stare as he closed the menu and waited.
The waitress looked a little awkward. "Is all that for both you and your sister?"
As if family obligation was the only reason a man like him would be out with a woman like her. Oh, man...
"No, that's for me. And she's my date, not my sister. Mary?"
"I... ah, I'll just have a Caesar salad, whenever his" - feeding trough? - "dinner comes."
The waitress took the menus and left.
"So, Mary, tell me a little about yourself."
"Why don't we just make it about you?"
"Because then I won't hear you talk."
Mary stiffened, something bubbling below the surface of her consciousness.
Talk. I want to hear your voice.
Say nothing. Over and over and over again. Do it.
She could have sworn this man had said those things to her, but she'd never met him before. God knew, she would have remembered that.
"What do you do for a living?" he prompted.
"Er... I'm an executive assistant."
"Where?"
"A law firm here in town."
"But you did something else, didn't you?"
She wondered how much Bella had told him. God, she hoped the woman hadn't brought up the illness. Maybe that was why he was staying.
"Mary?"
"I used to work with kids."
"Teacher?"
"Therapist."
"Head or body?"
"Both. I was a rehab specialist for autistic children."
"What got you started in it?"
"Do we have to do this?"
"Do what?"
"All the let's-pretend-to-get-to-know-you stuff."
He frowned, leaning back as the waitress put a huge plate of nachos on the table.
The woman bent down to his ear. "Shhh, don't tell anyone. I stole these from another order. They can wait, and you look very hungry."
Hal nodded, smiled, but seemed uninterested.
She had to give him credit for being polite, Mary thought. Now that he was sitting across the table from her, he didn't seem to notice any other women at all.
He offered the plate to her. When she shook her head, he popped a nacho in his mouth.
"I'm not surprised small talk annoys you," he said.
"Why's that?'
"You've been through too much."
She frowned. "What exactly did Bella tell you about me?"
"Nothing much."
"So how do you know I've been through anything?"
"It's in your eyes."
Oh, hell. He was smart, too. Talk about the total package.
"But I hate to break it to you," he said, making fast but neat work of the nachos, "I don't care if you're annoyed. I want to know what got you interested in that line of work, and you're going to tell me."
"You are arrogant."
"Surprise, surprise." He smiled tightly. "And you're avoiding my question. What got you started in it?"
The answer was her mother's struggle with muscular dystrophy. After seeing what her mom went through, helping other people find ways around their limitations had been a calling. Maybe even a way to work off some guilt at being healthy when her mother had been so compromised.
And then Mary had gotten hit with some serious compromises herself.
Funny, the first thing she'd thought of when she'd been diagnosed was that it wasn't fair. She'd watched her mother do the disease thing, had suffered right alongside. So why was the universe requiring her to know firsthand the kind of pain she'd witnessed? It was right then and there that she'd realized there was no quota on misery for people, no quantifiable threshold that once reached, got you miraculously taken out of the distress pool.
"I never wanted to do anything else," she hedged.
"Then why did you stop?"
"My life changed."
Thankfully, he didn't follow up on that one. "Did you like working with handicapped kids?"
"They're not... they weren't handicapped."
"Sorry," he said, clearly meaning it.
The sincerity in his voice popped the lid off her reserve in a way compliments or smiles never would have.
"They're just different. They experience the world in a different way. Normal is just what's average, it's not necessarily the only way of being, or living - " She stopped, noticing he'd closed his eyes. "Am I boring you?"
His lids lifted slowly. "I love to hear you talk."
Mary swallowed a gasp. His eyes were neon, glowing, iridescent.
Those had to be contacts, she thought. People's eyes just didn't come in that teal color.
"Different doesn't bother you, does it?" he murmured.
"No."
"That's good."
For some reason, she found herself smiling at him.
"I was right," he whispered.
"About what?"
"You're lovely when you smile."
Mary looked away.
"What's the matter?"
"Please don't put on the charm. I'd rather deal with small talk."
"I'm honest, not charming. Just ask my brothers. I'm constantly putting my foot in my mouth."
There were more of him? Boy, that'd be a hell of a family Christmas card. "How many brothers do you have?"
"Five. Now. We lost one."