I scowled. “I wasn’t—” Ugh. Who was I kidding? “I was just gonna say… you don’t have to worry about everyone matchmaking us.”
His lips twitched. “Who’s matchmaking?”
He did a dramatic scan of the bus, like he was just now realizing we were surrounded by a bunch of fifty- and sixty-somethings with nothing better to do than analyze our love lives.
I huffed. “Babs. Josie. Denise. Basically, everyone when we got back on the bus after lunch. Because we’re roughly the same age. And we happen to be…single.” A pause. “Aren’t we?”
“I’m thirty-two,” he said, deadpan. “You?”
My frown deepened. “Twenty-eight.”
He nodded, and the corner of his mouth twitched. Not what I meant, and he knew it.
I gestured vaguely to his hands. “You don’t wear a ring.”
His gaze didn’t follow mine, but something about his stillness told me he’d caught the flicker of my own glance, down at the faint mark where my ring used to be.
“So, when we came back from lunch together…” I trailed off, waiting for him to interrupt. He didn’t.
I kept digging. “I just meant, for all they know, you could already have a girlfriend. Or…boyfriend.” The words came out faster than I could stop them. “I just wanted you to know you don’t need to worry. About any of it.”
“Any of what?”
I narrowed my eyes. “About me getting ideas?” Oh. My God. “About them thinking you and I are…you know. An ‘us.’”
The air between us stretched, until he let out a slow breath. “No girlfriend,” he said. And then added. “Or boyfriend.”
His voice was steady, but something about the shift at the corner of his mouth—half smirk, half something else—made my pulse trip.
“Okay then.” And I hated that my ears were probably turning red. “We just need to survive for twelve days?—"
“Ten and a half,” he corrected, glancing at his watch like this was a perfectly rational conversation. “We’ve already survived the first…” He tilted the face toward me. “Thirty hours.”
He was too good at this. Disarming. Deflecting the conversation when asked about himself.
But we’d had that lunch together. And I’d told him everything. Most likely, too much. And I wasn’t going to let him slip away so easily this time.
I exhaled. He didn’t have to answer me, but that wasn’t going to stop me from asking.
“Why are you here?” I asked softly.
His smile faded, brow barely lifting. “Here?”
“On this bus tour?” I asked.
Because I’d told him my story.
And now I needed to know what had brought Noah Grady onto this silver bus with a bunch of retirees and his well-mannered, if a little clingy, mother.
Because it wasn’t for fun.
And it wasn’t for himself.
This time he was the one to exhale, long and slow.
“My mom.” His voice dropped slightly, and he ran a hand over his face, shaking his head. And then he winced. “It’s kind of a Mother’s Day present. She asked and…I couldn’t say no.” It seemed like he was going to add to that.
But then he didn’t.
