"Just because one person got killed on you doesn't mean everyone will."
I gripped the steering wheel tight enough to make my hands hurt. "I was eight when my mother died. My father remarried when I was ten." I shook my head. "People go away and they don't come back."
"Sounds scary." His voice was soft and low.
I didn't know what had made me say that. I didn't usually talk about my mother to strangers, or anybody else for that matter. "Scary," I said softly. "You could say that."
"If you never let anyone get close to you, you don't get hurt, is that it?"
"There are also a lot of very jerky men in the twenty-one-to-thirty age group," I said.
He grinned. "I'll give you that. Nice-looking, intelligent, independent women are not exactly plentiful either."
"Stop with the compliments, or you'll have me blushing."
"You don't strike me as someone who blushes easily."
A picture flashed in my mind. Richard Zeeman na**d beside the bed, struggling into his sweat pants. It hadn't embarrassed me at the time. It was only now, with him so warm and close in the car, that I thought about it. A warm flush crept up my face. I blushed in the dark, glad he couldn't see. I didn't want him to know I was thinking about what he looked like without his clothes on. I don't usually do that. Of course, I don't usually see a man buck na**d before I've even gone out on a date. Come to think of it, I didn't see men na**d on dates either.
"We're in the health club, sipping fruit juice, and I ask you out."
I stared very hard at the road. I kept flashing on the smooth line of his thigh and lower things. It was embarrassing, but the harder I tried not to think about it, the clearer the picture seemed to get.
"Movies and dinner?" I said.
"No," he said. "Something unique. Caving."
"You mean crawling around in a cave on a first date?"
"Have you ever been caving?"
"Once."
"Did you enjoy it?"
"We were sneaking up on bad guys at the time. I didn't think much about enjoying it."
"Then you have to give it another chance. I go caving at least twice a month. You get to wear your oldest clothes and get really dirty, and no one tells you not to play in the mud."
"Mud?" I said.
"Too messy for you?"
"I was a bio-lab assistant in college; nothing's too messy for me."
"At least you can say you get to use your degree in your work."
I laughed. "True."
"I use my degree, too, but I went in for educating the munchkins."
"Do you like teaching?"
"Very much." Those two words held a warmth and excitement that you didn't hear much when people talked about their work.
"I like my job, too."
"Even when it forces you to play with vampires and zombies?"