I caught myself before I added, “Especially after hearing stories of Rosie’s, Tressa’s, and Scarlett’s pasts.”
He chuckled. “I don’t read romance books.”
“Life can sure have some twists and turns, and turn into a mystery, can’t it?” I asked.
“Do you want to solve it?” he asked.
“Solve what?”
“The mystery.”
“It was a figure of speech,” I told him. “I’ll admit that there was chemistry between us from the beginning, but most couples aren’t where we are now until a year down the road. Do you want to explain that?”
“Are you a little testy tonight?” he asked.
“If testy and hungry are the same thing, then yes, and ...” I stopped long enough to flash a grin toward him. “I’m hungry for more than pizza and beer. I want a couple of those toe-curling kisses to keep me from being so grouchy. I have missed them very much.”
He chuckled and made a turn into the trailer park. “You say what’s on your mind, and I like that.”
“I’m glad, because I don’t know how to do anything else,” I said. “But honestly, it seems like we’re moving too fast, doesn’t it? I can tell you everything about any kind of poker you want to talk about, but this is a whole new game for me. Do people really get this serious after less than a month?”
He parked in the narrow space between his and Ada Lou’s trailers. “Sometimes they do. I knew the first time I laid eyes on you that there were vibes between us. The stars aligned for us, and we can either ignore them like you did Lady Luck, or we can give thanks for them.”
He got out of the truck, but I didn’t wait for him to open the door for me that night.
He handed the pizza to me on the porch, unlocked the door, and swung it open. I went inside and set the two boxes on the stove. But when I turned around, he was right behind me with open arms. I took a step forward and his mouth landed on mine. For several minutes, we made out right there in the tiny kitchen area, and then he took a step back.
“I was starving for your kisses, even more than the pizza, so we had dessert first.” He kissed me on the forehead and took two beers from the refrigerator. He twisted the tops off both and handed one to me.
My body was still tingling when I took a long gulp, but not even the icy cold soothed the heat in my body. With the few sexual encounters I’d had through the years, nothing had ever affected me like kissing Jackson Armstrong. I wanted to take it further, but suddenly I had second thoughts, so I blinked away the idea of this being the night to go to the next level with a sigh.
“Let’s take the pizza and beer to the living room and get a movie going. What do you want to watch tonight?”
Nothing with a lot of kissing or falling into bed.
I removed my coat, crossed over to the living area, and eased down on the sofa. He brought the pizza and set it between us.
“How did you know that I liked pepperoni?” I took the first slice out of the box and bit into the pointed end. Strings of hot cheese strung out and stuck to my chin. Jackson moved closer to me and wiped it away with one of the paper napkins the pizza place had given him. “I’m as graceful as a drunk elephant on ice.”
“That’s a joke. I watched you at the steak house, and you moved across that dining room like a ballerina when you came back from the ladies’ room.”
“Thank you, but I was being very careful that evening. I didn’t want your mother to see me fall, jerk one of those white cloths off a table, and wind up on the floor with tomato bisque or whatever other fancy soup they served all over me.”
He laughed out loud. “Is Clara Williams as funny as Carla Wilson?”
“No, sir. Clara is dead serious. She doesn’t smile except when she’s trying to throw another player off his game.”
The laughter stopped. “Does that mean that when you give me one of your smiles, you are trying to manipulate me?”
“I’m Carla when I’m with you, not Clara,” I answered. “You never did answer my question about knowing that pepperoni is my favorite.”
“I don’t know about Clara, but Carla doesn’t look like a pineapple and ham person to me, or a black olive and sausage,” he answered and opened the movie drawer.
“You are right about that. And Clara doesn’t watch much television, but Carla loves it, so what have you got in mind for us tonight?”
The twinkle in his eyes told me that his thoughts weren’t on picking out a movie. “We could argue about what movie to watch and then ...”
“Do you really believe that nonsense about the eighth date? We could break up after the seventh date in an amicable way and never argue,” I told him.
