“Itoldyou I find you brilliant and beautiful and intriguing. Of course, I did a deep internet dive. Isn’t that what folks do when they meet someone they like?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I usually just plug their name into the FBI database and see what pops up.”
He chuckled again. Anddamnit!The low, throaty sound turned her brain to mush and threatened to have it leaking out of her ears.
“Not all of us have access to the FBI database,” he countered.
“Color me curious. What did you find?”
“About you specifically?”
She nodded.
“Not much. You don’t have an Instagram account. You’re not out there tweeting away your day.” A line appeared between his eyebrows. “Or whatever it’s called now that the name isn’t Twitter. So, I was left with the various news articles that mention you. Oh, and I perused your online high school yearbook.” One corner of his mouth quirked. “You chose your senior quote to be, ‘Any pizza is a personal pizza if you try hard enough’?”
She grimaced. “I fancied myself a comedienne. If you aren’t tall, blond, and beautiful in high school, you have to find other ways to make the kids like you. Or else you’re likely to find your locker rigged with mousetraps or filled with those little round papers that come out of a hole punch.”
He canted his head. “But you’re two out of three. You’re blondandbeautiful.”
She glanced at the recalcitrant strand of hair that’d fallen from her bun to curl over her shoulder. “I’mbarelyblond. And I’m passably pretty now that my braces are off and now that I know I should have two eyebrows instead of one.”
He grinned unabashedly. “I especially liked the photo of you in shop class wearing goggles and holding up the birdhouse. Did you mean for the roof to be lopsided or…” He let the sentence dangle.
“Look.” Now, both her hands were planted on her hips. “Notallof us are mechanically inclined. I should get points for taking shop class at all since it was filled with football players whose IQs matched their shoe sizes.”
This time he tossed his head back and laughed. The sound was so big and deep and full of fun that she found herself smiling in response.
When he sobered, she pinned him with a look. “So tell me, what was it about those news articles and my cringe-worthy high school yearbook that led you to believe I’m after the white dress, the diamond ring, and the house on the hill?”
“Nothing.”
She thought he was going to elaborate. When he didn’t, when he just stared down at her with humor and…was thatheat…in his eyes, she sighed heavily. “And now we’re back to me thinking you’re either being purposefully obtuse or wondering if my caffeine consumption had finally addled my brains.”
“Your family likes to takea lotof pictures and makea lotof posts,” he explained. “So I know your mom and dad are happily married after forty-five years. And I know all three of your brothers put rings on their high school sweethearts' fingers and have the houses, the minivans, and the kids to show for it.”
“Damn Facebook!” She shook a fist in the air. “It was the end of privacy.”
Her mother and sisters-in-law loved to post the minutia of every family dinner and holiday celebration, which meant their lives—and Julia’s life by association—were blasted all over the internet.
“You come from the land of backyard barbecues and nuclear families,” he said with an easy shrug. “It stands to reason you dream of the same fate for yourself. Am I wrong?”
She didn’t lie. But she didn’t exactly give him the whole truth either. “I do dream of having all that.Someday.But you’re pretty cocky to assume I was thinking about any of that withyou. Who says I wasn’t trying to jump your bones? A little slam, bam, thank you, man?”
“Miss Julia,” he said in the way only Southern boys could. “This thing between us.” He motioned back and forth between them. “Call it an affinity, call it chemistry, call it whatever you want. But the one thing youcan’tcall it is casual.”
So hedidfeel that thing between them. It wasn’t just her.
She didn’t know if she wanted to shoot a victorious fist in the air or break down and cry because he wouldn’t let them explore it.
“If we were to start something,” he continued, “it’d end in hurt. I don’t want that for either of us.”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a cynic.”
“I prefer the termpragmatist.”
“Says every cynic ever.”
He simply shrugged, and disappointment replaced the butterflies that had fluttered in her stomach since she clapped eyes on him when he exited the front door.
