Jacks is crowded. The jukebox is loud and apparently someone is having an 80s flashback, because Bon Jovi is playing when we come in. We slide into the last two seats at the bar, and while Luis pours us Guinness drafts I get down to business and start asking questions.

I find out that Mitch started filming this past Monday. His character, Blake Ratcliffe, is the recently-discovered long-lost son of the show’s matriarch, Lucille, a formidable woman both in and out of her role. Mitch speaks of her with enormous respect, and insists she’s very well-liked by everyone.

I file that away for Kari but I know that’s not going to hold her. I try another tack. “So, if you’re so long-lost and everything, does that mean they didn’t know you existed at all?”

He shakes his head. “They had no idea. Grown children you never knew you had are a soap staple. I get to be the black sheep and shock everyone in my very proper family, especially my mother, with my wild ways and womanizing.”

“Womanizing?” I echo.

“Yeah, they’re hooking me up with this character named Cassie—she’s Lucille’s husband’s daughter.”

I think about that for a moment and say, “Wouldn’t that make her your sister?” Kari will love this.

“Stepsister,” he corrects me. “But yes, it’s terribly scandalous. Apparently I’m the sort that doesn’t care what other people think.”

“Typecasting?”

“Damn straight,” he says. “I can’t remember the last time I cared what anyone thought about me.”

Must be nice, I think.

Luis drops off our beers, and I take a sip, flipping through my mental rolodex of Midnight Confessions questions. What should I ask next?

He heads me off, though, by saying, “So tell me about this project at work that’s got you so frazzled.”

And to my surprise, once again it seems like the most natural thing in the world to talk to him.

“We’re launching this new savings and investment product. My boss wants to call it Grow; hopefully I can talk him out of it, but only if I can get my people to come up with something better. The idea is to market it to college students, who are kind of an untapped market in that they’re not generally looking to save or invest anything; they’re too busy taking out student loans.”

“So,” he says, “the problem is, how do you get someone who’s so broke that he’s borrowing for school to make a long-term investment decision that won’t show any results for years?”

“Exactly. The plan is to offer some very good opportunities for a much lower initial investment, and to give preferential rates to people who have other accounts with us.”

He smiles broadly. “Including student loans?”

“Especially student loans.” Man, he’s quick. I can’t help but slip into my marketing persona, and sell it to him like I would anyone else I was trying to convince. “The basic rationale is that kids that choose to go to college are going to go on to get good jobs where their investment potential is much greater. And these kids are already predisposed to understanding the value of saving and long-term investment, by virtue of the fact that they’ve decided to pursue a higher education in hopes of a better job—and, one can reason, enough money to prepare adequately for retirement.”

“So you want to get eighteen-year-olds thinking about retirement.”

“I didn’t say it was going to be easy. But I’m really excited about it, and I think that if we market it the right way it could work. Spectacularly.”

“And that’s where you come in,” he says.

“That’s where I come in. If we’re going to sell it, it’s going to be because of me. Or because of my department, which for all intents and purposes is the same thing.”

“That’s a lot to take on one set of shoulders.”

“It’s just the way it is,” I say. “I’m the head of the department, so Creative and Copywriting and Web Development and all of that falls under my umbrella. This is why the whole thing is making me a nervous wreck. If it fails, it’s on me.”

“And if it succeeds?” he asks.

“Then I might get a raise. And a big success under my belt should I need leverage later on.”

“Leverage for what?”

“Who can say? But this is the corporate world; it always pays to have an ace up your sleeve.”

“Office politics,” he says with distaste. “Sounds too stressful for me. I don’t do stress.”

“Doing stress isn’t really a choice, is it? I mean, I would think no matter where you are, stress is going to find you. Surely your job gets stressful.”

“I enjoy my job enough that the normal stress of it doesn’t bother me at all,” he says. “And if the stress gets to be too much … well, I can just move east and find a new soap, right?” He smiles at me again, but for the first time I don’t see his eyes backing it up.

“Is that what happened?” I ask quietly.

“I don’t really want to talk about it.” He doesn’t sound angry, but he also doesn’t sound like he’s going to budge on that, so I leave it alone.

Before I can think of what to say next, Mitch switches the conversation back to me, asking me questions about where I grew up and stuff. I find myself telling him all sorts of things that I generally keep to myself. We both have a good laugh over the story about the year my dad walked in on my birthday party and didn’t remember it was my birthday. It’s one of my favorites—I mean, it sucks that my dad forgot my birthday, but it really is a funny story. Especially the way I tell it.

“And he goes ‘What the hell is the cake for?’” I say, laughing.

“Seriously?” Mitch shakes his head like he can’t even believe it.

“It’s true, cross my heart. And so cranky, like it was a huge inconvenience to come home and find all these kids in the house.” I take a big gulp of beer and smile, remembering his face.

Mitch just shakes his head again, but he’s laughing a little, too. “You’re really tough, to be able to laugh that off.”

“Seriously, it wasn’t a big deal. Still isn’t. He loved me like crazy.” I’m still giggling when I realize he’s not laughing anymore. I turn to look at him and he’s staring at me, his eyes hooded and undecipherable. The color looks different in this light, darker. “Mitch—”

“Don’t say anything,” he says, and I hush up obediently. “I know we don’t know each other well, and this is our first date.”

