She didn't exactlymeanto cast an almost-shy, inquisitive look at Oliver Campbell, but he smiled fast enough to make himself blush. Tiffany felt a deep urge to dig her steel-toed boot into the dirt and squirm like a storybook girl with a crush. "Right," she said loudly. "Right, I better get back to it."
"Dinner tonight?" Ollie asked hastily, and Tiffany felt a smile bloom across her face.
"It's a date."
CHAPTER 12
There needed to be classes in How To Talk To Your Fated Mate. Ollie was almost sure bringing up the idea of having kids a mere 24 hours after meeting his mate wasn't the right approach, but he was realizing that despite people talking about how great and wonderful it was tomeettheir mate, they never really discussed the awkward parts.
Like how to explain his inner koala wasn't metaphorical, for example.
I'm eucalyptical,the koala said, offended. The fact that it had no idea what 'metaphorical' meant was completely beside the point. It saw a chance for offense and took it.
And Ollie simply laughed.Yeah, you are. Too bad there are no eucalyptus trees around here. I'd get you a treat.
Tiffany is a treat,the koala said hopefully.
"Probably," Ollie said out loud, "but not the kind you get for a koala. C'mon, let's go see where else there is to eat in this town besides the hotel. We've got a date tonight."
Of course, Tiffany would be hot and sweaty after her day's work. She might only want to go out to the hotel's outdoors restaurant again, but Ollie wanted to be prepared, just in case.He was checking the maps app on his phone when a family text message came through, reminding everybody that the wedding rehearsal dinner was starting at seven and to be at the hotel on time for it.
Oooooh, you're in trouble now,his koala said in delight.C'mon, let's you and them fight! You can't go to a rehearsal dinner! You've got a DATE!
"I can't not go to the rehearsal dinner," Ollie said faintly. They didn't do them as a thing in Australia, but this had been made very clear: members of the wedding party went to the rehearsal dinner in America. Or Else. "Steve would string me up by my toes."
I can take 'im! Lemme at 'im!
"You can't take him. He outweighs you by three hundred kilos."
But I got spirit!
Despite himself, Ollie laughed. No one in the entire world could doubt that his koala did, in fact, have spirit. It would take on a mountain lion without hesitation. It would probably fight a gazebo, given the opportunity.
I can take it!
Ollie gestured to the under-repair gazebo. "That's a gazebo. It's not something to fight."
Tiffany was climbing the gazebo's scaffolding at the moment, her biceps flexing and literally gleaming in the sunshine as she went up to examine something in the roof's repairs. She moved beautifully, her motions economical, and her confidence obvious as she swung onto a walkway, talking animatedly with one of her crew. She was really genuinely the most beautiful woman Ollie had ever seen. All he wanted to do was go right back to her side and stay there forever.
A wonderful idea trickled through his mind. Before he could think about it any more closely, because he knew it was also aterribleidea, he hurried back to the construction site and waved vigorously toward Tiffany. He didn't want to shout and distract her when she was three meters off the ground, but after a minute he remembered he had her phone number, and sent her a text message.Come talk to me when you have a minute?
Then he hung on the outside of the safety fencing, fingers pressed uncomfortably against the safety mesh, and waited. His koala was for once completely content: itlikedhanging on things and doing nothing else in particular.
Tiffany took her phone out, glanced at it, then, with furrowed eyebrows, glanced toward Ollie. He gave her a thumbs up that made her smile, and she went back to work. It was almost half an hour before she could come talk to him, but the truth was, he loved every minute of watching her, whether she was discussing things with her crew or hauling things around. All he moved around were numbers. It wasn't nearly as physically attractive.
She was smiling at something her crew had said when she finally made it back over to him. "This must be good. You've been waiting here for ages."
"I forgot I've got a rehearsal dinner tonight and I was wondering if you'd come to it with me." Ollie blurted it all out because he was afraid if he let himself consider what an over-the-top idea it was, he wouldn't be able to talk at all.
And indeed, Tiffany's pale eyebrows rose until they all but disappeared under her hardhat. "You…are asking someone you met yesterday…to come to your cousin'swedding rehearsal dinnerwith you?"
See, that was why Ollie hadn't wanted to let himself think about it. He'd been afraid that was an escalation. Nobody invited somebody they'd just met to awedding, he knewthat, he wasn'tstupid, after all, but he didn't know any of the rules about wedding rehearsals. Apparently it was pretty close to the samelevel as inviting her to the wedding itself. Still, he grimaced hopefully. "Yes?"
She stared up at him through the safety mesh. She was so small and delicious that for a moment Ollie couldn't think at all, not even about what a ridiculous thing he was asking. He just wanted to pick her up and convince her to do things with him that people probably shouldn't do on construction sites, and definitely shouldn't do in public. A couple of curls were visible at her temples beneath the line of the hardhat, dark gold with sweat that trickled down her jaw and toward her throat. It was possibly the sexiest thing Ollie had ever seen.
Tiffany, as if still working her way through this, said, "You're asking me to a huge, important family event as our second date?"
"Third date," he reminded her. "Lemonade yesterday afternoon, dinner last night, now wedding rehearsal dinner tonight. Three dates."
