“And now they’ve all seen me run—literally—to your aid. So I have no pride left, sweetheart.”
“Was I going to eat with all of your friends?”
“I forgot we’d moved our lunch from yesterday to today,” he said. “So it’s a good thing you didn’t come.” He nudged her back. “You never said how old you are.”
“Thirty,” she said. “You?”
“Thirty-two,” he said. “Never married, though I have dated quite a bit in recent years.”
“Define ‘quite a bit.’”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “Four or five women in the past year. That many the year before.” He blew out his breath. “Nothing ever takes.”
“What does that mean?”
He didn’t answer right away, and Caroline liked that he seemed to think about what he might say before he said it. “I think my last attempt at a girlfriend sums it up,” he said. “We went out a few times. She’s nice. It’s fun. I go to kiss her, and it’s like…nothing. Bland. If I had a sister, it would be like kissing her.”
“And you do that four or five times a year?”
He chuckled and nodded. “Seems that way for a while, at least.”
She turned into him, and Caroline honestly had no idea where this fizzy, flirty feeling inside her stemmed from. But she liked it. “Do you think when you kiss me it’ll be like that?”
“By all the stars in heaven, I hope not,” Dawson whispered. “But I reckon we need to go out a few times before that’ll happen anyway.”
“You never know,” Caroline said, teasing openly now. “Some people kiss before the first date.”
Dawson chuckled again. “Yeah, a friend of mine—Link—kissed his fiancée before their second first date.”
“Second first date,” Caroline repeated.
“Yeah, they, uh, had to try twice, but they’re real happy now. Gonna get married this summer.”
“That’s great,” she said, her own throat closing up slightly. She’d never imagined she’d date someone again, and certainly she’d never get married again. Dawson had her rethinking a lot of things, and they hadn’t even gone out on a date yet.
“You got something more to say?” he prompted gently.
“Did I sound like I did?”
“Yes,” he said. “You sure did.”
She lifted her head and slowly peeled her fingers away from his. “Maybe I do, but I think I’d like to hold it for another time.”
“All right,” he drawled. “Now, can I help you get off this roof? It really is hot up here.”
“It’s January.”
“On a clear, muggy day,” he said. He got to his feet first, and when he reached for her this time, Caroline took his hand and let him help her to her feet. With the pitch of the roof, she stood above him, taller, and looked down into his eyes.
“Thank you for coming, Dawson.”
His eyes lingered on her mouth, and he pulled them up to meet hers. “I’ll always come when you need me, Caroline.” With that, he led the way to the ladder and went down first. He held it for her while she made painstaking progress down it, and then he took it down and put it away in her shed.
A new tension had accompanied them to the ground, and Caroline didn’t know the steps to this dance. She could barely look at Dawson, and it sure seemed like all she could think about was kissing him.
“Belle and Judy will be home soon,” she said.
“Ah, that’s my cue to leave,” he said with anotherquick flash of a smile she caught though she wasn’t looking directly at him. “I won’t ask you out, but I am going to hug you.”
