A Magnolia Friendship - Anne-Marie Meyer Page 0,39

sight of Cassidy, who was watching us from her desk. Great. This was going to elicit another conversation that I didn’t want to have. “Did you need anything?” I asked again as I returned my gaze to Danny.

“Yeah.” He sucked in his breath as he reached out to fiddle with the pens in my pen cup. He looked nervous and it was adorable. “I was wondering if you wanted to eat lunch together.”

My eyes widened as his question settled in my mind. Had he really just said the words that I thought he’d said? “Lunch?”

Danny moved his gaze from the pens and over to my face. His expression turned serious as he nodded. “Well, you didn’t say yes to dinner, so I figured we could do something less intense and just eat lunch together.” Then he leaned in, and the smell of his cologne wafted around me, intoxicating me. The smell mixed with the way his muscles rippled as he moved, making me sure that if he asked me to stand on my head, I would.

I was in trouble.

“I’m really busy,” I offered. It was a lame excuse, but I needed him to leave before I agreed. What if I enjoyed being with him? Would I want to do it again? And where did I draw the line? Right now, it seemed wiser to just stay away than try to ration what I could or couldn’t do when it came to him.

Staying away was the best option.

“Hey, Cassidy?” Danny leaned back so that he was in line with her.

She perked up and was out of her chair before I could shake my head in an effort to get her to stay where she was. She didn’t take notice of my discomfort as she sprinted toward my office. “What’s up?”

Danny waved in my direction. “When does Shari eat lunch?”

Cassidy looked confused but glanced up at the clock. “In about an hour, why?”

Danny shot me a grin and moved to leave my office. I hated how excited Cassidy seemed as he neared her. It was as if she thought that he was leaving with her. Which made me feel jealous…which in turn made me feel immature.

I was a mess.

Before I could protest, Danny was out of my office and across the room. I watched as he headed out into the hall and disappeared around the corner. I leaned back in my chair and let out my breath. Cassidy looked as if she wanted to talk, so I reached forward and grabbed my phone. She seemed to take the hint and gave me a smile as she returned to her desk.

After a few seconds of listening to the dial tone, I set my phone back down and rubbed my temples. What was an already stressful day had just been magnified ten times with Danny’s invitation to lunch. The idea of taking a sick day seemed better and better the more I thought about sitting across from Danny. What would we even talk about? I didn’t know much about him, and I was pretty sure the last things he wanted to talk about were my kids or my divorce.

How could I even be friends with this guy, much less…

I shook my head. Friends. That was all we were going to be. If I allowed myself to imagine us being more, I was going to go crazy.

I wished I could say that I finally relaxed enough to get some work done, but that would have been a blatant lie. I spent the next hour staring at my computer screen and trying to force myself to answer an email, but my ability to form sentences had abandoned me. Everything had blended together into one mass, much like my thought process.

By the time Cassidy came into my office and announced that it was lunchtime, I was ready to get this whole lunch date over with so I could move on with my day and my life.

After grabbing my lunch from the fridge in the teacher’s lounge, I found a table at the far end of the room and sat down. I winced when I remembered what I’d packed. Leftover spaghetti with a cucumber and an apple wasn’t exactly what I wanted to sport in front of Danny. I didn’t have a desire to hide the kind of mother I was, but I also wanted the blinders to stay on somewhat. I’d rather him think I was more put together than I really was.

Thankfully, I ate my lunch