Page 53 of Not As Advertised

I felt assured until I saw her exit the front doors of the low-rise apartment building wearing the same dress from our client dinner in LA. That dress held too many delicious memories for me to keep any thoughts of work in my mind.

As she opened the car door, I watched the black satin slide sinuously over her curves as she got into the passenger seat.

“Holy fuck. That dress.” The fabric pressed against her body was too distracting for me to worry about my crass greeting. “I remember quite a few more wrinkles in it during that night inLA.” The dress in question didn’t burst into flames despite the fire in my gaze.

“Hello to you too.” She laughed. “I had it dry-cleaned.”

“Damn. Are you trying to distract me tonight? Because by wearing that dress, you’ve just guaranteed I won’t be leaving your side for a single second.”

“Well, considering this is the only dress I have that’s fancy enough for any kind of function, I guess I just got lucky that you like it so much.” She winked.

I watched her buckle her seat belt, the satin pulling tighter against her breasts as the strap restrained her body.

Once she was settled, I pulled out into the Saturday evening traffic. We had about forty minutes until we reached the convention center where the fundraiser was being held.

I needed to get her talking. Otherwise, I was going to spend the whole drive obsessing about how she looked in that dress and wondering what she was wearing underneath it. I needed to get myself under control—I still had a job to do tonight, and I couldn’t be so far off my game that I’d fail Jack’s purpose for sending me. I also didn’t want to spend the next five hours aroused beyond belief.

“Sweetheart, I need you to distract me. You look too damn good.” I reached across the console to offer her my hand. Just because I had to behave myself didn’t mean that I was going to forgo touching her while I had the opportunity.

That brought a laugh out of Abbie. “Aiden, come on. Be serious.”

“I’m dead serious.” My mind worked overtime to think of the least sexy thing I could think of. “Quick, give me a list of all the Pokémon you know.”

She laughed again at my ridiculousness. “Before I bore you to death, then, let me say that I am saying yes to us. We can take it one day at a time.”

“You just made my night, sweetheart. You’ll never get rid of me now.” A part of me I didn’t know was out of sync clicked into place hearing her agree to seeing each other. “Now, the list. It was so calming in LA to listen to you go on and on and on about a fake world full of things I don’t understand.”

“Was it really on and onand on?” She sounded skeptical about just how enthusiastic she had been about Anime Con.

I chanced a brief look over at her. Her eyes narrowed as if I had defamed her character while she struggled to keep her lips from smiling.

“I cannot tell a lie. There were definitely a lot of facts.” I couldn’t hold back my chuckle at her cutely affronted features. “But seriously, I love that you love it so much. I enjoy listening to you.”

She angled her body toward my side of the car and dove in. Clearly, full-body engagement was needed for a topic as important as Pokémon.

“Okay, you asked for it. Every kid can get a Pokémon when they turn ten if they want to. Depending on where they live, the Pokémon options change. So for Kanto, where Ash Ketchum lives, Charmander, Squirtle, or Bulbasaur are the options. In Hoenn…”

As I drove toward the highway, I let the smooth cadence of her voice wash over me. She was irresistible when she got going about one of her favorite things.

It had been several months since I’d made a trip back to San Jose. Other than the quick drive getting to and from the airport for the LA trip, I didn’t have any reason to travel to the city where I grew up until Thanksgiving. I was only required at three mandatory dinners a year at my mother’s house in Almaden Valley: Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

Thankfully, we would be a fair distance away from the house where I’d spent my teenage years, as the convention center we were heading to was in the heart of downtown San Jose.

I tried not to think about how big this event was going to be, knowing it was taking place at one of the main event venues in the city. The idea of being stuck in a room full of strangers and having to make conversation wasn’t my idea of a good time, to put it mildly.

Nerves aside, I couldn’t refuse the chance to go on a date with Aiden. I wanted us to have as many moments together as possible.

We’d arrived shortly after the cocktail hour began, and so far, I had been dutifully following Aiden as he scoped out the room.I’d been introduced to a few fellow advertising executives that Aiden knew from other events like this in his previous company and promptly forgotten their names because of my mounting nerves.

He looked at me now as they walked away from another industry executive and his wife, not retaining either of their names because of nerves.

“You doing okay?” he asked quietly.

“Yep.” I did a poor job of masking the tightness in my voice.

“Why doesn’t that convince me?” He chuckled. “Aren’t so many pretentious people in one place a balm to the soul after a hard week of work?”

I shifted my gaze from the sea of faces surrounding them to Aiden’s dark brown eyes. The mirth in his expression allowed some of the tension to flow out of me. It was a relief that he didn’t mind my nerves in these types of situations. I wasn’t going to start liking big crowds anytime soon.

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