I laugh. “Are you going to take notes?”
“Yup!”
“I didn’t think to bring a notepad myself.”
“Un-pre-pared…” she enunciates, jotting the word down and dotting the page with finality before jutting her pen at me. “I’ll go first.”
First? Are we playing twenty questions, then?
“Do you consider yourself unreliable?” she asks.
I show her my palms and all ten spread fingers. “Absolutely not.”
She tuts. “Yet you didn’t bring a notepad?”
“As if I don’t spend my every waking moment committing everything you are to my memory.”
She glances at my hands. “You need to cross your fingers on that one.”
“Who says it’s not true?”
“Logic and realism.”
I ponder that for the briefest of moments, sigh, and concede, crossing my fingers. “For the record, it’smostlytrue.”
Her lashes flutter. “Then you need touncrossyour fingers when you say so.”
I uncross my fingers to say a very honest, “I fear you’re overestimating my mind’s ability to collaborate with my body.”
“Poor…dexterity…” she murmurs, jotting and sighing. “Woe is me. That’s an important trait in a lover. I think.”
I flush. “You weren’t joking when you said you’d been practicing your teasing.”
“Can you blame me for liking how easily you blush?”
“No, I suppose not.”
Sunlit and lovely, she says, “Your turn to ask me something.”
Fighting to let my lungs soak in air while I’m seated so close to a saintly painting, I dive headfirst into the pile of my most burning questions and fish one out. “What’s your position on children and childcare?”
She stares at me.
I neither relent nor recant.
She stares another few seconds, crosses her fingers, and says, “Children are delicious. I prefer to prepare them in a large stew, taking care that they are thoroughly cooked before I use them for potions. What’s your work-life balance look like?”
“Poor. I work a lot. I have meetings and work trips regularly.”
Something glints in her eyes, and she leans in. “Is that so?”
I swallow. “Yes.”
“Yet…you’ve been here a few weeks already.”
I cut my attention off her. “Well…yes…”
“Which means…” Her smile slices through me. “This whole thing wasveryplanned, wasn’t it?”
