Claimed by the Rebel. Jackie Braun

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      “I assure you, I am not full of surprises.” But hadn’t she just surprised herself by acknowledging how she was coming to look forward to his visits?

      He shrugged, unconvinced. “Do you want to know when my birthday is?”

      He was back to playful again, and he wagged his eyebrows at her with such exaggerated hopefulness she had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing.

      “If I did want to know your birth date,” she said, struggling for composure, “I could find an old baseball card, I’m sure. Just think, I could find out all kinds of interesting information about you. How much you weigh, how tall you are, all your baseball stats. I could be just like all the other girls.”

      “No you couldn’t,” he said, serious again, quiet. “You could never be like the other girls, Katie.”

      She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, and she was not going to let him know she cared by asking!

      He sighed, looked at her with aggravation, then smiled as if he’d hit a home run. “What would you think about hitting opening day at the Ice Hotel, in Quebec? Coincidentally, it coincides with my birthday. Approximately.”

      She scowled at him. Looked over his shoulder. Today was the first day it had been warm enough to leave her door open, spring warmth creeping in, full of promise. It was not the kind of day that normal people thought about ice hotels.

      She had seen pictures of the Ice Hotel. It was magnificent: every piece of the structure, from walls, to floors, to beds, to vodka glasses carved out of ice. Seeing the ice hotel was on her list of one hundred things she wanted to do someday, right along with swimming with dolphins. How had he managed to stumble onto something from her list?

      She eyed him suspiciously. He was a man driven. He probably broke into her apartment when she wasn’t there and found her list.

      Then she sighed. How much easier all this would be if she really could believe the worst of him. That he tanned. That he stalked. But no matter how badly she wanted to believe it to protect herself, she had that sense again, of knowing him.

      She had a weird kind of trust in him even if he had spoiled the Ice Hotel for her.

      Somehow, now, knowing she would be seeing it alone, when she had been invited to see it with him wrecked it for her. She would never be able to see those caribou-skin-covered beds now without wondering—

      “No,” she said, and her voice sounded just a teensy bit shrieky.

      “Hey, it’s not until next year.”

      “Dylan, you strike me as the man least likely to plan for something a year in advance.”

      “Not true. I mean, okay, I might have a slight problem with birthdays, but other than that I’m quite good at planning ahead. The next line of Daredevils jackets, for instance, will come out a year from now. If we can ever decide on a design.”

      “Well, the answer is still no.”

      “Ah,” he said with a sad and insincere shake of his head, “Shot down again.”

      “Dylan, I wish you’d stop this.”

      “No, you don’t,” he said softly, suddenly serious again.

      She folded her arms firmly over the bright pink peonies on her chest, but it didn’t matter how she tried to hide those peonies. That was her shameful truth. She didn’t really want this to stop, and it was nothing but embarrassing that he saw that so, so clearly.

      If she really wanted it to stop, after all, she’d just say yes to something. Anything. Motorcycles or rollerblading or dinner and dancing. And then this whole thing would follow a very predictable pattern, the age-old formula for every story. It would have a beginning. A middle. And an end.

      An end, as in stopped. Over. He probably wouldn’t even drop in here anymore.

      “I’m not going out with you, Dylan,” she said. “Not ever. You must have better things to do with your time than pester me.”

      “Ah, Katie, my lady, oddly enough I’ve come to adore pestering you.”

      “That’s what I was afraid of,” she said solemnly.

      He laughed. His laughter was beautiful, it twinkled through his eyes, showed the whiteness of his teeth, the strong column of his throat. He laughed from his belly, with sincere enjoyment, a contagious joie de vivre. But his laughter just made her more aware of how much she stood to lose the moment she said yes.

      Sitting at his desk, throwing foam basketballs at his net and missing with heart-wrenching regularity, Dylan McKinnon was struck by inspiration.

      He realized he had been going about this the wrong way. He’d asked Margot to find out for him what girls liked, and gotten more than what he bargained for when their answers had poured in. He’d tried to talk Katie into doing what he liked, but with the same result.

      But he had always known she wasn’t like any other girl he’d ever met. Her ability to say no to him being an unfortunate case in point.

      It was time to tackle this differently.

      He thought about what he knew about Katie for sure. He knew she was heartbroken.

      Aside from that he knew she liked books and possibly cats. She was devoted to the library.

      She wanted to swim with dolphins. And he knew he’d seen just the tiniest flicker of interest in her eye when he’d mentioned the Ice Hotel.

      Absently he did an Internet search. Cats + books + libraries.

      Astonishingly he got a hit, and it was close to home, too. The gods had taken pity on him, seen the worthiness of his mission. Because there it was, as simple as that: the event she would find irresistible. The Toronto Public Library was hosting a fund-raising meet and greet with famous cat cartoonist Tac Revol. Tickets, naturally, were sold out, an obstacle that meant absolutely nothing to Daredevil Dylan McKinnon. By the end of the week, he had them.

      He walked into her store, practically swaggering with confidence. He paused and studied her. She was trying not to acknowledge him. Could she possibly be miffed that he had not been in here every day? Oh, yes, he thought happily, that seemed to be a distinct possibility! Did she look different?

      Yes, much worse than she had a week ago. She had her hair loose, which was unusual, but the style was uninspiring, lying limp to the curve of a shoulder hidden by a ruffled neckline. The skirt was a multilayered affair in several deep and distressing shades of purple.

      She looked everywhere but at him. Then she met his eyes, smiled with bright phoniness, and said, “So, have you met someone new? Time to send out your famous let’s-get-to-know-each-other bouquet?”

      Ah, so that’s why she thought he hadn’t been around. “No, I haven’t met anyone new,” he said.

      “Well, time’s awasting,” she said, still spilling over with phony brightness. “If you’re going to keep up your same schedule, a woman a month, for this year, you’ll have to get busy.”

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