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“It’s not a date,” she said quickly, her cheeks flushing. “It’s a debt owed.”
He didn’t say anything.
It was, absolutely, a motherfucking date.
“I probably don’t need to tell you this, since you’re a pro and all, but you should put those in water before we go,” he said, gesturing at the red roses.
He’d decided to go classic.
She seemed like a classic kind of girl.
“Uh…right.” She headed for the kitchen, and he watched her go, placing his hands in his pockets. “You’re sure you didn’t mention me, or that we were going on a…thing…to my brother, right?”
“I think I’d remember,” he said, laughing at her careful avoidance of the word date. “I just said you came by, sang for me, and did great. At the time, I thought I was putting a good word in for you with your employer. If I’d known he was your brother, I never would have even mentioned it.”
“I wish you hadn’t, because—” She broke off and muttered under her breath. Her phone went off on the counter, next to her purse, and she frowned down at it. “And there’s the text.”
“What text?” he asked, confused.
“The one I knew I’d be getting from my brother.”
“Oh. What does it say?” he asked slowly, walking toward her.
Her kitchen had white cabinets, a gray, tiled backsplash, and granite countertops. He liked it. It was very clean. Very organized. Very her.
“Do you ever do anything spur of the moment?” he asked.
She blinked at him, clearly caught off guard by his question.
“Uh…not really, no.”
“I figured.” He smiled at her. “The text?”
“Huh?” she asked, still taken aback by him.
Good. At least he wasn’t alone.
“The text.” He gestured at her phone. “What does it say?”
She read it. “That I should have told him I broke the ears of the greatest quarterback to ever live,” she said. “Followed by demands for every detail about you.”
He snorted. “Every?”
“Every,” she returned, lowering her phone. “He’s kind of a big fan.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
She laughed. Turning toward him with a smile, she said, “Yeah, sure you didn’t. Just like I was a good singer, and I’m not in debt to you after breaking your vase. You, Wyatt Hamilton, are a liar. A nice one, but a liar nonetheless.”
He was unable to speak or defend himself, because when she smiled, she lit up the room. It was his goal, then and there, to make her smile as much as he could, all night long, before he walked away from her. “I don’t lie. I always tell the truth. So, it’s true when I say this: you’re beautiful. When you smile, I swear, you take my breath away.”
She froze with the vase she’d pulled out from the cabinet halfway to the countertop. Slowly, she set it down and turned his way again, trembling. “You don’t have to do that.”
Closing the distance between them, he took the flowers out of her hand and took the wrapping off, since she didn’t seem to be doing it herself. “Do what?”
“Pretend to be interested in me like that,” she said, snatching the flowers back, shoving them gently in the vase and then filling it with water. “I’m going out with you because I happen to speak the right language. This isn’t a date, and these flowers don’t mean anything, and I’m not your type, and you’re not attracted to me in the slightest, so we can just go to this dinner as—”
“I mean no disrespect, Kassidy, but…” He stepped directly behind her, slowly spun her around, and locked eyes with her. “Where do you get off telling me whether or not I find you attractive? I think I would know better than you.”
