“Huh.” Via felt terribly naive. She’d gone home from a bar with two men in her life. One of them had been Evan. She wondered now how many of these subtle moves those men had employed on her. “I don’t know. I think a woman knows exactly what’s going on in a situation like that. Men aren’t slick. If he’s putting the moves on her, she’ll know. And that?” She pointed back toward the bar. “Wasn’t a move.”

“Some men are slick.”

“You?” She raised her eyebrows at him. Her look said skeptical, but her brain said, Flirt with me more, you gigantic, gorgeous man!

Seb shrugged. “I mean, you’re pretty much sitting in my chair right now, aren’t you?”

Via looked down in surprise and realized that...yeah. Somehow while they were talking, he had shifted enough, and so had she, that she’d leaned all the way toward him. She was sitting on approximately one eighth of one corner of her own chair and the toe of one of her heels was about half an inch from the toe of that unlaced boot of his.

She straightened up immediately, her eyes going wide and her cheeks going pink.

He chuckled, but his eyes searched her face, checking to make sure it was okay that he’d just done that.

She dipped her chin to him. She was flustered, but not exactly put out. “Hats off.”

He studied her face for another second. “Now, if I wasn’t subtle, I could have done the same thing by crowding you.” He demonstrated by flinging an arm over the back of her chair and pushing his wide-stanced legs into her space. Via felt the blank circles of other people’s faces turn to look at them, but she almost, almost didn’t care.

He leaned back and stopped crowding her. As soon as the heat from his body was gone, mild embarrassment rushed into its place. He was more than flirting with her. He was showing her exactly how he’d seduce her. Except without actually seducing her. It was confusing. And hot. Via wished like hell that their colleagues would all simultaneously decide to go home and watch Jeopardy!

“Or I could have dragged your chair over or slid an arm around your waist and put you in my lap.” He was compiling this list casually, apparently unaware that Via was sort of melting into a pile of vibrating honey in the chair next to him. “But all of that is way too aggressive in my opinion. I’m not trying to intimidate you into feeling me. I want you to want it, you know?”

The proverbial you. He’s using the PROVERBIAL YOU. She bullied herself into believing it. Because otherwise, he’d just point-blank told her that he wanted her to want him, and that didn’t happen in real life, in this bar, on happy hour Friday with a bunch of their colleagues talking shop three feet away.

Via surreptitiously let out a long, slow breath and took a sip of her beer. She tried to look casual. “Right. I guess that makes sense.”