She smiled at him. “Okay. Let’s… let’s try.”
“Okay,” he smiled back at her, his cheeks stretching with his grin. “Okay,” he repeated, relieved. “So, is there any chance that you want to… keep me company for a little while longer?”
He saw her answer before she said it.
He saw it in the slight furrow of her skin between her brows and the way her lips thinned a little.
“I probably shouldn’t.”
He nodded in agreement. “Okay.”
She looked at him as if she was waiting for the other shoe to fall, but to her surprise, it didn’t.
“I’m good with no, Harmony. I’m not going to pressure you.”
He saw her nod, but he also saw that she was struggling to believe him.
It was strange for him. Women that he dated were usually falling all over themselves to smooth things over with him when there was a disagreement or a difference of opinion.
Harmony held herself back. She didn’t push herself to make him feel better.
What had always been the norm before wasn’t happening between them, and Crois?
He didn’t just like it, he felt strangely hopeful because she was letting him see her tension. She was letting him see that she wasn’t quite sure.
Letting out a breath, he gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, because he felt it. He meant it.
“So, where can I take you? Do you have somewhere you need to go?”
Harmony breathed in and smiled at him. “Actually, I need to go to my apartment, I need to sleep. I need a lot of sleep.”
“Done,” he nodded, “I can drop you off at your apartment.”
“Great!”
He opened the passenger door and held it while she got in. He waited to make sure that she buckled in her seatbelt and closed the door before jogging around to the driver’s seat.
When he slipped in behind the wheel, he looked over at her as he buckled his own seatbelt. “So…”
“So?” She looked at him with a nervous tilt to her smile.
“Where do you live?”
She stared back at him with a blinking, blank stare.
And then she laughed.
Her shoulders shook and she covered her face with her hands. “I’m a big dork.”
Crois reached out a hand and gently swept it over her hair, enjoying the silky waves of her hair. “Then I must have a thing for dorks.”
Harmony turned her head, lowering her hands from her face. “Then I have a decent chance with you.”
“More than decent,” he smiled at her. “You think you’re a dork, but I like you, Harmony. I like the way you talk the way you are. So,” he reached out and carefully smoothed a few errantwisps of her honey-blonde hair from her face, “where do you live?”
“Tudor Arms on-”’
“Wait,” he frowned for a moment, struggling to believe that he’d heard her say the words that he’d heard. “Did you say Tudor Arms?”