“Yes.”

He reaches out and cups my face in his hands, strokes my cheek with his thumb, slides his hands down to cup the curves of my shoulders. “But you look really beautiful when you’re being brave, and I’ve decided that I’m going to kiss you.”

Uh-oh.

I start to say something—what?—but before I can get a word out he’s leaning half out of his seat and pulling me halfway out of mine to meet him. I put my hands on his knees to balance myself and then, as promised, he kisses me.

Oh, my.

It’s a soft kiss, not much more than a shared, lingering breath. It’s not at all like I thought it would be.

Wait a minute, I think, does that mean I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to kiss him?

Well, maybe a little.

His teeth tease at my lower lip, then his tongue flickers out and traces along the path where his teeth were. His lips are perfect, and he’s kissing me quite expertly, with just the right amount of pressure. I part my lips almost involuntarily and he gently meets my tongue with his.

What is going on? How is this happening? How much have I had to drink? My God, is anyone watching?

These questions flit in and out of my mind, but I can’t seem to concentrate on them. I can’t seem to do much of anything, really, except kiss him back. So I do that, moving to meet his tongue with my own, learning the taste and feel of his mouth.

His hands leave my shoulders and trail down my arms, and as the kiss deepens and gets more intense I feel his hands slipping under my shirt. His fingers brush across my back, just above the waistline of my pants. His skin is rough against mine; frankly, it’s sexy as hell.

But it’s also one hell of a wake-up call. What am I doing? Kari sent me on a mission; she didn’t send me out here to get kissed.

I break off the kiss and pull away, and he backs off immediately. He moves his hands and rests them on the curve of my hips—in a position that, to be honest, isn’t any less indecent. But at least my pants are between us this way. I take my hands off his knees and fold them in my lap to hide their trembling. My God, he smells so good.

He doesn’t say anything; he just looks at me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should never have agreed to this. This is awful.”

He looks mildly offended. “I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“That’s not what I mean.” I fumble for the words. “I like you very much.”

“Good—”

“You don’t understand. I don’t like you that way.”

“You were doing fine just now,” he says, but he takes his hands off my hips and reaches for his beer.

I resist the urge to tell him that he wasn’t too shabby himself. Not to mention the urge to reach out and stroke that gorgeous jawline until he stops frowning at me like he’s doing now.

I keep my thoughts—and my hands—to myself. There’s no sense in encouraging him any more than I already have.

The thing is—and it makes me sound shallow, but it’s not that—there’s a very specific sort of guy that, for me, is the end goal. And it’s not about money, it’s not about his job exactly, or any one thing I can put my finger on. I just know what Mr. Right is supposed to be like, and this isn’t it.

A few years ago? Mitch would have made a spectacular Mr. Right Now. But that’s not where I’m at anymore. And he can call it a checklist if he wants to, but I’m not ashamed of wanting very specific things in my life—and I don’t need some sexy dude swaggering in and upending my ideas about what I need. I know what I need.

But oh Lord, what I need and what I want are not the same thing right now.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to kiss you just then”—Lord, it sure isn’t—“but there are so many reasons why we really should keep this strictly just friends.”

“Give me one,” he challenges.

I rack my brain, trying to remember all the good reasons I had. “You’re just not my type, Mitch,” I say lamely.

He shakes his head. “That’s a stupid reason. I don’t think that even qualifies as a reason.”

“It’s not stupid. Everyone’s got a type—a Mr. Right.”

“Like Drew.”

I nod. “Well, yeah.”

“And I’m Mr. Wrong.”

I shake my head. “I’m not saying that. It’s just … people are attracted to a specific kind of person, you know?”

“So you don’t find me attractive?” He sounds like he doesn’t believe that for a second. Does he have to be so unshakeable, so supremely self-confident?

“No, it’s not that—of course you’re—I mean—” This isn’t working out how I’d hoped. “Whether or not someone is attractive isn’t the only thing that matters.”

“So what does matter?” he asks. “What is it about me that you don’t like?”

Huh. I’ll be damned—I can’t think of a single thing.

“You don’t understand,” I say again. This is, apparently, the best I can do.

“I understand more than you think,” he says. “I understand that if you stopped worrying about Mr. Right, you might find that things aren’t as cut and dried as you think. You might find that people don’t fit into those neat boxes you want to put them in.”

I don’t know what to say to that. Do I put people in boxes? I certainly don’t mean to. “All I’m saying is, I think you’re a really nice guy, and I would like us to be friends.”

“Friends,” he says.

“Yes, I’ve enjoyed talking with you and I would like to do more of it.” I try on a smile. After all, it’s the unvarnished truth. The whole truth. Just friends. Whatever just happened here was an anomaly.

After a moment, he nods. “Friends it is, then. That’s probably for the best, all things considered.”

What’s that supposed to mean? Oh, wait, isn’t that pretty much what I said to him? Somehow it sounds different when he says it. Plus, why did he give in so easily?

“So … friend,” he says, “let’s go find a cab and take you home.” He stands up and offers me his arm again.

He’s not very good at this friends thing. Kari never escorts me around with our arms wound together.

“I can just take the train, really,” I say.

“Friends or no friends, I’m not letting you wander off on our first—and only—date. I’ll see you home.”

And how is a girl supposed to say no to something like that?