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His eyes widened and he backed up quickly. Holly told herself she knew him; he wasn’t there to kidnap her. It took her voice another couple of seconds to catch up to her brain, and she sat all the way up as her abs protested the way she’d been sitting in a half-crunch for the past several seconds.
The alarm kept blaring as Holly fumbled for the window button. It rolled down, and by then, Silas has started laughing. “You’re alive,” he said.
Embarrassment cut through Holly. “I’m alive,” she said. “Just taking my post-potato chip nap.”
If anything, Silas’s grin widened, and he approached her SUV again. “I see this car here almost every day, and I found it kind of odd that I only see it at lunchtime. So I thought I’d investigate today.” He nodded past her. “Do you want to turn that off?”
Boy, did she ever. Holly said, “Oh, of course,” and hastened to find her blasted phone and silence it. She turned back to Silas and opened her door to get out. Why, she had no idea. She’d lost her mind about the time she’d started screaming.
He grinned at her and tucked his large hands in his jeans pockets. “You’re not dressed for work.”
“I don’t go to work until four,” she said. Self-conscious now, she looked down the length of her body to see what she wore. A pair of short black shorts, black sandals, and a black tank top. Most of what Holly owned existed in monochromatic colors—white, cream, eggshell, gray, charcoal, black. Navy was a favorite, and she branched into pale yellows and pinks and blues too.
Holly never wore bright colors, because she felt like her personality and voice were as loud as she needed to be; she didn’t want her clothes to overpower people too.
“Did you really think I was dead?” she asked.
“Not really,” he said. “I did think it was odd there was no seat there. I had to get pretty close to see you lying down.”
Holly wasn’t sure how she felt about him watching her, even for a second, while she was asleep. It felt intimate, and heat filled her from head to toe. “Do you go to town every day for lunch?”
He cocked his head at her. “How’d you know?”
She gestured to her car, which still had the engine running, the air conditioning blowing, and the driver’s door hanging open. “I started coming and spending my lunchtime here, just to get off the ranch.” She couldn’t believe she’d just told him that.
Silas looked over his shoulder, giving her a peek of his dark, curly hair coming out from underneath his hat. “A ranch has a way of consuming a person sometimes.”
“Do you feel like that too?” She almost couldn’t believe it.
He faced her again, his eyes set on super-serious. She could get lost in eyes like that, and for once in her life, Holly wanted to. She’d never been in love before. She’d never fallen for a man. She’d never had her heart broken.
Now, she stepped closer to Silas, as if he could do all of the above, and she’d be happy about it.
“I leave for lunch every day for a reason,” he said quietly. He asn’t in full flirt mode the way she’d seen him do with other women. It was almost like he was a different person completely. She told herself it was because she was his boss, and he wouldn’t cross that line.
“Maybe you and I should go to lunch together sometime.” He toed the dry ground with his cowboy boot while Holly forgot how to talk. He watched the dust rise into the air; Holly couldn’t look away from him.
Had he just asked her out? Did he know how adorable he was? Why couldn’t she speak?
Holly didn’t go into trances. She dealt with difficult and upset customers all the time. She always knew exactly what to say to fix any problem or accept any compliment.
Men…Holly had no idea how to deal with men. Or be a girlfriend. Or deal with anything romantic at all.
Silas looked up, and Holly managed to snap her mouth closed before he saw her fish-lipping it at him too badly. “That’s probably a bad idea,” he said. “Never mind.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” she said, the words blurting from her mouth. “I mean, I ate a snack-size bag of potato chips for lunch. Not exactly meeting the Food Pyramid guidelines.”
Silas relaxed as he chuckled. “Might be better than the cinnamon roll I ate. That thing was the size of my head.”
“From the diner?” she guessed.
He nodded and said, “Once I found out about them, I can’t stay away. They’re like crack.”
She laughed with him, and that felt…nice. Holly didn’t have the words to describe the giddiness parading through her. Hope accompanied it, and she really wanted to go out with him. She couldn’t believe she might actually get a date. She hadn’t dated since graduating college and returning to the ranch.
“Do you eat one every day?” she asked. “Because if so, there’s no way I can go to lunch with you.”
Silas sobered, plenty of spark in his dark eyes now. “Is that right?” he drawled. “Why not?”
