.

Go for the moon, she told herself, and pressed against him, her mouth on his. She was kissing him, kissing him as if she was starving for it.

And he was kissing her back, his mouth opening, making her let out a little whimper of need. She wanted more. She took more, losing herself in it until he let out a hissing breath. His fingers reached up and entangled with hers, making her realize she’d fisted them in his hair, tugging hard on the silky strands.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, face flaming as she pulled back. God, what had she been thinking? What had Cami been thinking? She couldn’t do this! “I think,” she said shakily, “I’m ready for dinner.”

“Are you sure? Because I’ve got your hands now, so we could just try the whole thing again-”

“I’m sure.”

He searched her gaze, then sighed and stood, pulling her up, as well. “Next time,” he muttered, “I’m going to go bald before stopping you again.” He stroked her cheek. “Remember that.”

She would do little else.

8

“MESSAGES!” Suzie called to Mitch in a whirlwind the next day. As she ran past him, clipboard in hand, she slapped a stack of pink message slips in his palm. “The one on top is a