Page 19 of Fight for Me

“Wine would be nice,” he replied.

She nodded and headed to the kitchen. Blane followed, noting her bare feet. Her toes were painted a festive bright pink.

“Red or white?” she asked.

“Your choice.”

He noticed she had a wine refrigerator as she pulled out a bottle and handed it to him, along with a corkscrew. Blane made quick work of it and handed it back. It was a chardonnay. Not an expensive bottle, but a decent one in the thirty-dollar range.

“Your apartment is very nice,” Blane said. “Did you decorate it yourself?”

“Lord, no,” she said with a laugh, pouring the wine into two glasses. “My mother insisted. She was horrified at the location as it was. I couldn’t stop her from decorating.”

“She did very well.” Blane accepted a glass from her. “It suits you.”

Anne gave him a small smile as she headed for the sofa with her own glass. “And how would you know?” She sat in the far corner, tucking her feet up underneath her.

Blane took the seat next to her, close, but not too close. “I have a sense about people,” he said with a smile of his own.

Anne’s breath caught. That smile was devastating. And he was close enough she could just catch a whiff of his cologne if she took a deep enough breath. She could really get addicted to that scent.

She shouldn’t have let him come up, much less come inside, especially after the events of tonight. She was still trembling inside from the trauma. Blane had saved her. She was dangerously close to hero-worshipping him, which wasn’t in keeping with what she knew about him.

And now she’d let him into her apartment, let him sit beside her on her couch, let him drink her wine as he smiled at her with that damn dimple, looking like James Bond after killing the evil villain and then cozying up to his leading lady.

“So,” she said, wanting to get her mind off how good he looked and how very much she’d love the comfort of being held right now. She reached for the recent gossip she’d read off the internet today, not that she’d been Googling him or anything. Ahem. “Are the rumors true? Are you going to throw your hat into the ring for president?”

Blane looked briefly taken aback, then laughed. “That’s your angle, is it? Are you going to sell my answer to the newspapers?”

Anne could tell he was teasing. “Depends on how much they pay. A girl’s gotta eat.”

He laughed quietly. “As it happens, I do think I’ll be ‘throwing my hat into the ring.’” He leaned a bit closer. “I hope you can keep a secret. If you need to eat, I’ll be glad to buy you dinner.”

His eyes twinkled, looking more gray than green in this light. He’d loosened his tie and undone the top button of his shirt. Why that patch of skin looked so incredibly appealing, Anne couldn’t say. Maybe it was because he was always so put together, so professional, and now she was seeing him relaxed and at ease. It made her want to reach forward and undo another button, which of course would be highly inappropriate, and no doubt give off the wrong impression of her intentions.

Well, it would actually be the right impression of the intentions she was feeling right now, which was part of the problem.

“I can’t imagine,” she said. “The kind of media circus and scrutiny that goes with all of that. Sounds like a nightmare to me.”

He shrugged. “It comes with the territory. I’m used to it by now.”

“I’d think it will get a thousand times worse, running for president than senate.”

“Probably,” he said, taking a sip of his wine. “It’s the price to be paid, I suppose.”

“For power?”

He gave her a strange look. “To serve my country.”

“Is that how you see it then? I doubt most politicians would.”

“I’m not most politicians.”

That was certainly true.

“What about you?” he asked.

“Definitely not running for office, that’s for sure.”

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