I hate that she thought I was ditching her. “I was so not ghosting you.”
She frowns. “I know that now. But you should have seen the curses my friends and I lobbed at you.”
I bring my hand to my heart, defending past me. “Here I was being a good guy, sending you texts, checking in, and you thought I was a world-class jackass,” I say.
She winces but nods. “The whole time before the event, I was racking my brain to figure out how to handle seeing this guy who had left me in the dust,” she says as we pass a sidewalk café with a view of the water. For a few seconds, I wish we could duck in there, grab some drinks, nosh on appetizers.
That thought is a little detour from our conversation. “Meanwhile, Iwasthinking about tonight. How I was going to tell you the trade news over text, so we didn’t get bogged down with work bullshit over dinner.”
She looks at me with delight. “You had a whole plan for just talking to me?”
“Oh yeah,” I say, telling her what I’d considered. “At dinner, I planned to focus on getting to know you.”
I still want that. She’s a fascinating mix of smart and funny, awkward and sassy. She’s not afraid to bust my chops, and I enjoy the hell out of her company.
“Aww,” Brooke says, sounding legitimately touched. “That’s sweet.” She shoots me an apologetic look. “And I feel terrible now.”
I wish she didn’t think I was a schmuck for the last few days, so I want to seal the deal on the rep of past me. “No need to feel bad, especially since you’re now aware what an awesome date I’d have been,” I say with a grin.
“And you are, it seems, since this is kind of like a great second date. In our parallel universe. And I’m curious. What did you want to get to know about me?”
“Anything,” I say, emphatically. “What makes you tick. You said you have a sister. What’s she like?”
That’s an easy start.
Brooke lights up as she tells me about Cara, her bright outlook on life, how hard she studies, her drive to be a special education teacher. “I’m proud of her, especially since she’s almost debt free. I didn’t want her to be like me, weighed down with loans.”
I grimace. “That’s got to be an inevitability of law school,” I say with sympathy.
“It is, but hey, no one feels bad for lawyers. And in a couple years, I’ll have them paid off. But that’s another reason I was in a funk about work when I met you. I thought I’d been passed over. But then it turned out I got a new job and a raise.”
I grin and offer a hand to high-five. She smacks back. This is not the way I want to congratulate her on her promotion. A hot kiss would be better. “That is awesome,” I say, focusing on the positive.
“The flip side is no third date,” she says, sounding a little forlorn.
Womp. Womp.
“For the record, I would have asked you on a third date. And I would also have not ghosted you.”
“Good to know,” she says.
We’re quiet for a bit as we walk into the night, my gaze drifting to her shoes. Sexy red skirt that revs my engine. Those black heels. That tight little waist. “By the way, those shoes? I would have had you leave them on tonight,” I say, in a voice just for her.
A smile sneaks across her face, deliciously dirty. “Would you have?”
“Absolutely. You naked in those heels? Mmm,” I say, enjoying the images my brain is supplying. “I’d put them on my shoulders, around my waist, up in the air.”
She lets out a sexy whimper. “You’re making this hard.”
“Oh, it’s definitely hard,” I say.
“Your hardship,” she says, playfully.
“That describes me when I’m with you,” I say.
She shoots me a knowing look that says she’s onto my dirty thoughts. And she knows the risks of them, since she clears her throat, tsks me, then says, “You mentioned when I met you that you had twin sisters. What are they like?” I suppose it’s good that one of us has the self-control to course correct.
Plus, I’m always eager to share deets on the doubles. “They’re troublemakers and they trick my mom and her hubs all the time,” I say, then grab my phone and show her the mermaid pic.