Like he found the whole situation more amusing than horrifying.
“Forget something?” he asked as I reached the bottom of his steps.
My face burned hotter than the surface of the sun. I reached up and pushed my hair off my forehead, more to expel nervous energy than fix anything out of place. “I, uh, I didn’t get your number. Or arrange when we should . . . you know. Have dinner.”
“Ah.” His smirk widened into a full smile. “That does seem like important information for planning a date.”
A date.
Oh.
My.
Mary.
Joseph.
And the donkey.
He’d called ita date.
Ever so slowly, as if sudden movement might scare my baby deer away, I climbed back up the steps, trying to look like less of a complete disaster than I felt.
“I’m really sorry about the . . .” I gestured vaguely at his face. “The kissing and running thing. That was—”
“Unexpected,” he finished, but he didn’t sound upset. If anything, he sounded amused. “But not entirely unwelcome. I like plot twists. Librarian and all, ya know.”
Not entirely unwelcome.
I’d take that. Ten times out of ten.
“So,” I said, pulling out my phone with hands that were definitely not shaking. “Number?”
He rattled off his digits. I typed them in with the precision of a surgeon, double-checking each number because there was no way I was messing this up again.
“When are you free?” I asked.
“Friday night? If that works for you.”
That gave me four days to plan something perfect, to figure out where to take him, to maybe learn how to act like a normal human being around cute librarians.
“Friday’s perfect,” I said. “I work till six. Seven o’clock?”
“Sounds good.”
We stood there for a moment, grinning at each other like idiots.
“I should probably let you get back to dinner,” I said finally, though I was reluctant to leave now that we’d actually made concrete plans. I kinda wanted to kiss him again.
“Probably,” he agreed. “Debbie’s likely wondering why the fancy whisk hasn’t produced any pasta yet.”
“Right. Pasta.” I started backing toward my truck again, but slower this time. “I’ll text you about Friday. The details, I mean.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
As I climbed behind the wheel again, I heard Debbie’s high-pitched voice carrying from inside the house, chanting with obvious delight:
“Daddy kissed a boy! Daddy kissed a boy!”
