Beyond the Ivory Tower by Jill Blake

you the address.”
    “Great. I’ll bring wine.” He paused. “On second thought, maybe we should skip the wine.”
    Anna bit her lip. “About that…I don’t usually drink.” She straightened the nearest stack of papers, making sure all the edges aligned. “I mean, maybe some wine with dinner, but never to the point of getting drunk. I don’t know what happened that night. I guess I was nervous. You were very kind, and I’m sorry if I embarrassed you…”
    “You didn’t embarrass me.”
    “I didn’t?” She frowned. “But you left…”
    “Yes.” He sighed, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck. “I didn’t trust myself to stay and not take advantage of you.”
    “I wanted you to take advantage.”
    His nostrils flared. “Anna…unless you’re ready to finish what we started—right here, right now—”
    A knock on the door dispelled any notion of that happening.
    Ethan shook his head. “I’ll see you tonight. And this time, unless you kick me out, I’m staying.”
    Her pulse fluttered at the intent in his eyes. She thought she’d messed up, that there was no going back.
    Thank God for second chances.
     

CHAPTER NINE
     
     
    Ethan wasn’t sure what to expect when he parked on the quiet street in front of Anna’s building. It was a three-story complex built around a central courtyard, with a wrought-iron external gate. Anna buzzed him in through the intercom system, and met him at the front door to her apartment.
    Her hair was down, and she wore a short wrap-around dress partially covered by an apron that read “Kiss the cook.”
    He grinned and did just that, leaving her pink-cheeked and flustered when he finally let her up for air.
    “These are for you,” he said, offering her the box of See’s chocolates he’d picked up earlier that day.
    “My favorite!” She smiled. “Thank you.”
    She led the way into a living/dining area, where the low lighting and soft music set the tone for what turned out to be one of the most memorable meals he’d had as an adult. Anna had clearly put a great deal of effort into the presentation: an Italian antipasti platter with marinated peppers, sundried tomatoes, olives, and assorted cheeses, followed by roasted chicken breast with pancetta, leeks, and thyme, and topped off by berries with sweetened crème fraiche, along with the chocolates he had brought.
    What made the evening so extraordinary, though, wasn’t the food. It was Anna herself, and how comfortable he felt in her unassuming company. Unlike his ex-wife, and the countless women who came after, Anna didn’t seem to crave the social cachet or media spotlight that came with dating him. Nor did she appear interested in his net worth. If anything, she went out of her way to avoid the perks of wealth he took for granted. In San Francisco, she’d insisted on paying for their dinner. And now, instead of jumping at the chance to go out on the town, she’d invited him to her place for a home-cooked meal.
    Their conversation drifted from books to politics to immigration. It turned out her family had left Russia when Anna was nine—which explained the faint hint of an accent he sometimes detected, and the unfamiliar expressions that occasionally peppered her speech.
    “It was touch and go for a while,” she said, in response to his question about the early years following their arrival in the U.S. “Dad managed to get a soft money position at Penn in the physics department. And Mom got a job with Concord Engineering, in their Philadelphia office.”
    She rose and started clearing the table. Ethan snagged their glasses and a nearly untouched bottle of dessert wine, then followed her into the kitchen. “Is that where you grew up?”
    “Sort of. There’s a huge Russian community in northeast Philadelphia, and for a few years we lived there. When Klara was born, we moved out to the suburbs. Better schools, safer neighborhood.”
    She reached into an overhead cabinet for a plastic container.