you haven’t found the right kind of book yet.”
“I’m not trying very hard,” he said, easily. “Anyway, I came in to see if maybe you’d like to go out for dinner?” He was impressed with his relaxed, assured tone. There was absolutely no way she could guess he was as nervous as a shortsighted fly at a spider convention. Crushed it.
“Uh . . . sure.” Nice, Nina, way to sound enthusiastic.
OK, well, she doesn’t sound all that interested, but let’s press on. “What day works for you?” He remembered the feeling of her in his arms, the kiss, the invitation . . . It didn’t look like that girl came to work today.
“Let me get my planner.” Nina carried the remaining books back to the counter and dug underneath for her planner.
“Wow,” said Tom, once she’d pulled it out. “That is a serious planner.” He thought about his own planner, which was a small section of his brain that rarely had anything to do. If he had more than two or three things to remember, he might jot them on a Post-it, but that was about it. This girl might be a little hard-core organized for him. What would she be like in bed? Two minutes on this nipple, please, then forty seconds of . . .
Nina looked at her planner as if seeing it for the first time. It was big and heavily accessorized. It had bookmarks sticking out at various points; it had ribbons and tabs; it had a pocket full of special, planner-sized equipment.
“I enjoy being organized,” she replied. “It’s just . . .” She opened the planner to that week, and Tom frowned when he saw how full the page was.
“Wow,” he commented. “You’ve got a lot going on.”
“Yeah.” Nina nodded, suddenly a little embarrassed. “Uh, this week isn’t good. How about next week?” She flipped over a few pages. “No, that’s pretty full, too.”
Tom watched her face as she looked through the planner. Her nose was straight and delicate, with a speckling of freckles. Tom had a relatively active love life—he was an attractive thirty-year-old man in Los Angeles—but he hadn’t fallen for anyone in several years. He liked the women he dated, but none of them had captured his imagination the way this woman had. He thought about her, wondered how her skin might feel, how his hand might fit on her waist, about holding her against himself . . . He frowned and tried to focus on the actual person in front of him rather than the adult version he suddenly had in his head.
Nina looked up at Tom and found him gazing intently at her. She blushed. “Uh, how about three weeks from now? I have a Friday night . . .”
Tom clunked back into reality, hard. “Three weeks?” He was nonplussed, taken aback. “Really?”
“Yeah . . .” She looked down at this week.
He craned his head to look at the page. “What about that?” He poked his finger at the page. “It literally says you have nothing to do tonight.”
Nina shook her head. “Nothing actually means something.”
He looked at her.
“I mean, it means something to me; it means reading.”
“You have enforced reading?”
“It’s my job.” And I’d rather be reading than anything else, but that’s not relevant.
“Wait, what about that?” He pointed to the entry that said Movie Night. “We could go to a movie together.” He looked triumphant. “You already have a ticket.”
“Good point,” replied Nina, “but not this weekend. I’m going to see Aliens with my friends. It’s set up already.”
“How about the week after?” Suddenly, Tom was embarrassed. If Nina didn’t want to go out with him, he wasn’t going to keep pushing it. It wasn’t that he expected her to clear her schedule for him completely and immediately, but a little bit of mutual interest would be nice.
She had flipped ahead. “No, I’m going to a Jane Austen movie marathon with Liz, my boss.” She looked up and smiled. “Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. Awesome, right?”
“Uh, sure.” This was maybe not the good idea he had thought it was. Maybe this girl wasn’t a good fit for him after all. He hadn’t read Jane Austen, hadn’t seen any of those movies, didn’t like reading, didn’t like being organized, didn’t like knowing what every minute of every day held for the next week, let alone the next month. Then she moved her head and there was that scent again, honey and lemons, and he knew he