They headed into the main ballroom with a crowd of other laptop-toting gamers, and searched for the section of tables reserved for her server. Once they found it, someone waved at them and she recognized several of her guild-mates—Madrigal the jongleur, PatsySue the mage, WangGus the Cutpurse and OuiBabyShaman, their healer.
“We saved you seats,” PatsySue called out as she and Loch approached. “Glad you could make it!”
“Glad to be here,” Taylor said, grinning. Loch held out her chair for her and she sat, trying not to blush as PatsySue gave her a few nosy looks. PatsySue was the guild gossip, and if she thought there was something going on, she’d make sure everyone knew about it. Taylor would have to be careful and make sure that Loch remained most definitely in the friend-zone when PatsySue was around. Loch pulled up a chair and sat down next to Taylor, and they both opened their laptops. “Loch’s got a baby toon so I’ll partner with him and pull him through any sort of dungeons they toss our way.”
“A baby toon?” one of the men asked. “What do you play?”
Oh, hell. She couldn’t remember if they’d mentioned that he was playing a female toon and pretending to be her roomie instead of her boyfriend. “You know what? I have a second account for when we need a tank. You want to play my Battlemage, Loch? She’s max level.”
“No thanks, I can play my warrior.” He pecked in his password with two fingers. Someone at the table snickered.
“Warlord,” someone corrected. “Warriors are in WoW.”
“WoW?” Loch looked up.
“World of Warcraft,” Taylor murmured. “It’s another game.”
“Ah.” He peered at his screen, concentrating as he logged on. “I’m not familiar with these games.”
“No kidding,” PatsySue said dryly, watching him hunt and peck at the keyboard.
“Warlord’s easy,” Madrigal said. “You just hit the Attack button and face-roll on through.”
“Face-roll?”
“I’ll explain later,” replied Taylor, giving the others a warning look. Were they deliberately trying to intimidate him? She felt protective of Loch for some reason. He was an adult and could take care of himself, but she hated the way the others sniggered as they watched him type. He played polo and rugby, damn it. He didn’t spend his time behind a screen pretending to live life. He actually lived it.
In that moment, Taylor wanted to get up and drag Loch out of the room and go somewhere—anywhere—but there.
“I’ll meet you in Cityport,” Madrigal offered, and Taylor shot him a grateful look. At least someone in her guild wasn’t being a douche.
Taylor logged in to her Dragon Rider, quickly scanning through the Message of the Day and the emails in her guild leader inbox. Sigmund started sending her messages right away, and she quickly got buried in the minutiae of Excelsior life. She was so absorbed in what she was doing that she’d forgotten about Loch.
“What’s that you just did?”
She glanced up and looked over at him, but he wasn’t speaking to her. Instead, he was looking over at Madrigal.
“I had my character bow to yours,” Madrigal said. “There’s an entire list of commands available that will let you do actions.”
“Where?”
“Click over here,” Madrigal said, pointing at Loch’s screen.
She really was going to have to promote Madrigal in-guild. He was always so helpful, and the time he was taking with Loch just confirmed what a genuinely nice guy he was. “I’ll run over to Cityport and meet you both,” she told them. She launched her character onto the back of her dragon and aimed it toward the city. “Be there in a jiffy.”
“Mmm,” Loch said, clicking away and peering at his screen. “I think I just danced at you, Mad.”
“You did,” Madrigal said with a chuckle.
Taylor glanced up and saw PatsySue smirking again. Ugh. Why was she being such a jerk? Everyone started out new at some point. Her dragon zoomed through a portal and appeared over Cityport, so she peeked at Loch’s screen to see where they were. Both his character and Madrigal’s were dancing in the courtyards. Smiling, she turned her dragon in that direction and landed. “I’m here.”
She piloted her character toward the two dancers. One was Madrigal’s short little gnomeling. The other dancer was Loch’s female Warlord, dressed in a few cast-off pieces of newbie armor. To share in the emote fun, she parked her character in front of them and waved in-game.
Loch’s Warlord waved back. Then, he/she dropped to a knee in-game and spoke:
TAYLOR, WILL YOU MARRY ME?
“Psst, you have the caps-lock key on, buddy,” Madrigal whispered to Loch.
“Shit. Right. Sorry.” He began to retype slowly, while Taylor stared at her computer screen, jaw hanging open.
The words eventually crawled onto her screen:
Taylor, will you marry me?
She looked over at Loch. “Like . . . in-game?”
He frowned at her, and shook his head. “I suppose I need to do this right.” He got out of his chair and went to one knee.
The breath left her.
Loch pulled a small box out of his pocket and held it out to her. “Taylor,” he said in that lovely, accented voice of his that made her knees weak. “Will you marry me?”
“Oh my god,” squealed someone at a nearby table. “Look! He’s proposing!”
Taylor looked up and it seemed like the entire room had gone utterly silent. Every face was turned to them. Her heart was racing, and everything felt very surreal. She looked over at Loch—gorgeous, sexy, athletic Loch, who didn’t play video games and was totally out of her league. “Why?” she whispered.