The email Preston Packer sent me.
My throat goes tight as I read the words again, the same way it does every time my eyes skim over them. I can’t believe he’s sent me a message, much less what the contents are.
Dear Penny,
I hope you don’t think this is too forward. I overheard you talking about your blog in the elevator at the office today. Curious, I googled it, and I read your latest blog post. I have an idea. You want some dating experience… Let me take you out. That way, you’ll be able to do the answer justice.
Warmly, Preston Packer.
Butterflies flutter in my belly. Reason tells me he probably views this as an offshoot of his charitable causes, a way to help a woman in need. There’s no romantic connection here.
I can imagine him telling his rich buddies. “I’m a good guy. I even helped out this sad girl with her tiny little blog.”
I cringe at the thought. There’s no way to know if that’s where he’s coming from with this.
But what’s the alternative?
He’s attracted to me, the same way I am to him?
I bite down, watching the city pass by. Nobody has ever shown any interest in me, going all the way back to early high school when some of my friends started getting into relationships. They were childish affairs, but it didn’t stop the jealousy from ripping me up.
Not that I wanted any of those high school boys. None of them compare with my man, forty-two years old, built like a caveman with the smirk and the eyes of a seasoned businessman.
Sue me, I googled him as well.
“What game are you playing?” I whisper under my breath, my eyes flitting over his words.
When I get to work, I’m relieved to see Juliana sitting at her desk. I’m thirty minutes early, as usual. If I take a later bus, I end up arriving just a few minutes before work is due to start, or late, and Lena would never let me hear the end of that.
Or she’d fire me.
“Can I talk to you for a sec?” I whisper, looking around the office at the other early starters.
Juliana’s here because the school run brings her close to work. She’d be losing time if she drove back home and then returned.
“Sure. I was going to get a coffee anyway.”
When we head into the break room and I explain the situation quietly, conscious that if Lena overhears she might lose her mind. I can just imagine her launching into one of her rants if she discovered Preston emailed me.
Juliana blows on her coffee once I’m done, steam rising around her face. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” I murmur.
“Yeah, that’s one way to put it.” She chuckles quietly. “So he overheard you mention your blog and now he wants to go on a date?”
“That’s what the email says.”
She tilts her head. “But…”
I grin, pushing past the dark emotions threatening to take hold of me. The self-doubt and the lack of self-belief and the knowledge that I could make a massive fool of myself if I believe this too easily.
“Who said there’s a but?”
“Nobody,” Juliana says, laughing softly. “But there is, isn’t there?”
“I was thinking about this earlier,” I tell her. “The email might not even be from him.”
Juliana narrows her eyes. “Who would pretend to be a famous football star just to ask a blogger out on a date? That makes even less sense than…”
She cuts off, biting down.
“What?” I urge.
She shakes her head. “Nothing, it’s nothing.”
I mentally finish her sentence. That makes even less sense than the alternative.
Meaning, that it makes no sense that Preston would email me.
“You don’t have to dance around my feelings,” I tell her. “I agree that this has come out of nowhere. And I could be right. Maybe Lena saw me looking at him. Heck, I was basically drooling. Maybe she’s testing me. Maybe if I agree to this date, she’ll fire me, on the spot, just like that.”
I snap my fingers.
“You’d be lucky if she pulled a stunt like that,” Juliana says. “You’d be able to sue her into the next life. I don’t think even Lena would be that reckless.”
“I don’t know what to do.” I sigh.
“What do you want to do?”
I consider her question for a moment. There’s no way I can tell my friend about the magnitude of the feelings flowing through me. I can’t tell her how difficult it was to sleep last night, my thoughts straying to Preston again and again. It was even worse than in the elevator because I’d googled him by then, giving me access to a whole catalog of photos.
The best ones are where he’s older, with his silver-streaked hair, instead of the dark brown almost black it was before experience turned it iron. Staring back at the camera with the supreme calm I can only dream about.