Her chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with nerves or her earlier embarrassment.
He reached out and gently caressed her cheek. “You look beautiful,” he added quietly.
She smiled, looking up into his brown eyes. “Thank you.” She swallowed hard. “I’m so nervous,” she admitted, finally letting the truth slip. “Are there a lot of people out there?” she asked. She hadn’t looked yet.
Pierce hesitated just long enough to make her suspicious.
“How many is a lot?” he asked carefully.
She narrowed her eyes. “Pierce.”
He huffed a small laugh. “What? I don’t know what you consider a lot.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Like, fifty?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Umm.”
Her eyes widened. “Pierce! How many people are out there?”
He gave her that grin again, the one that made his dimple pop. “A couple of hundred.”
“What!” she exclaimed, catching the looks from some of the volunteers.
He laughed, catching her before she could spin away. “Hey, you’ll be fine.”
“You don’t understand. I get stage fright easily.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Yeah? Go ask my kindergarten class. I was so nervous during show-and-tell one time that I passed out. And that was only like fifteen kids. I never did get to show off my Zhu Zhu Hamster,” she grumbled, thinking about that time years ago. She glanced back up at him. “Now you’re telling me that there are a couple of hundred people out there.”
He tilted his head. “Okay. Hold up. Before we address the crowd size. What in the hell is a Zhu Zhu Hamster?”
“It was this little motorized hamster that ran around in plastic tunnels,” she explained quickly. “You could buy differenthouses and little accessories for them. You could even build whole cities for them.”
He squinted at her. “So, it’s not a real hamster?”
“No.”
“Does it bite?”
“No.”
“Does it explode?”
“Pierce! This isn’t helping,” she said, trying to hide the smile that was trying to force its way onto her face.
“He watched her for a second, that slow grin settling in as if he had just accomplished something.
“Look at you,” he said quietly.
She blinked. “What?”
“You forgot about the two hundred people.”
Her mouth opened, then closed.
He stepped a little closer, lowering his voice. “You were just passionately defending a robotic hamster like it was a thesis presentation and completely forgot about all those people waiting outside to hear about the wonderful thing you had a hand in helping come alive.”
