Sunny Days

            Nick located Katie’s apartment, knocked briskly on the door, and could sense the hesitation that occurred before she opened it.

            “Hi,” she said, looking less than thrilled to see him.

            He registered this with a frown. What the hell was with the woman? Really. He was trying harder than he ever had in his life to get a dinner out of her, and she was actually angry with him. “What,” he asked, flatly, “did I do?”

            She was looking past him, at the bodyguards in the hallway. “How many people did you bring with you?”

            He glanced over his shoulder, unconcerned. “Only three. I didn’t want to overdo it. They don’t have to come in.”

            “What makes you think you’re coming in?”

            “I’m coming in,” he said, firmly, and walked past her into the apartment.

            She slammed the door, obviously disgusted. “I appreciate you not overdoing it. I know how concerned you are about attracting attention. That string quartet you hired was the most subtle string quartet I’ve ever seen.”

            “I wrote you a song, for God’s sake. Why are you angry with me?”

            “We need to talk.”

            “‘We need to talk,’” he echoed. “This is the first time I’ve ever been dumped by a woman who I haven’t even been to dinner with.”

            “I don’t want to go to dinner with you. I keep trying to communicate to you how much I don’t want to go to dinner with you. You don’t take hints. You write me music instead. You’re absolutely crazy.”

            “I’m not crazy. I’m a guy, who’s interested in a girl. Who happens to think you’re pretty damn cute. And I offer to take you to dinner, which, Katie Lark, I’ve got to tell you, most women would be jumping at the offer.”

            “So there must clearly be something wrong with me,” she drawled.

            “I’m willing to concede it’s me, and I don’t get what it is. Why don’t you tell me? I’ve pulled out every stop I can think of, and you keep moving farther away. Is this because of the stupid battle of wills thing? Let’s start over. Can we just start over, and forget about this fight? We don’t have to go to dinner. You seem to think I’m Hades or something, that I’ll pull you in forever if you take food from me, so we won’t do dinner. Tell you what. I’ll sit here in your apartment for a little while and we’ll talk. I won’t even make you make me coffee.”

            “I don’t think we’ve met,” she decided, looking at him standing in the middle of her cramped, crowded, tiny apartment, so big and masculine and larger than life that she felt like he was sucking air directly from her body into his.

            He ducked his head, looking uncertain about what was going on. “Are we…starting over?”

            “I’m Katie Lark,” she continued, ignoring the interruption. “I’m a lawyer. I live in New York. I work many hours a week, and then I come home and I go to sleep. I don’t have much of a life, because I’m too busy working to make money so I can pay off student loans and send money to various lazy members of my family that I cannot bring myself to cut off and then I also try to pay rent and buy really expensive business suits and while I think I’m decent, I don’t think I’m good enough in bed for this to be worth your trouble.”

            “Hmm,” said Nick, after a second. “That was a great speech. I think our primary difference is that I happen to be the lazy one in my family. Anyhow, I’m going to dinner with my brother and his fiancee and I really would like to be able to bring a date.”

            She blinked at him. “What?”

            “I get that this is a longshot, but I thought you might better be able to handle dinner with me if there were other people around us.”

            “Did you hear a word I said just then?”

            “I heard every word. I’m just not sure why you said them.”

            She placed her hands, fisted, on her hips, looking so adorable that Nick almost grinned. “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?”

            “Okay.” He sat on her couch, made himself at home. “My name is Nicholas Charles Kendrick O’Hare. My family has an annoying habit of calling me Nicky. I prefer Nick. The Charles is after my mother, Caroline. The Kendrick is after my father’s father. I seem to have musical talent. I started at Julliard but got bored and dropped out and found a couple of friends who were sufficiently adventurous to form a band and trust that I could write them songs.” He shrugged. “And then I wrote some songs. And there were a few years of us living in one shabby apartment because I didn’t want to ruin the cohesion of the group by living off my trust fund, and then we finally hit it big because I fancied myself falling in love with some third-rate girl and wrote a song called Peerless. Is that good for a start? I’ve left some stuff out, I admit. Grammys, all the free sexual favors, you know, things like that.”