“Do you want to know a secret?” I told him after he suggested that I could turn nannying into a full-time profession.
“Depends. Is it a good secret, or a bad secret?” he asked.
“I’ll let you decide.” I paused to choose my words carefully. “When you first asked for my help last week? You asked if I knew anything about taking care of babies. I said that I did.”
Taylor ran his fingers through his blond hair. “Right.”
“That was a lie,” I admitted. “I knewnothingabout babies. I had never even babysat before. In fact, I’ve onlyhelda baby once, and that was my nephew LeBron. I held him for about ten seconds before handing him right back to my brother.”
“Your nephew is named LeBron?” Taylor asked. “Like, the basketball player?”
“It’s a long story,” I said with a wave of my hand. “The important thing is that I lied to you. All of you.”
Taylor put down his wine glass and grimaced. “That sucks. And here I thought we had a lot of chemistry. Too bad you’re such a lying liar.”
His chair scraped on the floor as he got up, tossed down his napkin, and began to walk away. I stared in horror as he got halfway across the room.
But then he turned around and came back, grinning widely.
“That’s not funny!” I said. “You had me going for a second!”
“I don’t care if you lied,” he said.
“Really? You don’t think it was cowardly?”
“Cowardly?” Taylor scoffed. “If anything, it makes you more courageous.”
“Courageous,” I muttered. “Now you’re just being nice.Firemenare courageous. I’m just a girl taking care of a baby.”
Taylor leaned across the table, holding my gaze intently. “When we respond to a call, we know what we’re doing. We’re trained for it. We have experience. But you? You offered to help us with the baby even though you havenoexperience. So, yes. I think that takes courage.”
“Or a lot of stupidity,” I said.
“Maybe. But I don’t think you’re stupid, Clara.”
I was trying to be self-deprecating, but the way Taylor flipped it around put a smile on my face for the rest of dinner.
We split a dessert—chocolate lava cake, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream—and then left the restaurant. But the date wasn’t over. Taylor drove us a few blocks away to a little art studio.
“What are we doing here?” I asked as we walked inside. To be honest, I was surprised it was still open this late.
Taylor grinned. “We are going to take a guided painting class. It’s about an hour long.”
A memory trickled to the front of my brain. “Wait a minute. Those painting supplies I saw at the firehouse… Those were yours! I didn’t realize you were artistic.”
Taylor shrugged modestly. “I took an art class as a college elective. And it was fun. I like it. And I hope you will, too.”
There was a private room at the back of the studio with individual painting stations all set up. The instructor looked nothing like Bob Ross, but he had the same calm, soothing instructional voice as he guided the class (there were six of us total) through the painting process.
Occasionally, when I looked away from my painting for a split second, I would suddenly notice a new swipe of paint on my canvas that wasn’t there before. The third time, I caught Taylor leaning over and swiping his brush across my painting.
“Keep your paints to yourself!” I hissed at him.
This devolved into the two of us giggling and marking up each other’s painting. One of the other painters turned and glared at us, but we were having too much fun to care.
“Mine is way better than yours,” I said on the car ride back. I was holding both paintings side-by-side.
“Yours looks likecrap,” Taylor said. “Mine is an absolute masterpiece. I’m going to frame it and put it up in the station.”