He had wanted to pick me up—or maybe he just wanted to find out where I lived. I came up with an excuse for why he couldn’t arrive at my doorstep, but I didn’t bother coming up with a good excuse. It didn’t matter if he believed me or not. It only mattered that he wanted me enough to ignore the fact that he didn’t believe me. Men are incredibly easy that way.

When I arrive at the restaurant—a popular Italian place, his pick—he’s already there, waiting at a table in an outfit that looks almost designed to complement mine: dark-blue jeans and a creamy cotton pullover, long sleeves pushed up on his forearms, five buttons at the neck, the top one undone. Very casual and, oddly, very sexy. He’s drawing something on a piece of scratch paper, but when he spots me across the room he folds it up and puts it in the pocket of his jacket, which hangs over the back of his chair. The pen he leaves idle on the table.

“You’ve gotten all your errands done?” he asks as I sit down, his tone somewhat bemused.

“Virtually.” I take my seat across from him, giving away nothing.

A waiter arrives with two cocktails. “I hope you don’t mind,” Lander says. “I thought you’d like their specialty.”

I examine the two cocktails. His drink, which appears to be bourbon on the rocks, looks considerably simpler than mine, which is . . . something mixed with several other things and garnished with a twist.

“You like to add interesting flourishes to your alcoholic beverages, don’t you?” he asks, his voice casual, though immediately I think of my garnet ring.

“Why do you say that?” I ask, matching his tone.

“You’re a bartender. All bartenders like intricate mixed drinks.”

Is he playing with me? I can’t quite tell. I hold up my drink and smile. “Well, let’s see if this ends up being a little too interesting for me.”

We clink glasses. My drink tastes of bourbon and grapefruit and bitters. A little comfort, a little tart, a little bitter . . . not a bad balance to try to strike in life. But then, I gave up striving for balance a long time ago.

“You realize that this is our first date?”

I smile, nod. “It’s very . . . traditional of us, isn’t it?”

“What would have been traditional is if we had started with dating and worked our way up.”

“I meant that having dinner together is normal, and up until now nothing about us has been . . . normal. You’re not normal.”

“You don’t think so?” He picks up his menu, studies the choices. A few tables over a group of slightly drunk voices launch into a rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

“I’ve been to your penthouse,” I say, taking another sip of my drink. “I’ve been . . . in your limo.”