“I really need to go, but—” Somehow, she was only inches away now, so close the heat from her body taunted him. “Where would you have picked? For yourself, I mean?”
Since she was still leaning against her car, he must have moved forward without conscious volition. As if he were a compass needle seeking true north, or a man irresistibly drawn to temptation and trouble.
Which he wasn’t. He never had been, not once in over four decades.
“When I invite someone for dinner, it’s about that person. Not me.” It wasn’t a real answer, but it wasn’t a lie either. “Even in a professional context.”
He didn’t feel like a professional, though. In such close proximity to her, he felt like nothing more than a mammal in rut.
“Oh, I think your invitation says plenty about you.” She wasn’t smiling anymore. Instead, her gaze was solemn and fixed on him with such clarity, he had to fight a flinch. “More than you probably realize.”
When she got into her car, he stepped safely away and watched her leave. She was long gone before he managed to think of the smartest response to her statement.
And by then, it was much too late to run.
Four
If Simonand Poppy’s shared meal at That Good Night were a train, it remained safely on track for a full two courses.
Over their Stopped Hearts of Palm bao bun appetizers and Dismembered Duck Confit entrées—both her picks, both unfamiliar to him, both served in coffins, both utterly delicious—they discussed the ways Marysburg High differed from her previous school. How to operate most efficiently in her new environment. When to visit the copy room, which administrator to see for certain questions and concerns, the most helpful front-desk secretary, and so forth.
As he’d learned through painful experience, she didn’t need assistance with teaching. Still, he could offer practical tips about their specific school. And if he found himself admiring how the flicker of candlelight highlighted the curve of her neck, or noting the golden glow it imparted to her strawberry blond hair, well, no one needed to know that but him. It might constitute a weakness, but the chink in his armor wasn’t visible to the naked eye.
Then, with almost no warning, and entirely due to his own negligence, their conversational train jumped the professional rails.
The server placed two thick slices of Murder by Chocolate cake in front of them, and Simon had no way to know they were speeding toward disaster with every bite.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed Amanda’s diorama. Did you figure out the topic?” Poppy sipped at her mocktail, The Embalmer, between forkfuls of cake. “I’ll give you a hint: Her mom’s a nurse in the maternity ward of the local hospital.”
With that information, everything he’d seen suddenly slotted into place. “Her diorama is about America’s egregious maternal mortality rate.”
That explained the stirrups, at least. He’d been concerned about those.
She pointed her fork at him. “Exactly. Nicely done, Mr. Burnham.”
If he could, he would bathe in the warm approval of her smile.
Fuck, she was pretty. Her high buns exposed the sweet roundness of her rosy cheeks, the modest plunge of her neckline allowed a stunning, shadowy glimpse of cleavage every time she leaned forward, and her dangling jet earrings tickled the curves of her shoulders. Under the table, her leg brushed his, a moment of glancing, sliding contact that left him as dizzied as a blow to the head.
And somehow, before he thought through what he should say, he was asking her a personal question. “Why murder?”
She swallowed a bite before answering. “I’m not sure what you mean. In my lesson plans? In my dioramas? On a societal level?”
There it was. The smart way forward. He could steer the conversation back toward professionalism, back on track, with two words.Lesson plans.
In response, she’d say something about the inherent love of most teenagers for gore and drama, or about her years of gauging student response to different subjects, and he’d nod, and they’d get back to talking about which particular copier most often collated and stapled without overheating.
Instead, he said, “In your dioramas.”
Because he was a fucking train wreck in human form, evidently. At least around her.
“Well…” With a mutedclink, she set her fork down on the edge of her plate. “I’m not sure there’s a simple, straightforward answer to that question.”
“I don’t need simple or straightforward,” he told her, and that was news to him. He’d always wanted both. He’d wanted—needed—solvable problems he could comprehend and explain and set aside neatly at the end of the day.
Poppy Wick was many things, but she wasn’t neat. Not in the ways that had long mattered to him. And so far, he’d been unable to comprehend her, explain her, or set her aside.
But he still wanted her.
