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"Thank you, Maria. I'm glad my anxiety entertains you."
Her laughter faded away. "You really are anxious about this, aren't you? This woman must mean a lot to you."
"She does."
"Go with your heart and be yourself. She must like you the way you are, eh?"
"I think so." Though Eve had her doubts about my past behavior, I believed she accepted me the way I was. She'd told me as much, but still… "What if being myself offends her?"
"Then she's not the woman for you."
She was the woman for me. I'd known it for a while. Whether I could be the kind of man she needed remained to be seen. I'd try as hard as I could to become that kind of man.
Maria and I talked a bit longer, mostly about our family and what everyone had been doing since the last time we'd spoken. After we said goodbye, I wandered through the house until I found Eve in the living room, sitting in an armchair. She had her legs crossed with her feet on a footstool, and her laptop was balanced on one thigh. Shorts and a tank top concealed only the most private parts of her body. The parts she saved for me alone.
The light of the sinking sun bathed her in a golden, pinkish glow.
When I walked into the room, she smiled. "Hey, gorgeous. Were you on the phone? I heard you talking."
"I called my sister Maria."
Eve angled her head to the side like she was analyzing me. "What's wrong? You look nervous, which isn't like you at all."
She was right. I felt nervous, and that was a rare experience for me.
I perched on the edge of her footstool with her bare feet nudging my ass. "I need to ask you a question."
Clapping her laptop shut, she set it on the table beside her chair. "Shoot."
My pulse throbbed faster, thumping in my ears. I scratched my head, fidgeted, and avoided looking her in the eye. Maria would've found this highly amusing. I wanted to grab the nearest blunt object and hit myself in the head with the thing.Snap out of it, I commanded myself.
For the first time ever, I had clammy palms because of a woman.
I cleared my throat. "Eve, I was thinking about what we should do for dinner tonight."
"This is Chinese night, remember? I placed an order already."
"For the guests." I fidgeted again. "For us, I wanted to, uh, make some kind of, um, special arrangements."
"Special?" Her eyebrows cinched together over her nose. "Like what?"
Be yourself, Maria had advised.
Eve liked me the way I was. Right?
She poked me with her big toe. "What's the matter? Did Ollie beat you at soccer? Sorry, I meant to say football."
"I didn't play a game with Ollie today." I took a deep breath, straightened, and met her glittering blue gaze. "Como vai, gatinha?"
"Huh?"
"It's Portuguese."
"What does it mean?"
"The phrase is a Brazilian pickup line." I angled in and laid a hand on her bare thigh. "How's it going, baby? That's what it means."
She laughed. "That's your great pickup line? How did you ever become a ladies' man with material like that?"
