Come As You Are(13)

“But people try. Next thing you know, someone will make an app with a sign that says taxi on your phone screen, and you hold it up to hail one.”

“I think someone did make that. Also, I didn’t fund it,” she says, laughing, as the bartender slides me a champagne.

“I didn’t either.”

She runs one hand along a wing full of money. “I only fund the best and brightest ideas with my Monopoly money.” Her voice turns slightly more serious. “Do you get pitched on apps a lot?”

I take a drink of the bubbly. “I get pitched on everything all the time.”

She nods. “That must be par for the course, being a VC and all.”

I part my lips to speak, to tell her I’m not a VC. But I flash back to the racquetball game, to the face-lift suggestion from my sister. If this angel thinks I’m a VC, that means my face-lift is working. My costume is doing what I want it to do—it’s making it possible for me to be me. To have a conversation as Flynn Parker the guy, not as Flynn Parker the multimillionaire.

She doesn’t know who I am. And I don’t correct her. “It can be.”

She nods thoughtfully then roams her gaze over my black attire. She taps her bottom lip. “Hmm. Let’s see what we have here tonight because I don’t think you’re a ninja.”

I punch the air. “Keep going.”

She studies me more closely. “You’re something mysterious. You’re trying to fly under the radar. Am I getting warmer?”

More like hot. “Yes.”

Her brow knits. “You want to go unnoticed, at least for the moment.”

I tense, hoping she’s not putting two and two together as to my identity. Absently, I raise my hand to my glasses, wondering if they give me away. But then I remember. I’m wearing my contacts tonight, something I rarely do.

She snaps her fingers. “I know! You’re a stealth start-up,” she says, using the term for a new company that’s keeping quiet.

I raise my arms in victory, a thrill racing through me. “Everyone else has guessed code ninja or SEO ninja, but you’re the first person all night to get it right. I am, indeed, a stealth start-up.”

Admittedly, donning black pants, a black shirt, and a black eye-mask might have made it challenging to guess. But then again, the angel figured it out, and all without the missing start-up button.

“Your lips gave you away.”

She recognized me from my lips? I furrow my brow behind my mask. “What do you mean?”

“Your mouth,” she says, raising her fingers dangerously near to my lips. “I could tell you weren’t a ninja because your lips aren’t covered. Ninjas cover their mouths.” I relax again since she was referring to my clothes. “Only their eyes show. But you’ve covered most of your eyes, and you’re showing only your mouth and your chin. That’s how I knew you had to be something other than a ninja.”

“I could kiss you for that,” I blurt out. I take a step back and hold up a hand. “I’m sorry. That was probably terribly inappropriate.”

A smile slowly spreads across her lips. “No, it wasn’t inappropriate. It wasn’t inappropriate at all,” she says. Something in the way she takes her time with each word tells me she wouldn’t mind being kissed. That gives me one mission and one mission only: keep talking to this angel.

But before I can ask her a question, she reaches into her purse, grabbing at something. She holds out her hand. It’s in a fist. “Is this your start-up button?”

She opens her hand to reveal a red button.

Laughing, I take it from her hand, and slip it into my pocket. “You found my start-up button. Maybe that’s why no one knew what I was. Or maybe you’re just a genius.”

“I prefer to think genius.”

“I’d offer to buy the genius a drink to keep the conversation going, but the drinks here are free . . .” I let my voice trail off, inviting her to pick up the thread if she wants to.

She smiles coyly. “I wonder if you could come up with another way to keep talking to me.”

And she wants to, so now it’s my turn. The music shifts from hipster rap to something slower, smoother. One of those songs I never know the name of but you hear on trendy TV shows before a hot couple kisses. I nod my forehead toward the speaker. “I planned that,” I say as I hold out a hand.

She laughs. “No, you didn’t.”

“But you have to admit it’s good luck, like the button. Care to dance?”

Her lips twitch in a sexy smile. “Yes, I care to dance.”

I take her hand and lead her to where the chandeliers cast patterns of light across the hardwood floors. The dance floor is surprisingly crowded, but I don’t notice who’s here since I’m not actually looking at anyone but the hazel-eyed angel. I twirl her once, and when I tug her closer, her eyes sparkle.

“You know how to dance,” she says, a note of surprise in her voice.

“I’m not just a clever costume-maker and a producer of the finest knock-knock jokes.”

She leans her head back and laughs, exposing a gorgeous throat that I want to kiss. Yes, this is instant attraction. But then, that’s exactly how some attraction can be. And, perhaps, how it should be.

“One, your costume skills need work,” she says, giving me a pointed look as we move in time to the music. “Perhaps you should enlist the help of a crafty costumer for your next ball, at least to sew on the buttons so they don’t fall off. Two, tell me a fine knock-knock joke.”