Seb’s eyes continued to search hers for a minute. “Fair enough. You want another?”

“Oh.” Via looked down at her empty beer glass. “Sure. I’ll buy, though. I didn’t exactly pay for my last one.”

She was rising up in her chair when he laid one of those gigantic, rough-palmed hands against her forearm. “Sit. Please. Let me buy you a drink.”

His eyes were right on hers, not bouncing around the way Evan’s always had. It was disconcerting almost, to have a man be so sure of himself. It wasn’t that he was confident in how she would react, exactly. It was more like he was holding his hand out to her and waiting patiently to see if she would take it.

“All right,” she answered, and to her dismay, heard a small tremor in her voice. Via watched him stride away toward the bar. He said something that made Christian the bartender laugh. And then she watched Seb forcibly jam cash into Christian’s hand. He came back, a beer in each hand, shaking his head.

“What was that all about?” she asked him, accepting the beer he was handing down.

“Son of a bitch does not want anyone but him buying you beers.” Seb glowered over at the bar, and Via watched as Christian shot a cocky smile in their direction, shrugging his shoulders.

“I was afraid of that,” Via muttered.

“Afraid? I thought the Golden Oldie over there was the man of your dreams.”

Via laughed, rolling her eyes. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

He shrugged, grinning into his beer.

“I never said that that guy—” she nodded her head dismissively in the direction of the bar. Was she really doing this? She was doing this. Fuck it, she was just going to say it “—was the man of my dreams. I just said that I’m attracted to older men.”

Seb shifted in his seat, his stance widening just a bit. He didn’t exactly lean toward her, but he might as well have. His eyes fell to the bottom half of her face, and it was strangely as if somebody had hit Mute on the music. There was a rising buzz in her ears that seemed to correspond with the tingle in her fingertips.

She waited, but he said nothing. Had she struck him speechless?

A whippy, charged feeling suddenly zipped through Via. Nothing about their circumstances had changed in the last ten seconds. But suddenly, Via didn’t feel significantly younger. She didn’t feel younger at all. Suddenly, she felt like there was a chance that she might, sort of, be in charge.

To test it, Via let her eyes drop to the condensation on the outside of her beer. She drew a little squiggle through the fog. She lifted her finger to the rim of the glass and touched every inch of it. When she looked up, Seb’s eyes shot to hers on a delayed reaction. He’d been watching her hand.