Really? There was a part of her that had become convinced he already knew about her crush on him and upon her confession, he’d smile gently and say something witty or wonderful. But then again, he specialized in stock lines that he pulled up at random intervals from his storehouse. Probably he didn’t realize she’d noticed that he repeated himself a lot when he was being charming, which she’d never considered a detraction to his attractiveness. Until now.
But she had to see this through. There was a bet to consider here. Plus she had some things to prove to herself and to her sisters. Most of all, she had to get a barrier in place between her and heartbreak and Tristan Marchande was it. “So, yeah. I was thinking it was time to lay it out and see if—well, you know. What you thought about that. Is there any chance you might want to get coffee sometime? That kind of thing.”
“Are you asking me on a date?” Tri
stan’s clear blue eyes bored into hers as he laid it out in kind.
“Yes.” There was the squeaky voice she’d expected from the beginning, which might not have been so bad if she hadn’t also tacked on a lift at the end that made it sound like a question.
Dust motes spun through the suddenly still air as she waited for him to drop the hammer. Which was a ridiculous metaphor but she’d likened him to Thor already in her head, and it was too late to avoid picturing him with a raised fist, giant mallet-style hammer clutched in his hand.
“Aria.” No affirmative sentences started with that tone. It was the precursor to being told something she didn’t want to hear. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’re not really right for each other.”
Definitely not what she wanted to hear. And shortsighted on top of that. She bristled, totally unconcerned if it was visible or not. “Why, because you’re beautiful and I’m not?”
Boy, talk about laying it all out there. But she wasn’t backing down now. He’d offended her principles in the same breath as rejecting her and she wasn’t standing for it.
Tristan had the audacity to chuckle, but tempered it with a quick shake of his head.
“That’s not it and you know it’s not.” Both of his hands flew up, palms out, as if to ward her off. He must have guessed—correctly—that she was about to flay him alive for daring to tell her what her own mind was. “Relax, Aria. We’re all friends here. Give me a second to sort this out before you go warrior queen on me again.”
Slightly mollified, strictly because he’d never called her warrior queen before, she crossed her arms and waited for him to dazzle her.
“First of all, you’re spirited which is better than being beautiful all day long.” He ticked off that point on his index finger. “But you’re also pretty in an unconventional way, which has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not we can get coffee.”
“What does then?” she demanded. A part of her should be mortified over this show of temper but all bets were off at this point. Probably literally too. There was no way he was asking her out on a date unless he did a complete 360 in about four seconds.
“The fact that I don’t think of you that way,” he explained gently with nothing but sincerity radiating from his face. “You’re a great person and I like seeing you at the diner. But that’s all there is. When I catch sight of you, I don’t recoil in horror or anything, I just don’t get anything inside that means I could think of you as something more than a friend. Does that make sense?”
She sighed and tried to work up some more anger, but since she’d as recently as five minutes ago had a similar revelation about the lack of pinging, she didn’t exactly have a leg to stand on. “You mean, just for example’s sake, when you put your hands on my shoulders earlier, you didn’t get a zingy sensation where it counts?”
“Something like that.” Earnestly, he searched her expression. “I’m not trying to hurt you. But I have to be honest up front. This is a small town. I would hate to hurt you worse later on if I led you on. I hope you can forgive me.”
Geez. Tristan was a gentleman and a really nice guy underneath it all. How many women got that kind of speech before making fools of themselves over a guy who flirted as a default? Or worse, before jumping all in with their heart, only to have it blow up in their faces later when they figured out he wasn’t serious about all the compliments and stuff?
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she mumbled, still struck by the irony of it all.
Was there any worse time to realize there was no future with a guy than at the exact same moment you figured out he had unknown depths of character?
She wasn’t even upset. How could she be? She’d done exactly what she’d set out to do, or at least the trying part. She’d failed to get him to ask her out, sure, but in the process, he’d said some pretty complimentary things about her that weren’t his typical rehearsed lines. They weren’t right for each other, bottom line, and he’d managed to convey that eloquently.
“Still friends?” he asked and stuck out his hand.
She nodded and slipped her hand into his for what she thought would be a perfunctory shake, but it was Tristan. He raised her knuckles to his lips to kiss them and winked.
“Besides, we’d never work out anyway,” he told her and released her hand. “Not with Isaiah still in the picture.”
“Um, what?” Or at least that’s what she’d meant to say but it came out garbled with zero resemblance to English.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know he thinks you hung the moon,” he teased and then caught a clue that maybe she wasn’t pretending. “I mean…you don’t see how he looks at you?”
“You didn’t see the way I looked at you,” she muttered as her brains completely fried like a dropped egg on concrete in August. “So that’s not a valid test.”
Tristan just laughed. “Because there was nothing to see, as we just discovered. We don’t float each other’s boat. You might have admired my cut abs on occasion but you know, everyone does.”
Instead of his ego annoying her like it probably should, she had to laugh too. “I’ve never seen you without a shirt, so whatever. Get over yourself maybe.”
“Can’t.” He shrugged. “Born this way. Now about that hair band…”