“Thank you for being my date tonight,” she said softly as she dug her keys out of her purse.
“It was my pleasure.”
“It didn’t go exactly as I expected,” she confessed.
He smiled down at her, the light from her foyer catching his profile perfectly. “Do you want to talk about that?”
“Uh…” She hesitated. That was clearly an opening for her to invite him in, right? She didn’t want to take up more of his time than she already had, but if he was offering to talk, she wasn’t going to say no. “Sure. If you aren’t in a hurry.”
“I got a hotel room for the night. And it’s still early. I’m all yours—I’m grateful for your help, Jess. We all are. Liam thinks the world of you.”
Right. The town. She nodded. “Sure, come on in.” She unlocked the door. “Would you like a drink? Tea, coffee—”Me?No, that was definitely not the ending to that sentence. “Whiskey, or wine?”
“Would you have a glass of wine?”
She pushed the door open and winked at him. “I’d drink the bottle, unless you wanted some of it.”
“Then wine sounds great.”
She didn’t have any Go West wine, but whipping out a bottle of his own stuff would be too obvious anyway. She had a California white in the fridge, though, and he nodded approvingly at the label when she showed it to him.
After pouring two glasses, she led him to the living room, where they sank onto the same couch side by side. Evan loosened his tie, and she kicked off her heels.
At first, they just sat there in silence, drinking their wine.
“This is nice,” he said.
“It had good reviews,” she said, tipping her glass to the side. “I like it.”
“I meant the company,” he added dryly. “But the wine is good.”
“Ah.” She felt herself pink a little in the cheeks. “As is the company from my perspective as well.”
“So how was it different than you expected tonight?” he asked. “Did it go better? Or worse?”
“Just different.” She sighed. “I thought I wanted to show Brent I’d moved on.”
“And in actuality?”
“I think I was using you as a shield in case it was too hard to see him, period. And it wasn’t. If anything, I felt kind of bad for bringing a date when he was alone. That’s messed up, right? After a year?”
* * *
Evan wasn’t goingto tell her she was messed up. For God’s sake, she was human, that was all. And clearly still in love with her ex.
“You’re not going to answer, are you?” She leaned in and poked him gently, her finger lingering on his arm before she pulled away. The proximity gave him a chance to breathe in the scent of her, light and floral mixed with warm and womanly beneath that. “I guess only I can answer that question.”
“There you go.”
“But sometimes we’re not the best judge of ourselves, you know? It’s hard to be objective.”
“On the other hand, as an outside observer I’m going to miss a lot of subtext.”
“Such as?”
“You’re awfully nice to him.”
She looked surprised. “Really?”
