“Is that sarcasm I hear?”
He tilted his head, affronted. “Me? I could never.”
I clutched my stomach, laughing as he ordered our food. My cheeks hurt from laughing so much over the past thirty minutes since he’d picked me up from my office.
We hadn’t gone anywhere fancy, but there was an outdoor concert at the park, and we’d planned on getting those sausages anyway, so that was where we ended up.
Groaning, I closed my eyes and swallowed the first bite of my sandwich. “Mmm, these are so dang good.”
When I opened my eyes again, I zeroed in on the scorching gaze Don gave me. It gripped me from the inside out. For a minute, my entire body short-circuited, and I forgot how to walk and talk. Even blink.
His gaze slowly traveled down to my mouth where it lingered for half a beat before his eyes wandered back up to mine. He didn’t say anything as he took the first bite of his sandwich. But really, what needed to be said?
The air around us sparked with sexual energy. I grew acutely aware of the apex between my thighs and had to force myself to push away thoughts of Don between my legs.
I cleared my throat and broke eye contact to maintain my sanity. “Corey used to tell me about the pranks you played at the station.”
“We all play jokes on one another.”
“Yeah, but he used to say you were on another level. Always the one to keep the energy flowing and light around the station. I bet you were the class clown in school.”
We continued walking, food in hand. He pondered for a minute as he chewed, and then he turned to me. When I thought he would answer, he swiped one of my cheese fries instead.
“Hey,” I yelled as he popped the fry into his mouth.
“Damn, those are good. I should’ve got a large.”
“You should’ve gotten your own. These are mine.” I turned my body away from him when he went to steal another one.
He frowned.
“Don’t look at me like that. Besides, I’m the woman. I should be stealing food from your plate.”
“Is that how it’s supposed to work?”
“What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine,” I quipped.
He lifted a dark eyebrow, smirking. “Sounds like a marriage to me.”
I snorted. “It’s a...compromise.”
He huffed. “The definition of a compromise is an arrangement where nobody gets what it is they want.”
“Is that your definition?”
“It’s in Webster’s. Look it up.”
I scoffed. “Whatever you say.”
“To answer your question, I was the class clown in middle and early high school.”
I asked. “What happened later in high school to change it?”
He looked at me with a seriousness in his eyes that made me hold my breath. “After my mom got sick, things didn’t seem so funny anymore. Then she…”
He turned his head away.
With my food in my left hand, I reached out and squeezed his forearm, with my right. I knew the pain of losing a parent. It never really left. You just learned to deal with it.
