“Okay,” she said, voice shaking just a little too much, hands trembling as she held the book open. “So my favorite example of a man surreptitiously propositioning a woman has to be inBound to You. She has an eyelash on her face, and he notices, and he goes to remove it but he doesn’t do it the way you would in ordinary circumstances. Instead he leans down and kind of blows it.”
When she dared to look up at him, however, he just looked puzzled.
“That doesn’t seem like anything. I mean, how is that sexy?”
“Well, it’s the way that the author writes it. It’s kind of—”
“Kind of what? Let me see,” he said, and as he did he fished his little glasses out. He perched them on his nose. All of which shouldn’t have made him sexier, at all. But if she was being honest, it kind of did.
It gave him this air of a gentle librarian.
If the gentle librarian sidelined as a bare-knuckle boxer.
None of which she could really cope with. Though she likelycould have coped with it better if he hadn’t immediately started reading the passage aloud. One of the sexiest things she’d ever read, rolling over his tongue like low, syrup-soft thunder. Those big hands cradling the book, the heat blooming from him, their knees somehow touching despite all her efforts.
“‘His breath ghosted over her cheek, her lips,’” he said, and it was all she could do to not demand he try it. She had to force herself to snatch the book from his hand and scramble for another. A tamer one. One she didn’t like that much.
“Let’s try the one where he kisses her hand instead,” she suggested.
Only he didn’t even let her get to the passage. He met her gaze, those blue eyes heavy and soft suddenly, and then he reached forward. He took hold of her hand. “Oh, I know how to do that one,” he said as he lifted it up, up, inexorably up to his lips. Ten seconds and there was going to be contact. Five seconds and there was going to be contact. Four, three, two—
“Hello, is there anybody there?”
Nancy almost yelled, hearing the voice from the front of the store. Mrs. Twiliger from the dance studio, it sounded like, and oh, was that a relief on several fronts. First, because it meant she got to snatch her hand away without seeming weird to Jack. Second, because it gave her a chance to cool her hot cheeks and her hot chest and her hot everything. And third—well, Mrs. Twiliger was nice.
She always bustled into the store smelling of violets and wearing shoes that made Nancy think of dancing in ways she didn’t fully grasp. Usually there was a cloak and a flowery hat. And it was always followed by delight at what Nancy had done with the bookstore.
“My dear, you are a wonder,” she trilled as she gathered up some of the keys from the book cauldron. Then Nancy got to ring them up and pack them in tissue paper and put them in one ofher series of adorable paper bags. This one had the wordsI’m at the end of my tropeemblazoned on the front, and Mrs. Twiliger cackled like a witch over it.
It helped.
By the time Jack came to see where she was, she had regained her calm. She felt almost sensible as she turned and told him brightly that he was absolutely ready for the next stage of dating. “You’ll be fine,” she said, and he looked as pleased as punch.Case closed, she thought.
Until he said, casual as anything:
“Great. Because I was thinking we could try a drive-in next.”
And she realized. It was her he wanted to go to the drive-in with.
She’d leveled him up. Now it was time to endure exactly what he’d learned.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
She told herself that this could not possibly be any worse than being inside his house after he had asked her in for coffee. Or sitting beside him in the book nook, being read to and almost hand kissed. But of course as soon as they were in the truck together, she realized that this wasn’t just like sitting on a couch or a bench with someone. This was like beingtrappedon a couch or a bench with someone. With nowhere to go. And no way of extricating herself from the situation.
She couldn’t just jump from the car on the highway, or in the middle of the movie, or at the end of the movie, or while driving back. She had to remain there, sitting next to him, for hours and hours. And in a space far smaller than she remembered it being before. Their arms were pretty much touching somehow. Hell, their thighs were almost doing the same. Every time she shifted in her seat, they seemed to nearly brush each other. She found herself wishing she’d worn thicker stockings—even though her stockings were very thick indeed.
Gray, and woolen, and covering absolutely everything.
Yet, still, she got the full impact of his unbearable heat through them. And not even pressing herself against her door could stop it happening. It was almost like the car was shrinking. Pressurizing. By the time they got to the drive-in, and found their space, andhe had ordered popcorn and peanuts and drinks and all kinds of candy, it felt like she was being cooked alive.
Her cheeks were flushed; every inch of her skin felt sticky.
And it wasn’t just her reacting weirdly to nothing, either.
The windows steamed over almost immediately. He had to swipe at the windshield with his sleeve. They ended up watching the start of the movie he had picked—The Rocky Horror Picture Show—through a small hole surrounded by fog. And one that unfortunately only appeared on her side of the car. She tried to focus on the title credits through that tiny circle, and then realized that in order to do the same he had to lean close.
Really close.
