Tim and Ben nodded, and Tim joked to Ben, “Have you noticed he always gets the girl at the end, too?”
Noah chuckled and said, “Not always.”
Kayla rolled her eyes. “Infamous on the West Coast as well, hmm?”
He winked at her because he knew it would irritate her, and he wasn’t disappointed.
They left Tim and Ben then and, with the help of the bar manager, made their way to the back of the bar and out the fire exit.
As it turned out, they didn’t have to worry about scaling walls. There was an alley that ended at a side street. From there, they walked to where Noah’s car was parked.
Once they’d hit the road, Noah said wryly, “Tonight was the sort of thing that passes as business entertainment among the wonder boys of high-tech. Just be glad there wasn’t a Star Trek convention in town.”
“Tim and Ben are nice guys.”
Her comment amused him. “And I’m not?”
“You’re grist for the rumor mill.”
He laughed, then sobered. “When your life is fodder for the tabloids, you become familiar with back exits.”
When she made no response, he changed the subject. “Seems like you have an interesting job. Makes me wonder why you want to trade it for a hard news beat.”
The look she gave him said she hadn’t expected him to admit her job had any redeeming qualities. “My job has its moments, but my column is mostly news about local figures because the Sentinel doesn’t have a hope of competing with national tabloids and magazines.”
He flashed her a look. “I figured ambition had to have a place here somewhere. So why don’t you apply for a job at one of the national tabloids?”
She didn’t answer for a minute, as if weighing what she wanted to reveal. “I’m ready for something besides gossip,” she said finally. “Believe it or not, it’s tiring to report on Buffy the Man Slayer’s latest conquest. And, reporting on celebrities’ bad behavior also requires a thick skin.”
“How so?”
She slanted him a sideways look. “When you print things that upset people, there’s sometimes fallout. And, besides, I don’t take pleasure in printing stuff that winds up hurting someone.”
Her admission surprised him. In fact, the entire discussion this evening about her job had surprised him. While he was still angry about his own appearances in her column, he was willing to concede he might have been too judgmental in characterizing what she did for a living as telling lies.
While he still wasn’t sure whether her column could be thought of as social satire, he could concede there were some areas of his social life—and, God knew, of those of the women he dated—that could easily be mocked.
Yet, he was glad she’d gotten an unexpected taste tonight of dodging paparazzi. He’d seen the worry in her eyes and had felt a modicum of satisfaction in knowing she was stressed over the possibility of being caught with him and of having to stomp out the inevitable flames in the media.
When they got to her apartment complex, he parked and helped her out, then walked with her to the front door of her building, which had a security camera but no doorman.
She took out her keys, then looked up at him. “I’m not sure what to say under the circumstances, but thanks, I had a good time. It was a good intro to how the computer industry works.”
“You’re welcome.”
Her air of vulnerability both attracted and amused him. He wondered whether her regular dates ended with awkward moments like this.
Abruptly, he pulled his mind back from the irritating thought of her out with other men. To hell with other guys and what they’d done or hadn’t. He wanted to kiss her.
He leaned in, but she dodged with a nervous laugh. He looked at her quizzically.
“You haven’t been keeping to your part of the bargain,” she said.
“Huh?” He blinked.
“Even though I learned a lot tonight about the computer-software industry in general, I didn’t get a smidgen of information about Whittaker Enterprises in particular.” Her chin came up. “What’s your interest in Tim and Ben’s company?”
And what an attractive chin it was, he thought. Attached to a long and graceful neck that led down to br**sts straight out of an erotic fantasy. His erotic fantasy.
“Are you paying attention?”
“Mmm-hmm. Yeah.” He focused his gaze on her face again. “I agreed to give you broad access, but not to give away confidential information about Whittaker’s possible future plans. For one thing, you’re the press. For another, that information could be very valuable on the stock market.”
“Are you suggesting I’d do something illegal like purchasing company stock on an inside tip?” she asked crossly.
He tapped her nose. “Not you personally, no, but the policy still stands. The last thing I need is for inside information to inadvertently leak, so the fewer people who know anything, the better.” She was too cute standing there, looking all mad at him. “But here’s a hint I’m willing to give—nanotechnology.”
“That’s it?” she said disbelievingly. “One word?”
He couldn’t help smiling as he leaned down again.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “But don’t worry. There’s more where that came from.”
The kiss he gave her was brief, yet still powerful and disturbing, and he wondered again what he was doing getting mixed up with a journalist who just saw him as a convenient ticket to a promotion.
“I can’t believe it!” her sister said. “Two guys who have great odds of seeing their bank accounts shoot into the multimillions and you didn’t even mention you had a single and unattached younger sister? Did it even cross your mind that I have student loans to pay off? No, of course not,” Samantha answered herself, before slumping into a chair. “You were too focused on Mr. Naughty-and-Nice.”
“I was not focused on Noah,” Kayla said absently.
Samantha snorted. “Yeah, right. I suppose that’s why you’ve mentioned him about fifty times in the past hour?”
Kayla closed out of the website that she was viewing and looked away from the screen. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon and, as happened from time to time, Samantha had crashed at her place the night before, not wanting to take a late train back to school after an evening out on the town. “You’re a real smarty-pants, you know?”
“Smart and poor,” Samantha replied, then nodded at the computer. “What have you been doing?”