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My best friend grins at me knowingly. “Where you going?”
Abigail’s been “getting some air” for nearly twenty minutes. If she was going to come back, she would have.
That means I’m going after her.
“For a walk.”
“A walk about thirty yards long?” he asks.
“Yeah, something like that.”
I start for the back door in case she really is still out there on the back patio. But just as my hand hits the handle, I stop, turn back, and stomp over to the table where Abigail had been sitting with her sisters.
I hook my finger under the straps of her shoes, then carry them with me as I head out into the night.
I stalk across the dirt parking lot, the dirt road that runs between the parking lot and Ellie Landry’s side yard, and over her grass to the front walk. I intend to charge up the porch steps and bang on the front door.
But I realize someone is sitting on the top step.
I stop at the base of the steps and look at Abigail. “Got enough air yet?”
She’s changed out of her dress. She’s now in what look like pajamas. It’s a T-shirt and shorts set with a matching pattern of either polka dots or flowers. In the dim light cast by the moon and the tall street lights in the parking lot of Ellie’s I can’t make out details.
Her hair is still up in the braid I did for her though.
She’s also barefoot again. Or still.
“Just waiting for the window AC unit to cool the room off. Then I’m on my way to bed.”
It’s June in Louisiana. It’s hot and humid. It’s hard not to sweat in Louisiana in June, no matter what you’re doing. But I want to scoop her up, carry her upstairs, and show her a level of sweaty she’s never imagined.
I hold her shoes up, letting them dangle by the strap from my fingers. “You left your shoes behind.”
“Those shoes aren’t really my style,” she says. “I’m okay without them.”
“As a prince I’m kind of obligated to return shoes to beautiful, intriguing women when they leave them behind after we dance,” I tell her.
That makes her smile. “Right. I wouldn’t want you to lose your Prince Charming card.”
I lean over and set the shoes on the bottom step. “Really? Because I’m thinking if I didn’t have that, you might have stuck around for the rest of our dances.”
She doesn’t respond right away. Then she asks, “You’re really that disappointed about not getting all those dances?”
“I am. But I want more than the dances, Abigail.”
She presses her lips together, takes a breath, then asks, “What else do you want?”
I decide to be honest. “I want to whisk you away on my private plane to an actual palace and give you everything and anything you could ever want or need.”
Her eyes widen. “You don’t even know me.”
I tuck my hands into my back pockets. To try to look casual. But also to keep from reaching for her.
“I’ve read all about your work,” I tell her. “I started by just wanting to know about that job you said you hated so much. But then I kept reading. I know all about your degrees, what you want to do for the future of farming, how you see farming changing, and how indoor farms can combat a lot of the current challenges to food production and can fill in the gaps where people are hungry and where those gaps are only going to increase in the future.”
She’s staring at me. She’s sitting up straighter now and even in the pale light, I can see her shock.
“You…read about me?”
