Page 13 of The Law of Attraction
He crammed a huge bite of delicious-looking burger into his mouth. “You’re welcome.”
“Where’s my drink?”
“There’s milk in the bag.”
She blinked at him in disbelief. “Milk? Am I five?”
“Did you know that between the ages of twenty and eighty, women lose one-third of their bone mineral density?”
“So you were just looking out for my bone health, is that it? And not being a cheapskate?”
He ignored her. “Our flight’s still on time, according to the board. Thirty minutes to boarding.” He had a habit of changing the subject when he didn’t like the way the conversation was going.
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” she said, unwrapping her tiny hamburger. It was barely larger than a makeup compact, and she polished off the whole thing in three bites. There was also a tiny bag containing twelve whole french fries, and underneath that— “Oh! A toy!” she exclaimed in genuine delight.
It was a tiny wind-up robot. According to the bag her kid’s meal came in, there were five different robots you could collect, each with a slightly different expression on its molded plastic face. Hers looked vaguely grumpy and disapproving.
“I’m going to name it Adam,” she declared, setting it on the floor after she’d twisted the little lever in his back. “Because he’s so much fun to wind up.”
“Har har,” Adam said sourly.
Tiny Adam toddled across the floor until he ran into Big Adam’s leg and fell over onto his back. Olivia snickered as his legs kicked helplessly in the air like an overturned turtle. “He’s so cute! I love him.”
She reached over to rescue Tiny Adam from the floor, and the back of her hand brushed against Big Adam’s knee. An unexpected shiver traveled up her arm at the contact, and she jerked her hand away.
“You know,” Adam said as she wound the robot for another go, “I could make a comment about how much you seem to enjoy twisting my crank, but that would be inappropriate on a business trip with a coworker.”
“You’re right, that would be inappropriate.” She set Tiny Adam on the floor again, and he marched off across the carpet. “I could also make a comment about how cute your teensy weensy little lever is, but that would also be inappropriate.”
When she lifted her eyes to Adam’s, she was surprised to find him smiling. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a genuine smile on his face before. He only ever seemed to offer a distracted sort of half-smile around the office—and only when it was absolutely required to satisfy the minimum demands of politeness. This smile looked sincere and spontaneous, and for one shining moment, it relaxed all the muscles of his face, giving his handsome, Instagram-perfect visage an even more appealing, boyish gleam.
Adam seemed almost as surprised by it as she was, and he quickly steeled his expression again as he reached out to save Tiny Adam, who’d keeled over after a collision with his shoe.
“Here.” He extended his arm and placed the toy robot in Olivia’s hand.
Another shiver went up her arm as his fingers brushed her palm.
Stop it. You do not like Adam Cortinas. Not anymore.
“So you’ve been to Comic-Con?” he said, and for once Olivia was grateful for his subject-changing tactics.
She nodded as she tucked Tiny Adam into her purse for safekeeping. He would definitely be getting a place of honor on her desk next week when she got back to the office. “I go every year.”
“Why?”
“Because I like it. I usually go to Dragon-Con too, although I couldn’t last year because my sister got married over Labor Day.”
“What do you like about it?”
She considered him for a moment before answering. In her experience, people who questioned her about her con-going fell into one of two camps: either they knew nothing about it and thought it made her a weirdo loser, or they were self-appointed gatekeepers challenging her nerd cred. She couldn’t even count the number of times she’d been quizzed on her knowledge of geek trivia by some guy who couldn’t handle the fact that a woman might genuinely share some of the same pop culture interests.
If she had to lay money on it, she’d bet Adam fell into the former camp. He seemed way too good-looking—and too boring—to be a nerd.
She braced herself for the inevitable judgment and disdain. “I like looking at all the booths and the presentations for upcoming movies and TV shows. And some of the smaller panels are really good, like with comic artists and writers. Plus, I’m a cosplayer, so I get to show off my latest costume creation.”
He paused with a fry halfway to his mouth. “You dress up in costume?”
And there it was.
