I stayed there for a second. I could feel her breath go uneven against my jaw.
When I pulled back, her eyes opened, and I saw the moment she made up her mind. She lifted her chin just slightly and tilted her face toward mine, and I was already moving to meet her. Her mouth was a quarter of an inch from mine. I could feel the warmth of her breath, the small soft sound she made just before?—
A customer chose the worst possible moment to walk in.
Cara made a sound that was half laugh and half something else entirely and dropped her forehead against my collarbone for one brief, defeated second. I closed my hand gently around the back of her neck and held her there for one breath because I couldn’t help it, and then we both straightened up slowly, with a synchronization that shouldn’t have come as naturally as it did.
A man in a Carhartt jacket was holding the door open and looking around the shop with patient calm.
“Hi,” Cara called, and her voice was almost steady. “Let me know if I can help you find anything.”
“Looking for the new Cormac McCarthy biography.”
“Top of the new releases shelf, front window.”
“Thanks.” He nodded and headed in that direction.
I watched him go without really seeing him. My hand was resting on the counter near hers. Our pinkies were touching. Neither of us moved them.
“Jasper,” she said, very quietly.
“I know. That was a close one. I’ll kiss you properly after our date.”
She turned her hand over on the counter and pressed her fingertips briefly against mine, quick and deliberate, and then pulled back. “I need you to leave this shop,” she said, “because if you stay one more minute, I’m going to do something we’ll both regret in front of a man buying a biography and two customers somewhere in the shelves.”
“I don’t think I’d regret it.”
“Jasper.” But she was smiling.
“I’m going.” I picked up the green essay collection from the counter. Our hands brushed again on the cover, and neither of us flinched. I tucked it under my arm wherePersuasionhad been. Then I reached across and traced the edge of her jaw one more time with the backs of my knuckles—just once, just enough—and her eyes closed again for half a second, and I made myself step back before I did anything else.
“Friday,” I said. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“I close at six.” She was looking at me with color high in her cheeks and her hands flat on the counter, composed and not composed at all. “That gives me an hour.”
“An hour’s enough.” I took another step toward the door. “Dress for somewhere good.”
“How good?”
“Good enough that you’ll remember it.” I pushed the door open. At the last second, I looked back at her. I’d told myself I wouldn’t, but I did. She was standing behind the counter with her hand resting on the spot where mine had been, watching me go with an expression I was going to be thinking about until Friday.
“See you on Friday,” she said.
“I can’t wait.”
I walked to the truck, got in, and sat for a second with both hands on the wheel and the green book on the passenger seat. Then I exhaled and started the engine.
I was halfway to the bar before I realized I was still smiling. A real dinner. On the calendar. I’d saidI want to be the guy you make plans without loud in the middle of her bookshop, and she’d said yes, and she’d almost kissed me on the mouth in front of a customer, and I’d felt her decide to do it and I’d been moving to meet her, and we were going to dinner on Friday, and I was going to find a way to kiss her properly before then because I did not have that kind of patience. Not about her. Not anymore.
I pulled into the back lot at the bar at ten minutes to four with the essay collection on the passenger seat and her voice still running through my head.I read everything thinking about you lately, Jasper.I sat in the cab for one more moment, just to let it finish landing before I put it away and went to work.
Then I got out and headed for the back door, still smiling, and didn’t try to stop it as I headed into work.
Chapter 19
Jasper
Enough time had passed since I’d asked her to dinner for it to have settled from something terrifying into something that was merely, constantly, in the back of my mind. Enough to know that Cara Darlington had said yes and had meant it, and that I had been carrying that fact around with me like something I kept checking my pocket for, just to make sure it was still there.
