“Thank you. You look beautiful,” he replies.
“Thank you. I’m ready, I just gotta grab my purse. Would you like to come in?”
“I’ll wait,” he replies, and I slip back into the house to grab my purse. I’m back outside within seconds.
“Okay, all ready. So, where’re we going?”
He rushes ahead to open the car door for me. “It’s a secret.”
I want to roll my eyes as I climb in, but I manage to hold it back. I might as well prepare myself for a typical date in Loveville. Dinner at a restaurant I’ve eaten in a thousand times, and then probably to the bar and grill for drinks and dancing. I was hoping he’d be more creative than that.
Shepard climbs in behind the wheel and starts driving out of town.
“Hey, I said we can’t leave town.”
He laughs. “I know. We won’t. I have a picnic set up for us.”
My brows lift. “A picnic?”
He nods. “Yes, I wanted to think outside the box, and since I can’t wine and dine you with expensive wine and a five-star meal, I had to come up with something else.”
Suddenly I’m excited, and can’t wait to see what he’s come up with. A little while later, we’re turning down an old dirt road and the tree line opens to a big lake. I look over at him with a smirk. “Really? Lover’s Lake?”
He laughs. “I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m trying to take you to the sock hop or something, but I needed some place that wasn’t on private property.”
I laugh. “No, this is great. I haven’t been here in years.”
His brow lifts. “So, you’ve been here before?”
“Of course. I grew up here. Every horny teenager has been here before.”
“Who’d you come with?” He’s smiling, wanting all my deepest, darkest secrets.
“Oh, just about every boyfriend I had in high school.”
He begins driving around the lake and off to the far side. Nobody ever goes this far.
“Tell me about the first time you came here.”
I roll my eyes as my face heats up. “Well, his name was Tommy. We’d only been dating for about two weeks, but he had a car, and he was one of the popular kids, so he just thought that I’d sleep with him. We parked by the lake and he turned on music, then he slid closer and spouted off all these stupid lines about how beautiful I was, and how he was the luckiest guy in the school because he was here with me.” I roll my eyes. “Then he kissed me and that was fine. It wasn’t great. He was sloppy. It was too wet.” I want to shiver just thinking about it. “Then he tried for second base and I pushed him away. We ended up getting into a fight and he left me here. I had to knock on a window and borrow someone’s phone to call my sister to come get me.”
“He left you?” he asks, looking at me quickly before turning his attention back to the windshield.
“Yep,” I say with a nod.
“Then what happened?”
“Then Monday at school, he told everyone that he broke up with me. End of story.”
He shakes his head. “What a tool. Where’s this guy now?”
“No idea. Long gone. He left for college and I ain’t seen him since.”
He finally parks and opens his door. “Come on.”
“Come on where? Nobody ever gets out of their car here.”
He closes his door and circles around the vehicle to open mine. When I step out, I see a blanket spread out across the ground with an ice bucket and wine chilling. He opens the rear door and pulls out a picnic basket, carrying it over to the blanket.
