“I’m going to go home now,” I said, slinking toward the door.
“Pick you up at seven tomorrow night?”
I froze with my hand on the doorknob. My stomach churned with the nervous energy of a thousand butterflies. “For what?” I knew exactly what for.
A date!
“I thought it might be nice to head out to the farmer’s market. I need to browse around and talk with some of the regulars and see what they’re going to be selling around the end of the month.”
My nose wrinkled. Chefs were a strange breed of human. I’d never once wondered what kind of produce farmers would be selling a month in the future, two months in the future, or even what they were selling right that very moment. “Interesting.”
“What?”
“You want our first date to be an outdoor grocery shopping trip? I’m not complaining, but it’s not quite the Cash flair that I would have expected.”
A slow grin spread over his lips as he prowled up to me. “The Cash flair.” He rolled the words around in his mouth like they were covered in honey. “I think I like the sound of that.” He rested his forearm on the doorjamb above my head and gazed down at me with teasing eyes. “What exactly is theCash flair?”
Cash had elevated his flirting skills to a whole new level with that single pose. All the bells and whistles in my head were going off as the needle on my internal flirt-o-meter gauge spun round and round. Every ounce of energy I had went into keeping a cool exterior.
I cleared my throat. “This.” My voice cracked, but I pretended neither of us had noticed.
“This?”
“Yes.” I turned the knob but couldn’t bring myself to open the door.
“Me. Just standing here. That’s theCash flair?”
I inhaled his scent, my head whirring with my new favorite smell. “You’re not just standing here, and you know it.”
A chuckle rumbled deep in his throat. “I know.”
I tore my gaze away from his, but not before I shot him a smile—a half-smile. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him to turn me into a giggling puddle of a woman. I opened the door and backed into the breezeway.
Cash moved forward, his broad shoulders filling up the better part of the doorway. “That flair I’m famous for would never allow me to take a beautiful woman out for an evening of grocery shopping and nothing more. There’s going to be live music. Maybe a little dancing.”
“Dancing?” My voice squeaked. What was up with my voice’s antics today? I’d been training my voice ever since I started lessons with Mom when I was five. I was a singer—a performer—a vocal athlete. My voice didn’t crack and squeak unless I wanted it to.
Unless Cash was nearby. Then all bets were off.
“Yeah, you know what dancing is.” He snapped his fingers to a rhythm in his head and broke into a few steps of a line dance that ended all too soon. “You can dance, can’t you?”
“CanIdance?” I couldn’t. But how hard could it be? If Cash could do it, so could I.
“Confident. I like it.”
I opened my door and stepped inside.
“Come hungry,” he called after me.
“Oh, I will.” I said the words with a little too much gusto and shut my door in a hurry to avoid Cash’s knowing gaze.
I spun around and rested my back against my cool door—anything would have felt cool compared to the temperature my body was running at. My cheeks burned because I had an inkling of what I was hungry for.
Cash might have been involved, but it had nothing to do with one of his sandwiches.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
The next evening, Cash and I strolled down the sidewalk on our way to the farmer’s market. The light breeze that blew reminded me of the rush of hot air that blasted me in the face every time I pulled a frozen pizza from the oven. It wasn’t too bad though. At least this hot air didn’t smell like burnt cheese.
