that all teenage boys are troublemakers, of course!” Shut up, Carla, shut uppp! “I’m sure there are some good ones among them. They just have that reputation, you know. I’d like to hire a teenage boy to work in the store – give him something to do that isn’t causing problems, but guys don’t seem to want to work with flowers.”
She was about to dive headlong into a diatribe about how flowers weren’t just for women to enjoy when she realized they were pulling into the parking lot of the Old Horvath Mill.
This stunned her so much, she actually managed to lapse into silence. The old mill? They were going to the old mill?
She’d been here a few times on Saturday morning, attending the new Farmer’s Market that Penny and Troy Horvath had started up not too long ago, but it was Friday night, which was most definitely not Saturday morning.
Clearly, Carla, you have a dizzying intellect.
But not even a line from one of her favorite movies could calm her nerves at a time like this.
He pulled into a parking spot and shut off the engine, hopping out and hurrying around to help her out of the truck. She was still mute, thank the heavens above, and completely confused. If she’d had to guess a hundred places that they’d go on their date tonight, the Old Horvath Mill was nowhere on that list.
He slid back the giant wood door on its track and stood aside to let her through. One foot inside, her jaw dropped in shock.
“What the…” She trailed off, hurrying forward and then spinning in circles, trying to take it all in. There was a huge projector’s screen hanging down from the ceiling. Elegant couches, and tables laden with food and drink, and flickering candles, and fairy lights strung everywhere,and…
“You did this?” she whispered. “You did this for me?”
“Well, I had a lot of friends’ help,” he said modestly. “You like it, then?”
“Like it? Oh Christian, I love it.”
This wasn’t a pity date. No one went through this kind of hard work and effort for a pity date. She’d almost convinced herself over the previous few days that this was a bet gone wrong. Or chivalry taken to an extreme. Or an overactive tendency towards pity. Or a penance prescribed by a priest. Or maybe even a wide masochistic streak.
This, though, blew all of those theories out of the water.
Which only left one…that he liked her.
Which couldn’t be.
She trailed along behind him to the buffet table, resolving to leave the mystery of why they were on this date for another time. Right now, she fully intended on enjoying herself, because God knew, with the averages she was batting at, it’d be a decade before she got to go on another one.
They filled up their plates, Carla carefully taking tiny portions of each proffered dish. She couldn’t eat like she normally did in front of him. She’d simply pretend as if she ate like a bird at every meal, and then she’d eat again when she got home. He’d never like someone who had a “hearty appetite,” as her mother had always put it. And honestly, it wasn’t so inconvenient to cook another meal when she got home.
Not if it meant getting another date sooner rather than later.
Moving to the couch where TV trays had been set up, she did her best to settle into place and not spill her food everywhere, but the opening strains of the soundtrack to The Princess Bride made all decorum flee her mind.
She gasped. “You love The Princess Bride too?!” she squealed, turning to Christian, her mouth agape. “I didn’t know you liked this movie! What’s your favorite line?”
“I, um, haven’t watched it before.”
She froze in place, staring at him, trying to comprehend, but failing. “Haven’t…watched…” she mumbled. “I…how? Okay, look, I’ll do my best not to recite every line in the movie as we watch it, but I promise nothing. Half the fun of this movie is saying the lines along with it. Hold on – if you haven’t watched this, why did you pick to watch it with me?”
“Some very good advice,” was his cryptic answer.
Which just reinforced her theory that this wasn’t a pity date. No one decorated an old mill to the nines and catered a meal and asked for advice so they could fulfill their part in a bet gone bad.
“He’s gonna pinch my cheek. I hate that,” Fred Savage’s character said, and Carla giggled like she did