Ido.
I giggled and blushed, then glanced around to make sure no one had seen me. What was happening tome?
I take it you don’t know about playing hard toget.
I could envision his face when I read his nexttext.
You said earlier we were doing this all wrong, starting with the kissing. Wrong seems to work for us, so why stopnow?
Even his texts were giving me that thing—that fluttery chest, heavy bellything.
What should I say in response? I was staring at the phone when another text camein.
Come for dinnertomorrow?
I checked mycalendar.
Nothing open untilThursday.
I’ll takeit.
You’reon.
That made my belly flip-flop like crazy. Three days until I saw himagain.
I almost got lost canvassing that evening with Zach on my mind. I kept thinking about his smile and that low sound he’d made when we kissed. His smell, too, and that magical, undeniable zing ofsomethingbetweenus.
How was I going to make it untilThursday?
Yeah. I liked the guy. A lot. Like a lot a lot. It was exciting and fun, but it also scared the crap out ofme.
5
Zach
I couldn’t get enoughof VeronicaCruz.
Which was bad news, since the last thing I needed was a visitor nosing around my house. One wrong turn and she could figure everything out andthen…
Would she turn me in? Would she even recognize what she wasseeing?
No. The answer was clearly no.Let it go.Relax.
Not something I did a lot. Not with Granddad, because we just didn’t. We worked. From the time I came to move here, he drilled it into me: you want it done right, do it yourself. Being blind, as far as he was concerned, was nothing but an obstacle to overcome.I’m old, you’re blind. So what? Who says we can’t conquer the world?From this house, of course, since he wasn’t much onleaving.
I wondered, for a second, what he’d think of Veronica Cruz, this woman who thought she’d be a better leader than the usual blow-hards. Would he likeher?
Probably. But what mattered right now was that I liked her. And I was ruining things by being way tootense.
She’d been here for half an hour now. And I needed to get my head back in the game, because things between us weren’t easy like they’d been last time. I was toojittery.
Not surprising considering how crazy she made me. Like a teenager. Which was exactly how I’d been acting since I last sawher.
What are you wearing?I wanted to ask.Can I touch you? Wanna makeout?
Yeah,no.
Instead, I said, “How about another glass ofwine?”
