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He huffed out a laugh. “Yeah. Now what’s this face for?”
She sipped her coffee. “You don’t strike me as a Vonnegut fan.”
“Your dad suggested it. He’s helping me with a quest.”
“Quest?”
His face filled with worry as if he were going to slay a dragon. “I’m trying to read every book on your parents’ bookshelves.”
There were hundreds of books stacked up on all those shelves. That was one hell of a dragon. “How many have you gotten through so far?”
“This’ll be number two.” He grinned. “Slow and steady wins the race,” he said, his foot moving next to hers, his leg resting along her own.
“Why is it so hard for me to believe you’re the slow and steady type?”
He sat up, took off his beanie to run a hand over his wavy hair then tugged it back down. “I’m not usually. But I could be.”
She knew there was more to those two sentences than their face value. He wasn’t flirting or playing anymore. His voice was deep yet soft, and he spread out the words like a promise.
He could be slow and steady.
His dark eyes, the color of his coffee, pinned her in place, and she couldn’t look away. He waited patiently as she collected her scattered thoughts, and when she finally gathered them all together, they told her to flee.
“Well, I gotta go.”
“You gotta go?” The spell was broken, and he leaned back into his chair. “Where?”
“I’ve got to read this before my online class tonight,” she said, motioning to her book before wrapping her scarf back around her neck. She didn’t usually procrastinate like this.
“What was that?”
She stopped in the middle of looping her purse around her shoulder. She hadn’t even realized she’d said that out loud. “Nothing.” Only that she never waited so long to do her homework. She was a get-it-done-as-soon-as-it-was-assigned student, not the push-it-off-until-tomorrow kind she had turned into lately.
“I guess I’ll see you Saturday, then?” he said.
“Saturday?”
“Luke’s birthday party.”
Bronte should have known. Her mom mentioned Chris had been spending a lot of time at their house, but it never occurred to her that she’d be seeing him so often. How she supposed to forget him when he hung around her favorite coffee shop and family dinners, she didn’t know.
Leaping up from her chair, she pushed it in to the table and stepped backward. “Yeah, I guess so.”
He licked his lips and unleashed a wicked smile. “Have a good day, Bronte.”
Walking to the door, she spared a quick glimpse over her shoulder. His book was open, yet his eyes were on her, and the heat in them had her heart racing faster than her feet as she practically ran out of there.
Chris was trouble with a capital T, and she was capital T tempted to give in. But if she did, her whole world would change, and Bronte had never been good with change.
