Page 10 of Matched By Mistake
Let down her guard and let him in.
No way.
She wasn’t going to do that. And she had a feeling he wouldn’t, either. Or maybe he would now at the beginning of their relationship. As he’d said, strangers could be honest in a way that intimate partners weren’t.
“Like how?” she asked.
“Something simple,” he said.
She arched both eyebrows at him. Her brother could arch one, which looked totally cool, but she’d had to settle for both. She remembered seeing a photo of him at the opening of an art gallery in Houston recently. “What kind of art do you like?”
“Photos or realistic things that show the Texas landscape or portraits. You?”
“Impressionist mainly. I do like some of the surrealists, and I truly love what some modern artists are doing, but I’m not a fan of when they do something just to shock,” she said.
“I forgot you’re not just a graphic artist,” he said.
“Graphic artist and art director,” she said. “I’m not really that great at the fine arts, like hand drawing and painting.”
“There’s more to art than perfect lines,” he said.
“Says the architect.”
He gave her a wry grin. “Indeed. But a straight line isn’t necessarily perfect if you haven’t taken into account the entirety of what you are working on. Take the expo center. I went through ten drafts before I had a design that I was happy with. Each of those straight lines had to add up to something that would be more than a standard convention center. I wanted to create something more.”
“Art. So I think we can add a check in the we-both-like-art column,” she said.
“Agreed. Do you like sports?” he asked in a very casual manner.
She knew in an instant that he did and that he was probably very passionate about at least one. And she wanted to know what kind of man he was when he met some opposition, and she could never resist teasing her brother about his passion for baseball, which she couldn’t get into. “Not really, but I do like hot guys so sometimes I tune in to a football match.”
He flattened his lips and shook his head. “Dang. I thought we were going to be a match for the ages but that’s a deal breaker for me.”
“Is it? Can’t live without your sports?”
“Icanlive, but really, what is life without basketball?” he said.
“Pretty much what it is with basketball. I don’t know that I’ve ever watched a game. My brother is into baseball and my dad loves football and golf,” she said. “So that’s a non-match. What about food?”
“What about food?”
“Are you a foodie? Do you cook?”
He shrugged. “As I mentioned I grill, and I can make a mean omelet. You?”
“Same. Salads and soups are my go-tos year-round. So it’s either chop veggies and toss them in dressing or grill veggies and blend them up into a soup. Not exactly a gourmand.”
“Something else in common. We’re not doing too bad here,” he said.
“No we’re not,” she admitted. But did shewantto like him? He had been funny about basketball, not angry, which was important to her. She didn’t want to date a man whose default emotion was anger.
They talked about books and movies and they were sort of fifty-fifty on them as well. They had some similarities but he didn’t share her love of 1940s rom-coms and she definitely wasn’t into gangster films. Though it was fun to watch him do some impressions.
When they were done with their meal, she still was torn about going through with dating him. She liked him. But as she’d mentioned when he’d arrived, her father’s anger toward his family was justified and as much as she didn’t let him dictate her life, she had never been one to deliberately anger him.
And there was the attraction. She’d been sitting across from him all night trying her best to ignore the fact that his mouth was strong and looked firm. She remembered the feel of his arm around her and the warmth of his body pressed to her side. She wanted him.
She’d been denying that she was a sexual being for the last two years. Masturbating when she could no longer deny her needs. But with Jericho sitting across the table from her, watching her with his big brown eyes and that intensity that she couldn’t help feel was more than a little bit sexual...
