Every time he complained about some petty shit, she patted his arm in the most patronizing possible way and told him sweetly, “These cares are but fleeting moments of discomfort. Pray do not get your breeches in a bunch, good sir.” Which was obnoxious, but also pretty damn funny.
“Why not panties?” he asked her one day as they walked back to their cars.
She shot him a puzzled look. “What?”
“Why not say, ‘Pray do not get your panties in a bunch, good sir?’”
After a moment of thought, she raised her forefinger. “Well, first of all, I doubt the phrasepanties in a bunchdates back to the eighteenth century, although I could check the etymology.”
“Jesus Christ.” Such incredible nerdiness. She was a marvel.
Two fingers. “Second of all, I don’t want the junior interpreters repeating that phrase.”
“I’m a bad fucking influence,” he agreed.
Three fingers, which she wiggled in emphasis. “And third of all, colonial people didn’t wear panties or any real undergarments. My shift would be my underwear, and your shirt would be yours. Don’t you remember our training session?”
He stopped abruptly on the path through the Mayor’s Mansiongardens. “Do you mean those colonial motherfuckers were just free-balling it? All the goddamn time?”
At that, her eyes flicked down to the fall of his breeches for a long, breath-choking moment. When she looked up again, those rosy cheeks of hers had turned a deeper shade of pink.
She was looking at his crotch and blushing.
Cool-as-a-damn-cucumber Molly fucking Dearborn wasblushing. Overhim.
So yeah. Everything was great. Those giggling preteens in their floppy-ass bonnets could make fun of him all they liked. He wasn’t the one who’d be demonstrating how a fucking box iron worked in the broiling sun all summer.
Then, late one sunny Saturday afternoon, he panicked. Realized he was running out of guaranteed time with Molly. It was their last day of volunteering. The project was due next Friday, they were graduating soon, and Dearborn was going to college in goddamn Cali. If he wanted to make sure their friendship didn’t die again, he needed to figure out how.
And if he wanted more than friendship from her—and he did, always had—it was time to man up. Now or fucking never. Whether he was good at relationship shit or not.
He made his move at the end of their final shift.
On their way to the Mayor’s Mansion parking lot, they passed through a long, leafy arbor, where beech trees on either side had been trained to arch and meet overhead. The setting was kinda romantic, although Karl understood fuck-all about those sorts of things.
When he snuck a glance over at her, he pictured Molly at prom. With him.
He didn’t give a shit what she wore. If she showed up in the petticoat, buckled shoes, and big straw hat she was wearing right now, fine. Full set of armor? Great. One of her usual flannels and ripped jeans? He’d be fucking thrilled.
Men’s-style clothing looked hot on her. Always had.
He should ask her. Hewouldask her.
When he abruptly stopped walking, Dearborn—who’d been rummaging through the basket hanging from her forearm—stumbled over the oyster shells carpeting the garden paths. She didn’t fall, but the keys she’d just located went flying. They both squatted down and bent forward to pick her keys up at the same moment, and their foreheads thunked painfully.
Fucking hell. This was a disaster.
Muttering to himself, he grabbed the stupid keys and chucked them in her basket, then tossed her basket aside entirely. It landed with a thump on the oyster-shell path, and Dearborn side-eyed him hard.
“What?” he demanded, frowning.
“I brought an eighteenth-century tea caddy to show the junior interpreters today. A family heirloom. It’s in my basket, which you just flung on the ground like an old bag of clothes on its way to the dump.”
Motherfucker.
“Uh...” Swallowing hurt. “Really?”
“Nope,” she said cheerfully, and grinned at him. “But it could’ve been true. Stop tossing around vessels full of unknown items, Dean. This is a public service announcement on behalf of your future companions.” Her widespread hand swept an arc high in the air. “The more you know.”
