“How do you do that?” she asked. “This is the second time you’ve been able to sneak up on me.”

His tawny gaze settled on her face… which gave her a distinctly unsettled feeling. He stood about six two or three. She was five nine and had put on two-inch heels, but still had to tilt her head slightly to study his face.

“I sneak by profession,” he said. “You look terrific.”

She glanced down at the black dress she’d pulled on. She’d bought it on impulse from a guy selling them out of the back of a truck on campus. With the designer label cut out and not a tag in sight, she’d had a feeling the merchandise hadn’t been exactly legal. But the price had been amazing and the dress made her feel elegant and sophisticated. Two things she knew she would need tonight.

She held out her arms, sucked in her stomach and turned slowly. “The miracles of modern medicine.”

“Did you have a boy or a girl?” he asked.

“It was more of a beanbag mound. Undetermined gender.”

As she came to stop in front of him, she flipped back her long hair, a gesture she’d perfected at age fourteen and hadn’t had reason to use in years.

This was fun. Maybe she’d been too hasty in settling in to her years of celibacy. There was something to be said for appreciation in a man’s eyes.

Sam took her hand and placed it in the crook of his arm.

“Shall we?” he asked, motioning to the open courtyard of the restaurant.

“Why not?”

Why not? Well, for one thing, there was a growing knot of nerves in the pit of her stomach. Sam was smooth. The men of her acquaintance didn’t dress like GQ and act like James Bond. The guys in grad school were more jeans and Taco Bell.

Oh, well. She’d said she was going to get back in the swim of things and had decided throwing herself in the deep end was the quickest way. If her plan backfired, she would dog-paddle to the side and drag her wet butt out of the pool.