“Yes, they have.”
“You have no objections?”
“No.”
“See no hindrances in that?”
The dratted man chuckled.“None of the insurmountable variety that I can think of.”
“What was your first experience like?”
He choked on air as his fist came to his mouth.
“Pardon me?”
“What was your first experience?”
And though she didn’t think it possible, her eyes didn’t lie when they took in the twin red stains in his cheeks.
“Me?”
Mouth dry, she nodded.
“You don’t want to hear that.”
“I don’t just ask questions without having given them thought.”
“I see…”
She watched as he stalled by subtly angling his legs away from her and then back again.His restless hands could find peace neither on his lap nor on the cushions.And just as she’d come to expect, he twisted his pinky ring.
“You don’t want to tell me.”
“I…”
“You said I could ask anything.”
“Right.”His eyes met hers with a hardness she had never seen in them before.“Well then…brace yourself.It’s not a romantic story.Only a senseless tale of a fatherless teenage boy abandoned by his world-travelling mother on the hunt for another man when an older woman pursued me and showed me my purpose in life.”
Stunned, it took her a moment to recover and digest all that he had shared.“That’s awful.I’m so sorry that happened.”But what she meant as concern, he took as pity and scowled at her.
“It is what it is.Nothing a starry-eyed romantic should like to hear.”
“I don’t consider myself a starry-eyed romantic.”
“No.I don’t suppose you do.”
“Is that really what you think of me?”
“No.”His voice softened.
The carriage rolled on as his single word answer hung in the air between them, as if on a string.
With more than a little hesitancy, she willed up the courage to ask, “What do you think of me?”
“I think,” he tapped his fingers on his knees as a change fell over his face, “that you’re quite remarkable.”
She laughed.Couldn’t help it.No one had ever expressed anything remotely close to that sentiment.She was, by far and large, hardly evenmarkableat all.
