This time, however, Tiffany Wright's hand crept into his line of vision, and stopped just shy of touching his elbow. His koalaactually held its breath, suddenly entirely focused on her small fingers and the even smaller distance between them and contact with Ollie's arm. She didn't touch him, though, and with a jolt, Ollie remembered he'd just told the waitress that he didn't care to be touched by strangers. Tiffany had listened,heard, and applied it.
Ollie lifted his gaze, quite sure that he was heart-eyed. Or he would be, if such a thing was possible. Tiffany's own gorgeous blue gaze was locked on him, concern obvious in her strong-jawed, beautiful face. "Are you all right? You must be exhausted after that flight."
Flight!? What flight? Koalas don't fly! Tell her the truth! Tell her we looooooove her! Tell her I'm a hunka hunka burnin' luuuuuuurve! Tell her?—
"I have a bit of a headache," Ollie said, not entirely untruthfully.
"Brain freeze," Tiffany said wisely. "Lemonade straight to the roof of the mouth. It'll getcha every time. Put your tongue against it."
Ollie had a brief but rather vivid image of a circumstance under which he woulddearly loveto have Tiffany use the phrase 'put your tongue against it.' Vivid enough that it silenced the koala, possibly because oral sex wasn't high on a list of koala's favorite activities, but more likely because it felt Ollie was finally getting on board with the whole 'drag her off to the trees and make passionate love' thing.
What he actuallysaidwas "Glrk?"
Fortunately, that was the kind of sound a person might make if he was putting his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and Tiffany smiled approvingly. "Good, there, that should help. Just hold it there a minute."
Ollie's brain dove straight for the gutter again. He was fairly certain this time he actually whimpered. Tiffany's eyeswidened as if she followed his thought, and the most deliciously wicked smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth. To his intense disappointment, she moved her hand back to her side of the table, and said, primly, "I think you're all right."
"Ta, thanks," he blurted more or less on top of her comment. Her eyebrows—pale blonde and feathery, like her hair—rose, and he said, "You noticed, you paid attention. When I said I didn't like to be touched by strangers. I don't mine if you do, though."
That smirk softened into a single-cornered smile. Tiffany reached across the table again to touch his elbow, then withdrew her hand as his koala, unable to come up with something even as coherent asphwoar, hyperventilated in Ollie's mind.
This was great. If Tiffany could keep the koala completely off balance for, like, ever, Ollie would owe her everything. And since he was already prepared to offer her the rest of his life, that seemed like it would work out well for him.
"I'll keep that in mind," Tiffany murmured, but before Ollie could turn it into any kind of invitation, his cousin Steve lumbered into the cafe.
CHAPTER 5
Working in construction meant working with a lot of big men, but the guy Ollie stood up to greet still struck Tiffany asbig. He moved through the crowded cafe easily, keeping himself out of peoples' way, and embraced Ollie in what could only be called a bear hug.
Ollie wasn't a small guy himself, but he was pretty well enveloped in the other man's hug. When the bigger guy had put him down again, Ollie, smiling, said, "Tiffany, this is my cousin Steve. It's his wedding this weekend. Steve, this is Tiffany Wright, she's?—"
"Tearing up the town square this weekend." Tiffany spoke briskly and offered a hand as she stood.
Steve shook her hand with the careful strength that big men who weren't jackasses learned to use, but his thick eyebrows crawled toward his hairline. "You're what?"
"I'm Wright Construction," she replied. "I've been hired to build the new playground in the town square, and my team will be here in about ten minutes to start work. I'm sorry about thedisruption it'll cause to your wedding, but I'm on a tight timeline and honestly, someone should have told you."
There was a long rather looming silence—Tiffany figured this guy couldn't help but loom when he went quiet—followed by, "Charlee is going to kill me."
"I'm sure we can figure something out," Ollie began with quiet determination.
Tiffany lifted a hand, stopping him. "Whyexactly is she going to kill you? Because if the reason is something like 'I promised I would look into whether the gazebo was available this weekend and I never got around to it,' I'll have a backhoe here in thirty minutes and I promise you on her behalf, they'll never find your body."
The very large man blinked down at her, then gave a hollow laugh. "No, although I wouldn't blame you. Her. Somebody. No, I did look into it and it was fine but that was before Noah's fundraiser, and it never occurred to me that they'd move this fast with the playground."
Some of those words didn't make much sense to Tiffany—she had no idea who Noah was, or what his fundraiser had to do with anything—but her eyes widened a little, almost hopefully. "Do you have a contract?"
Steve dropped into a chair, which, somewhat to Tiffany's surprise, didn't collapse immediately under his weight. "No," he said, still hollowly. "Nobody ever contracts for the gazebo. It's a public amenity. But I talked to them last October, before the playground was even a twinkle in Noah's eye. I'm sure the city just didn't remember we were getting married this weekend. Charlee," he announced again, apparently to the cafe at large, "is going tokillme."
Tiffany dropped into her own chair, which creaked. She had a terrible moment where she thoughtitwould collapse, which, given that Ollie's cousin was easily twice her size, would havebeen really embarrassing. Steadily but quietly, she began to curse, first the usual sort of thing, and then with increasing creativity, until she cut herself off by drinking most of her lemonade in one go.
"Who exactly did you talk to?" she asked through cold teeth, once the lemonade was gone.
"Pamela Smith," Steve replied. "The town clerk."
Tiffany took a very deep breath and held it for a long time. "I was hired by Phil West, the town clerk."
"Oh, my God," Steve said after a horrified pause. "That's right. Pam moved back to Montreal in January."
