He shrugged, his shoulders looking especially broad in his overcoat. “It’s okay,” he muttered under his breath.
“Is there something else wrong?” she asked when he didn’t say anything else, just stared at the parking-lot overhead light thoughtfully.
“I wanted to tell you—your mother asked me to join the family for Thanksgiving dinner at her house,” he said in a rush, as though he’d been waiting to tell her this news and wanted to get it over with. “I told her I already had plans.”
“She did? You do?” His revelation was news to her. Why hadn’t her mother mentioned it? Why was Eric acting so brusquely all of a sudden? Who were his plans with? Some adoring female, like Delores?
“I told your mother I had other plans, because I knew you wouldn’t want me there.”
“Oh,” Colleen uttered, stunned. She stifled a wild urge to tell him she did want him there, very much. But how could she sound so enthusiastic when she’d spent the better part of the last two weeks making sure they weren’t alone? She shivered and dug her gloved hands in her coat pockets, stalling for time while she thought out this little dilemma.
“Do you really have other plans?” she asked him.
“Sure,” he said. Her heart sank in disappointment.
“What are they?” she asked, not sure she really wanted to know.
“They’re pretty loose at this point, but they might include a TV dinner and football on the tube,” he said solemnly.
Sympathy and concern swamped her until she saw the gleam in his eyes and the hint of a smile shaping his lips. “You’re pulling at my heartstrings, Tiny Tim.”
He laughed, the sound striking her as warm and delicious, ringing in the frigid night air. She chuckled along with him.
“You should come,” she said, suddenly sure. “Natalie will be there. It wouldn’t be right if we stole your only family away from you on the holidays. Think how unhappy Natalie would be, knowing you were alone on Thanksgiving.”
“I’ll be perfectly fine eating alone on Thanksgiving,” he told her, and he seemed to mean it this time. “I was just kidding before. I’m actually working for most of the day.”
“Mom doesn’t serve her Thanksgiving meal until the evening.”
“The meal schedule isn’t really my point.” He pinned her with his stare. “You wouldn’t want me there. You’re avoiding me.”
“No, I haven’t been—” she began, but he interrupted her.
“You don’t have to deny it,” he said. The parking-lot light cast enough luminescence that she made out his small, wry grin. “I’d be an idiot not to notice, and I understand why you’re doing it.”
“It’s good one of us does,” she mumbled, feeling guilty for making her cowardly avoidance so obvious. She wasn’t sure he’d heard her, because he continued.
“I’m just telling you all this because I wanted to let you know you don’t have to be uncomfortable anymore. We have to be around each other for the next month or so. It’s unavoidable. But there’s no need for you to bend over backward to make sure we’re never alone together. I know when a woman isn’t interested.”
Her guilt swelled. “It’s not that I’m uninterested—”
“So you are?” he segued smoothly.
“Yes. I mean…no,” she broke off, trying to find the right words. She noticed a few snowflakes had landed on his arched eyebrows—stark white against black. She resisted an urge to brush them away. “I think we both know I’m…attracted to you.”
“You just don’t want it to lead anywhere. I get that.”
She made a sound of acute frustration.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Eric, do you think you could try not to put words in my mouth for once?”
“I’m sorry,” he acquiesced, his lack of argument flustering her even more. “What did you want to say?”
“I’m just confused right now. Maybe it hasn’t been right for me to be avoiding you, but I didn’t know what else to do,” she said in a burst of honesty.
“What are you afraid of?”