For Seven Nights Only - Sarah Ballance Page 0,30
to them. They know what they’re getting, and I never promise anyone more than one date, one night.”
“Except me,” she said softly. She didn’t look at him. She looked at her foot.
“Except you.”
“Why?”
He sighed. “The truth? I was bored.”
She wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about his admission.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, boyish grin back in full force. “You initiated the whole thing. First you watered down my apartment, then you threatened me with your cooking. What’s the deal with that, by the way? Did your mom ever try to teach you to cook?”
“Nope. She was a career woman. My dad, too. Takeout all the way.”
“Your sister the same way?”
Kelsie bit back a grin. “She’s worse. But don’t change the subject. Why were you bored?”
“You got any beer?”
She cocked her head toward the fridge. “Go for it.”
He eased from under her leg, leaving it on his cushion. “Want one?”
“I have a glass of water,” she said. “Unless you tried to unfold it.”
His laughter trailed behind him as he crossed the small apartment. When he returned, he carefully placed her foot back on his thigh. “To answer your question,” he said, “I just wasn’t interested in the bar scene that night. And if you can’t entertain yourself in a bar, you’re pretty well screwed sitting alone at home.”
“Is that why you’re here tonight?”
“To get pretty well screwed?”
“No.” She laughed. “Because you’re bored.”
“If I answer that question, you’re going to use it against me.”
Her mouth twitched. “I thought you came to feed my dog?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, a tad sheepish.
“The water thing,” she said, hoping she was treading cautiously. “Have you even tried to get near it?”
He turned his head and fixed those gorgeous green eyes on her. “Are you asking if I have legitimate psychological issues?”
“I already know you have legitimate psychological issues,” she said. “I’m just asking about the water.”
He leaned back against the cushions and laughed, and she was again struck by how gorgeous he was. And how…on her sofa, with her foot in his lap. After nine o’clock on a Thursday night, presumably because he worried her dog would starve.
He ran a finger across the tips of her toes and smiled when she wriggled. It tickled. “I’ve never let anyone drown because I refused to get in the water. How’s that?”
“Have you ever actually jumped in to save someone from drowning?”
“Nope.” His grin devastated her in the best possible way.
She couldn’t help the bubble of laughter that escaped. “That’s cheating.”
“Yet my assertion remains true.”
“Has anyone ever really pushed you out of your comfort zone, Sawyer? Successfully, I mean.”
“Yeah,” he said. He gave her foot a squeeze and stood. “You did. Fucking opera.”
While she stared, a grin teasing her mouth, he leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Wait,” she said as he headed for the door. “Why did you come over?”
“Felt bad for the dog.” He hesitated by the door, then dug in his pocket. He came up with a piece of paper, which he tossed on her table. “And someone asked me to give you this.”
The irony, of course, being that he hadn’t given it to her but had thrown it on the table. When the door shut behind him, she immediately went to grab the slip of paper. On it, someone had scrawled a man’s name and phone number. Under that was a small note. The guy from the gym.
Kelsie read it a dozen times, her throat growing tighter by the moment.
Then she crumbled the damned thing and tossed it in a drawer.
Chapter Nine
The opera was an utter waste of a Friday night. For that matter, it was an utter waste of any night, yet there Sawyer stood at her door, fidgeting and tugging at his collar. His second thoughts had second thoughts. In theory, her idea to go to the opera had been marginally acceptable. She wanted a cultured kind of guy…long-term, he’d guess. Someone who could button the top button of a dress shirt without feeling like he was choking. Someone who could show up to that wedding of hers and not make a fool of himself over which fork to use, and who could discuss museum exhibits and literature and the stock market. Not a guy who had zero interest in playing the dutiful, domesticated type that paid good money to listen to people screech from a stage. Definitely not an HVAC guy with zero interest in the fine arts.
Definitely not him.
He didn’t like how much he really