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and work in the same area of town.”
    “So do hundreds of other people. That hardly means we’re meant to be.”
    “Yeah, but hundreds of other guys haven’t kissed you.”
    “You hadn’t either until today, so I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
    “Maybe you are the one woman I’ve never been able to forget, Cathy Jane,” he said, quietly.
    “Is that true?” she asked. When he called her Cathy Jane it made her feel cherished. Not like a corporate warrior who’d carved a place for herself in the world, but like a woman who’d found a special spot with the right man.
    She watched those wizard eyes of his carefully. They revealed no emotion to her and she sensed that he was trying to decide if pretending he was in love with her despite the time that had passed between them would win her. But she’d been lied to by men her entire life and she’d learned long ago not to believe what they said.
    “Forget I asked,” she said. She’d learned some tough lessons about men. You’d think she’d have enough smarts to stop asking them questions like that.
    “I won’t forget you asked. I want you to say yes, CJ….”
    “But you can’t admit that I’ve been on your mind. I’m not asking you to confess undying love.”
    “Good. Love is such an indefinable thing.”
    “It’s not a thing, it’s an emotion. Do you have those?”
    “Sure, I do.”
    “Just not for me?” she asked.
    He gave her an aggrieved look. What had happened to Tad in his past relationships? Something in his tone told her that he was hiding an important detail from her. “We don’t really know each other.”
    “My point exactly,” she said. Marriage was…scary. She didn’t know that she’d ever be able to risk her heart on happily ever after since every time she’d counted on that, she’d lost.
    “Which is why our marriage will work.”
    “How do you know this? Did you try it once before and fail?”
    “No. I’ve never made it to the church.”
    He must have gotten close. She wanted to find out more about his past relationship but didn’t want to probe too deeply. “Then how can you be so sure?”
    “I watched a friend of mine get torn apart in the name of love.”
    There was a fierceness about him that told her that he did experience deep emotion. For a minute she mourned the fact that she wasn’t the person inspiring that emotion in him. But she’d looked in the mirror. She knew her limits.
    She was the meat and potatoes kind of girl. A solid meal that would keep you alive. She wasn’t the fancy French pastry that everyone craved. It was time she stopped forgetting it.
    “I don’t plan to ever marry,” she said at last. She wasn’t settling in her personal life and fully expected to remain single because she was realistic enough to realize no man could give her everything she wanted from him.
    “Cathy Jane, forget those dreams you have of a white knight. We can have a nice, comfortable life together.”
    Screw you, she thought. What was she a pair of bedroom slippers? Sure she knew that she didn’t exactly have it going on when it came to being a sexy goddess but that didn’t mean she was comfortable.
    “No. Thanks.”
    “No to what?” he asked as she pushed past him and gathered napkins and paper plates.
    “To marriage,” she said under her breath.
    “I haven’t asked you yet.”
    Stunned she pivoted to face him. He watched her with a calm implacability that made her want to scream. “You are so frustrating.”
    He gave her a half smile that she was sure he intended to lighten the mood. But nothing could. She’d only seriously considered marrying two men in her life. Tad when she’d been eighteen, which had been pure fantasy.
    And then Marcus when she’d been twenty-three, which had been harsh reality. Now Tad was here asking her to marry him and she wanted to say yes but she couldn’t…wouldn’t. She wasn’t risking her heart and soul for another man. No matter how attractive he