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right?”
    “Not even close,” she chuckled. “I’m a writer.” Next to Dominatrix, it sounded pretty damn tame.
    He snapped his fingers. “Damn. So close.”
    In that moment, his mind snapped a mental picture of her. Eyes sparkling, smiling at him, radiant. She was quite possibly the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. His heart even skipped a few beats to emphasize that thought.
    It shook him a little. “So what’s so bad about being a writer?” he asked, sipping his coffee, trying to regain his equilibrium.
    “Nothing,” she said, as the laughter faded away and some of the uncertainty coming back into her voice. Adam didn’t like it at all. “Unless you write fiction.”
    “Worked pretty well for J.K. Rowling, didn’t it?”
    “Yes,” she said slowly, looking down at her mug, tracing the handle with her index finger. He noticed she did that when she was feeling a little nervous. “But I don’t write about boy wizards.”
    “What do you write about?” he prodded.
    She didn’t want to tell him. He could sense it, practically see the battle raging behind those pretty green eyes. Finally her features went carefully neutral, a self-defense mechanism if he ever saw it.
    “Vampires. Shifters. Angels and dragons. Medieval Scottish Highlanders. Navy SEALs.” She exhaled, afraid to meet his eyes. “I write romance novels, Adam.”

Chapter 8
 
    T here. She said it out loud and braced herself for his reaction. A laugh. Perhaps an awkward cough. Followed by either a polite suggestion to call it a night or a poorly veiled offer to help her with some “research”. But as the seconds ticked by in silence, he didn’t say or do anything.
    Was he shocked, then? Stunned into silence because he’d thought she seemed like such a nice, intelligent, sensible woman? Or maybe he was taken aback by the fact that he could have been so wrong. Holly felt the color creeping up her neck, hating that she still cared so much what other people thought.
    No, not other people, she corrected. Him. Because, she realized, she really liked this guy, and for whatever reason, his opinion mattered.
    Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore and raised her eyes. Adam was watching her intently, his face relatively neutral but his eyes sparkling with ... something. What was that? Interest? Amusement? Panic?
    ***
    H oly shit , he thought. That look. Those eyes. Like someone already found guilty and awaiting a sentence, knowing it was going to be bad but determined to take it with some dignity. She was waiting for his reaction, actually worried about it. Since she didn’t seem like the type of person to care too much what other people thought, perhaps (dare he hope) that he was different in her eyes? That she might be feeling the same unexplainable spark he was and care about his opinion?
    “Do you like it?” he asked.
    She blinked, nonplussed. “Like it?”
    “Yeah. Do you like writing romance novels?”
    “Yes,” she admitted warily.
    “Does it pay your bills?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you are among the fortunate minority who enjoy what they do for a living.  It’s not really work if you enjoy what you do, right?”
    “Right,” she agreed, but her voice still held a trace of doubt. That hint of vulnerability tweaked something primal inside of him, something that appealed to his inner caveman. Without conscious effort, this woman was drawing him in farther and farther, and she didn’t even know it.  “What about you?” she asked, tossing the ball back into his court.
    “I, too, am pretty fortunate. I love what I do.”
    “And what is that?” she asked, her eyes less doubtful now and sparkling with ... mischief? “You’re not a Dom, are you? A real-life Christian Grey?”
    “More like Ty Pennington,” he chuckled, but the idea of dominating this particular woman had taken hold in the back of his mind. It was an effort to remember that he was in a public coffee shop with a woman he barely knew. “I renovate old houses.