Ty leaned closer. “I didn’t hear you, sweetheart.”
“Yes,” she said louder, lightning striking through her body as all of her memories of Carver stormed back to life. “I’ve been engaged—just once. It didn’t work out.”
“Engaged?” The level of surprise in Ty’s voice pitched it up. “Wow.” He chuckled. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.”
“You don’t think someone would like me enough to want to marry me?” She threw him a smile that pinched against her cheeks.
“No, of course not,” he said. “It’s not that—I just….”
Winnie took a couple of beef kebabs, and then moved down and added two slices of smoked turkey to her plate, all while Ty tried to figure out what to say.
When she reached the end of the table, where she ladled some gravy over her turkey and then turned to face Ty, she said, “This isn’t good party conversation. We don’t have to talk about it right now.”
“Is he why you left Oklahoma?” he asked.
Winnie’s eyes widened, and Ty seemed to get the message without her having to say anything. He frowned. “I’m really sorry, Winnie.”
“Like I said, it’s not good party conversation.” She turned away, scanning the tables for somewhere to sit. She’d literally just met everyone here, and she could admit she was looking for a table with two seats.
“There,” Ty said. “Next to Jacob.” And he led the way to a table in the corner, where Jacob sat with a male RA named Redd and the nighttime custodian, an older man named Mark.
Ty sat next to Jacob and asked, “Can we sit here?”
Jacob nodded and grinned first at Ty and then at Winnie.
Ty signed and said, “I live with Jacob. Did you know that?” He moved with a graceful, fluid motion, but his signs did seem a little hesitant.
“Yes,” Winnie said, and she smiled over to Jacob. “Now tell me—is he a clean roommate, or is he messy?”
Jacob laughed and said,Ty’s a neat freak.
Winnie looked at Ty. “Ah-ha. Good information.”
“I amnota neat freak,” Ty said. “I just think things have their place, and that’s where they should go.”
Jacob laughed again, and Winnie couldn’t stop smiling. “Sounds like a neat freak to me,” she said.
“I better watch my job,” Mark said, and he signed and spoke too. Winnie looked at him, because she hadn’t realized that he could also hear. “Sometimes I don’t think I’m as neat as I should be.”
Oh, you’re fine, Jacob said, and they settled in to eat their dinner. There wasn’t tons of conversation in a Deaf meal while people used utensils to eat instead of their hands to talk, but Winnie really enjoyed the camaraderie that came with simply being with another person.
She really wanted her date with Ty, and after she finished her dinner, she leaned over to him and said, “I’m going to go get the brownies. Do you want me to get you some?”
“I want one of everything, sweetheart.” He ducked his head toward hers, and their eyes met again. The whole world fell away from Winnie in that moment. If she just tilted her head a little bit more, and Ty moved another eight inches, she could kiss him.
Panic flooded through her, because when Carver had left, she’d never thought she’d be whole again. She thought she’d never feel anything for a man again, and yet, there she sat at a nine-foot round table with a cream-colored tablecloth on it, imagining kissing Tyson Greene.
“What are you doing tomorrow night after your brother gets engaged?” she asked.
Ty blinked at her. “I don’t rightly know.”
“Do you have a family obligation? Surely he’ll want to go out with his fiancée alone.”
“Yeah, I think they’re planning on doing something by themselves,” Ty said.
So Winnie tiptoed her fingers across the table and down Ty’s arm. She tapped his wrist a couple of times. “Maybe you’re not free for lunch, but maybe you’re free for dinner.”
Ty slid his hand back and curled his fingers aroundhers. Everything tight inside Winnie sighed away at the warmth and comfort of holding hands with him.
