Patrick ~ Where There's Smoke...

His first message was like most first messages on these websites:

"Your profile intrigues me. It's rare here to see a woman who actually knows what she wants and isn't afraid to ask for it. Can we chat?"

That was mid-October. By the end of that week we had been trading witty messages back and forth daily - feeling each other out, getting to know each other a little. By the middle of the next week we had graduated to messenger (honestly, where would we all be without messenger?!). We chatted nearly non-stop during the day while at our desks at work.

I liked talking to Patrick. He was smart and funny and sexy without being obnoxious about it. I had only seen a couple pictures of him, one from his younger days that quite literally made me drool, and one recent one that was all-grown-up-sexy. I knew he was married, with children, in his mid-forties, and completely stifled in his marriage. I also knew he was tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed and slim.

We chatted steadily through the rest of October, and into November. He started to hint that he wanted to meet me; and while I wasn't against it, I wasn't rushing toward it either. I had been sorely disappointed in the past, both by men who didn't match their pictures, and by men whose personalities didn't live up to their hype.

When he finally convinced me to meet it was the third week of November. We picked a little pub downtown and agreed on a time. It was a place I was comfortable with, being the site of many of my more youthful shenanigans over the years. I arrived early and took a table at the back among the busy lunch crowd.

When he walked in 10 minutes later, I'm sure I looked like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. I knew it was him the moment he walked in - he looked exactly like his picture. Tall, blonde, lightly tanned, slim but fit, dark slacks, black sweater, black overcoat, and blue eyes that pinned me to my seat. He approached, smiling, and somehow I managed to get to my feet and accept his light hug.

Spark, nuthin'.

I know I babbled like a fool through that whole visit. I know because he told me later. I don't recall much about that first meeting, I was that floored. I have flashes of images. His forearms, lightly furred, as they rested on the table; the way his eyes smiled into mine. I have no idea what we talked about. At one point in my babbling he reached out a finger and ran it across my wrist, halting the stream of words mid-sentence.

You know that hokey, romance novel blather about a touch feeling like a jolt of electricity? Yeah, I never bought that either. And that's exactly what his touch felt like. I felt it right to my toes and every place in-between. I remember meeting his eyes, speechless with the shock of the sensation. I remember clasping my hands together to stop them trembling. I know he rescued me with a new, innocuous topic of conversation. But damned if I know what it was, or how I got through the rest of our time.

I remember, when we left the pub and he walked me back to my car, how he turned to me, an almost shy smile playing at his lips, and slipped his hands under my coat to tug me close and feather a slow kiss over my unresisting mouth. I vaguely remember getting into my car and driving back to work.

I didn't reopen messenger to continue our conversation. I didn't reply to his emails that afternoon. I was stunned. I was, in a word, terrified.

That spark I was looking for? It was there alright. Actually, I had skipped the spark and gone straight to full-on blaze and it scared the hell out of me. Yes I wanted it, in fact had insisted on it; but here it was and the strength of it had me rethinking everything.

Could I really do this?