“I don’t know. . .” Reagan said, pretending to give her appearance a great deal of thought as she set a bucket full of prepared clay in front of the wheel. “You look pretty cute to me. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever loaned a woman one of my aprons.”
When Libby looked at her, her cheeks were flushed. “I guess I should be honored instead of complaining then.”
“You do whatever feels good to you,” she replied, immediately earning a sideways glance.
>
“How long before you drop it?” Libby asked as she followed her instruction to sit at the stool behind the wheel.
Reagan feigned ignorance. “Drop what?”
“Always saying the right thing. Always being so perfect.
No one is this put together,” she challenged.
Rolling a stool next to hers, Reagan shrugged before sitting. “I’m not trying to do that,” she replied honestly. “I was being serious. If you want to complain, do it. Why not?”
Libby cocked her head to one side in a way that made Reagan feel like a zoo exhibit. “Well . . . for one . . .
complainers are annoying.”
“Maybe to you,” she replied with a laugh. “Maybe I don’t mind if you complain. Ever think of that?”
Libby tried and failed not to smile. “You’re something else. You know that, right?”
The shifting intent in Libby’s eyes quickened Reagan’s pulse. “Me? Why?” She tried to put on an innocent expression.
“No one is really this selfless and understanding. It’s just not possible.” Libby crossed her arms over her chest. “No one single, anyway. Trust me. I’ve interviewed every single single in the county.”
Reagan chuckled as she tossed the little clay ball from one hand to the other. “Actually, you only interview singles who either need help getting out of their own way or don’t know themselves well enough to be objective about prospective life partners.”
For a long time, Libby didn’t respond. She just watched her as if waiting for a sudden movement. “Why are you single?”
Instead of responding with a joke, Reagan considered the question. “Because I know in the deepest recesses of my soul
that I haven’t found the other half of my orange.”
After another long pause, Libby dropped her arms and leaned forward. “You know . . . I really didn’t think this is what you wanted to win with your bet.”
With heat flooding her body, Reagan laughed to escape her nerves. “You find it impossible to believe that we wanted the same thing?”
Libby raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t buying it. Does she know what I want?
Reaching out, Libby took the ball from her hands and slammed it onto the wheel like a veteran potter. “Maybe I’m agreeing that we wanted the same thing.” The laser focus in her eyes and intensity pulsing from her like an EMP was disabling.
“Wanted?” Reagan asked, her heart leaping into her throat. “As in don’t currently want?” She glanced at the clay.
Every cell in her body told her they were beating around the same bush, but she found naming it impossible. She pivoted to a joke. “What else was on the table?”
Each second of silence took a month o Reagan’s life. She would have given everything she had, and even some things she didn’t, to know what Libby was thinking as she gazed at her with an unreadable expression.
“Were you really thinking about this when you formulated the wager?”
The question, delivered in an unexpectedly throaty voice, made the tiny hairs on the back of Reagan’s neck stand at attention. No part of her body was spared from the warming tension mounting between them.
Reagan was trapped between making another joke and taking the moment seriously. If she got it wrong, the quiet resolve in Libby’s being would slip away. She was so sure she risked their future on it.
“No,” she admitted, rolling forward in her stool until their knees were touching. Her body ached at the minor contact and eviscerated any delusion she’d been harboring about her interest being platonic.