She made a face. "Him? You want to go out with him?"
"I take that to mean that you wouldn't mind if I did."
"He's all yours, honey."
Gemma beamed. "So, you want me to call Jim and have him tell Ethan to call you if he's interested?"
"Yes, please. He seemed nice." This was too tenuous for my comfort. What would happen if he couldn't remember who I was, or if he didn't want to see me? The fate of the magical world—and maybe even of the nonmagical world, too—might rest on this date. I wasn't sure where I'd find an intellectual property attorney anywhere else, not one I could get to talk to me without me having to explain the situation up front and pay a hefty retainer. They'd think I was insane. I bit my tongue to keep from telling Gemma to tell him to hurry and call me because I didn't have a lot of time.
That might be a subtle clue that I was after something other than a boyfriend.
The next afternoon I was surfing the Web in search of information on marketing campaigns for challenging situations when I got an e-mail from Gemma. "Jim said Ethan remembered you, thought you were cute. Jim gave him your number, and Ethan said he'd call sometime." That was good news, but I was worried about the
"sometime" part of the equation. This was no time to deal with the typical male definition of the statement "I'll call you," which generally means "sometime before I die, if I think about it."
I felt as if I was back in high school, rushing home to check the answering machine to see if he had called, leaping for the phone whenever it rang, calling the machine several times throughout the day to check messages. My roommates must have thought I'd gone stark raving nuts. "I had no idea you were so taken with Ethan,"
Gemma remarked at one point. "You should have said something sooner."
He finally called on Thursday night. For once Gemma got to the phone before I could—by now Philip had learned to use a telephone, so there were two of us waiting for calls. Her face lit up when she answered, then she put her hand over the receiver and singsonged, "It's for you! Guess who!"
Still feeling like I'd reverted to my teens, I grabbed the cordless from her and retreated into the bedroom, shutting the door behind me. "Hi, Ethan," I said, fighting to keep my voice from shaking.
"Hi, Katie." He had a nice voice over the phone, soft and rich. "It's funny, but I was just about to ask Jim if he thought enough time had gone by so it would be okay for me to ask you out. I wouldn't want to cause any trouble among friends, but I did want to see you again."
Now I felt bad because I really only wanted him for his legal mind. Then again, he was cute. And as far as I knew, he wasn't prone to zapping things in or out of existence. He was probably the most normal man I knew right now. "I got permission from Marcia," I said, then wondered if that made it sound like Marcia had no interest in him whatsoever. But if he was wondering about me, it meant he had no interest in Marcia, so he wouldn't get his feelings hurt.
"Would you like to get together sometime?" he said.
I was tempted to be sarcastic and say I'd only asked him to call me so we could talk on the phone for hours, but this was no time for games. I had to be very, very clear.
"Sure. When did you have in mind?"
"Is tomorrow night too soon?"
"Not at all." If he'd wanted me to, I would have thrown on a pair of shoes and run to meet him right then.
"What about dinner after work? I can get away about six. Where do you work?"
"I work downtown, near City Hall, but I live near Union Square, so anywhere in between could be good for me."
"I know this place on MacDougal, not too far from Washington Square. It's nothing fancy, but it's good, and it's a place we can just sit and talk."
"Sounds great."
He gave me the address, and we arranged to meet at six thirty. Now I just had to find a way to get him talking about work. Judging from the last time I'd seen him, I doubted that would be too difficult. The trick would be getting useful information, and then finding a way to use it. We'd have to hire a lawyer to really accomplish anything, and that might take confessing to the magic situation. I'd have to play it by ear to see if Ethan might be remotely receptive to the idea. At the very least, maybe I'd learn enough to know what steps to take next.
I reported to Merlin the next day that I'd be meeting with my source, then I left early to prepare myself. Since Ethan thought I was meeting him right after work, I had to strike a balance. I wanted to look nice, but not like I'd put in a lot of special effort. I had to look like I'd just come from work and still managed to look gorgeous. This was why I hated dating. Even the simplest, most casual date could be so very complicated.
I had a last minute burst of nerves as I rode the subway a short distance across town, then one stop downtown. Why did I think this would work? I might be bright, capable, and in possession of some degree of common sense, but I was lousy at dating. If the fate of the world rested on me having a semisuccessful date, we were in big trouble. I just hoped Jeff the Frog Guy kept his distance tonight.
Ethan had chosen a restaurant in a spot I couldn't get to directly via public transportation. This wasthe first time I'd walked alone after dark since the attack the previous week. I knew I wasn't really alone. There were very likely magical people nearby, watching my every move. In a way, that made me even more nervous. I didn't want an audience on a date. I really, really hoped Owen had more important things to do tonight than play bodyguard.
As I approached the restaurant I caught a glimpse of Sam perched on an awning and relaxed. Sam might tease me later, but he made a good bodyguard.
Ethan was waiting in front. He smiled when he saw me, which I took as a good sign, for it meant he really did remember which one I was. He was taller than I recalled.
When I got closer to him and shook his hand, the top of my head barely reached his shoulder, and I was wearing heels. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting long," I said.
"You're right on time. I managed to get away earlier than I expected."
He was right that the place was nothing fancy, just a nice little casual restaurant, but it was warm and cozy, and we didn't have to wait for a table. He helped me out of my jacket, then hung it and his coat on the hook over our booth. We made the usual small talk while studying the menu, then ordered burgers and fries. I liked the idea of someone who didn't feel the need to put on the dog on a first date, who could just go someplace comfortable. Even if this didn't work out in a business sense, maybe there would be other benefits after all.
After we'd ordered, I decided it was time to get to work. "You said you worked in intellectual property law, right?"
He smiled. "Wow. You really were paying attention. I thought I'd bored everyone to tears. I was such an enthralling conversationalist that night that my date never wanted to see me again."
"You weren't that bad. I actually found it interesting. How often does that really happen, though, where an employee tries to take what they've done at a company somewhere else?" It was the best I could come up with to get him talking, short of trying to convince him that legal talk made me hot and bothered.
"It depends on the industry. We see it a lot in software. There's a lot of job-hopping, and people take bits of code with them. But then there's always the argument that they're just applying things they've learned, not using anything they actually developed. There've been attempts to come up with noncompete clauses, where people can't go to work for their company's direct competitor for a certain amount of time after leaving, but that often gets struck down as unfair restraint of trade." The waitress brought our drinks, and he used that as an opportunity to change the subject. "Enough about me," he said. "What do you do? I don't think it came up that last time. I was too busy droning on about my work."
"My work isn't nearly as interesting as yours. I'm a secretary. That's about it." I stuck to my most boring job description, hoping he wouldn't ask me more questions.