Tall, Dark And Irresistible. Joan Elliott Pickart

popular restaurant was so crowded and noisy that her hearing aids had shrilled painfully in her ears.

      Oh, drat, she didn’t want to have lunch with Ryan. She didn’t want to even see the man again. The continuous stream of beautiful flowers had caused him to take front row center in her mind and follow her into her dreams at night. He was driving her crazy.

      Well, there was only one way to end his ridiculous performance. Suffer through one lunch with him and that would be that. Fine. No, it wasn’t, but what choice did she have?

      “Carolyn?”

      “Yes, all right,” she said, sighing. “But not the deli. There’s a small restaurant that’s fashioned after an English pub in the next block. I can’t remember the name of it but…”

      “I know the place. Nice choice. It’s very cozy, rather…intimate, shall we say. I’ll see you there at noon sharp.’ Bye.”

      “Goodbye,” Carolyn said, then her shoulders slumped with defeat as she replaced the receiver.

      At exactly one minute before noon, Carolyn stood outside the intricately carved wooden door of the quaint little restaurant, and mentally pleaded with the butterflies to stop their frenzied flight in her stomach.

      She wished she’d worn something more flattering today, she thought suddenly. Her gray suit with the pink blouse was very professional, she supposed, but she’d had it for several years, and the cut of the jacket was out of style and borderline frumpy.

      Oh, for Pete’s sake, what difference did it make? This wasn’t a lunch date where she was attempting to impress. She’d been blackmailed into this meeting, a fact she was still angry about.

      So why was she so shaken up about seeing Ryan Sharpe again? Oh, forget it. There was no point in asking herself a question she didn’t know the answer to.

      “Get a grip,” she ordered herself, then squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and entered the restaurant.

      She stopped immediately to allow her eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight to the rather dim, rosy glow created by candles burning on each of the small, cloth-covered tables. A smiling man in a suit and tie suddenly appeared before her.

      “Ms. St. John?” he said, complete with a crisp, British accent.

      “Yes, but how did you know that I’m…”

      “Your gentleman told me that a lovely woman with dark hair, and eyes the color of a summer sky would be joining him,” the man said. “You most definitely fit that description, madam.”

      “I do?” Carolyn smiled. “Well, fancy that.” She frowned in the next instant. “What I mean is, yes, I’m Ms. St. John and I’m rather pressed for time, so if Mr. Sharpe has already arrived would you be so kind as to show me to his table…sir?”

      “Of course. If you’ll follow me, please?”

      Forget it, buster, Carolyn thought. The butterflies had now doubled in number, her knees were trembling and… She did not want to be here. She did not want to see Ryan Sharpe again. She did not want…

      “Madam?” the man said, from several feet away.

      “Oh. Yes,” Carolyn said, starting forward. “Certainly.”

      As Carolyn followed the ever-so-proper man, she saw Ryan seated at a table in the distance. Her heart quickened as he smiled and got to his feet.

      How strange, Carolyn thought rather dreamily. The butterflies had zoomed out of her stomach and fluttered down to create a magic carpet that was floating her toward Ryan, because she surely wasn’t doing anything so mundane as putting one foot in front of the other. Oh, no, not when Ryan was smiling that smile and gazing at her with those mesmerizing obsidian eyes of his.

      “Hello, Carolyn,” Ryan said quietly, when she reached the table.

      Hello, who? she thought foggily, then blinked.

      “Yes. Well, hello, Ryan,” she said, tearing her gaze from his.

      The man assisted her with her chair and she sank onto it gratefully, her trembling legs threatening to give way beneath her. She spread her napkin on her lap, smoothed it, then straightened the corners into a perfect square.

      “I’m very glad to see you again,” Ryan said. “Thank you for coming, for having lunch with me.”

      He was more than glad to see her, he thought. As he’d watched her come closer and closer to him he’d been consumed by a strange sense of…rightness, of her being where she belonged…with him. A warmth had crept around his heart, then, an instant later, coiled and churned low in his body as desire flared into flames of heat.

      His intense reaction to Carolyn was unexpected, but here it was, and for reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom he welcomed it, embraced it, owned it willingly.

      Carolyn slowly raised her head, looked directly at Ryan, ignored the pitter-patter of her heart and prayed to the heavens that she didn’t have a dopey, dreamy expression on her face.

      “Let’s order our lunch, shall we?” she said. Oh, good grief, was that her voice, that I-can-hardly-breathe-when-I’m-this-close-to-you sound? “My desk is stacked with work. Said desk that will no longer hold flower vases because I’m here as agreed.”

      “You’re dusting me off.” Ryan frowned. “Won’t you accept my apology for my earlier behavior? Give me another chance?”

      Carolyn sighed. “So you can get on your soap-box? Ryan, you believe that bringing Asian children here is basically wrong because they don’t resemble their adoptive families or their peers. You feel that what I do, what I’m devoted to doing is right…only to a point. I don’t want to hear all that again.”

      “I’m very sorry about what I said that day. Please, Carolyn, believe that. I’m extremely grateful for my loving family and the advantages I’ve had.

      “Yes, I had some problems, but that’s no excuse for saying what I did to you, and I know that. Let’s start all over again. Okay? Have dinner with me tomorrow night? It will be Friday, the beginning of the weekend, a new beginning for us that can erase what happened in your office the other day. Please?”

      Nope, Carolyn thought, deciding that her napkin needed attention again. She was not going out to dinner with Ryan. No way.

      Then again… It had been months since she’d been on a date. Months. Ryan was charming, intelligent, so handsome it was ridiculous, and he had apologized about a gazillion times for the crummy, negative things he’d said that first day and…

      It would be a nice change to go out on a Friday night, instead of spending another one curled up with a good book. Not that she didn’t like to read good books, but… Was she mentally babbling? Yes, she was, no doubt about it, due to the fact that Ryan Sharpe had the capability of throwing her off-kilter. But as long as she was aware of that fact, she could stay one step ahead of it, or ignore it, or whatever and…

      “All right,” she said, looking at Ryan again. “I’ll have dinner with you tomorrow night, Ryan.”

      “You will?” Ryan said, an incredulous tone to his voice.

      “Yes.”

      “Great. Fantastic. Seven o’clock? I’ll need your address, too. For the record, I want you to know that I was fully prepared to resume my flower crusade to get you to agree to dinner.”

      “Oh, spare me.” Carolyn laughed. “The flowers were lovely, really beautiful, but the whole staff at the agency was hovering around, trying to get me to divulge who my admirer was.” Her smile faded. “I really don’t care for being the center of attention like that. It makes me uncomfortable.”

      “Uh-oh. Do I owe you another apology for sending all those flowers.”

      “No,” she said, smiling at him warmly. “I’ve never had flowers delivered to me