A Time for Us - By Amy Knupp Page 0,34

gut and not ridden with her mom to the benefit-planning meeting. She didn’t want to go at all, and had, in fact, manipulated her work schedule so that she’d had a shift on meeting night. It was just her bad luck that this week’s meeting had been switched to Thursday. But she knew full well that if she skipped it, Cale would guess it was because she was embarrassed as hell about what had happened last night. God knew she was, absolutely, but she didn’t want to advertise it.

Her mom, of course, was adamant about getting there early, which totally cramped Rachel’s style of showing up when there were no seats left around the table. It was so much easier to hide—and leave early—when she could sit along the outside of the room near the door. It also made interacting with the other volunteers harder to do, which was the way she preferred it.

“I’ll be in in a few minutes,” Rachel told her mom as they approached the restroom. “Gonna stop here.”

“That’s fine,” her mom said, distracted by her own thoughts of the upcoming meeting. Rachel breathed out in relief as she entered the deserted ladies’ room and her mom’s shoes clicked on down the tiled hall of the library’s wing of meeting rooms and offices. Now, if only Rachel could find a legitimate excuse to pass the next sixty minutes in here....

A short, hefty woman wearing chained glasses came in, so Rachel plunked her purse down on the counter and rummaged through it as if she were searching for makeup. The search was futile, as she didn’t have anything besides cherry ChapStick in there. She pulled it out and applied it as the woman went in the stall, then fumbled around some more. A brush. Something to do. She ran it through her already untangled hair, making no impact on her appearance.

When the toilet flushed, Rachel scurried into the other stall even though she didn’t need it. Waiting it out as the woman washed and dried her hands, which was of course taking aeons, she closed her eyes and wondered what the hell she was doing. Hiding out in a library bathroom stall? For real? She was a highly competent physician. Not a chicken.

Much.

The woman left and Rachel checked her watch. Two minutes till the meeting started. It was better than being ten minutes early.... If she stalled too much longer, her mom just might send a rescue crew to find her.

She walked out, took her time washing her hands and walked at a leisurely pace toward the meeting room.

As soon as she went into the room, she realized her plan to pretend Cale wasn’t there was unrealistic and immature. Doubly so when he was looking straight at her and had a hand on the empty chair next to him, obviously indicating she could sit there.

Not. A. Chicken.

She wasn’t able to paste a grin on her face, but she did force her legs in his direction and sat down next to him just as her mom started the meeting.

On the bright side, Rachel had avoided small talk with him. What, exactly, could one possibly chat about with the guy she’d thrown herself at not even forty-eight hours before?

Mariah and Eddie sat on the opposite side of the table toward the other end, but Mariah made a point of smiling at Rachel, and Rachel offered an awkward wave in return. Familiar faces helped somewhat. Even though Noelle’s name had already been spoken once, the meeting itself wasn’t as bad as it had been last week—so far.

Rachel sat back in her chair, determined to make it all the way through the meeting without wimping out again. She tuned in to hear Trina, one of Noelle’s best friends, give her update on volunteers for the event itself. Trina went into detail about how many volunteers she was going to need for every single aspect of the concert. Rachel’s attention wandered as she began to relax.

Facing the table straight-on since her mom, at the head of the table, had opened up discussion to the rest of the group, Rachel couldn’t help but notice Cale’s hand resting on his notepad to her left. His fingers were long, the backs of his hands tanned. The body hair on his arms was a shade lighter than the hair on his head, almost light enough to consider blond, most likely from the sun. She couldn’t help thinking about the strength in his fingers, in him, to do