Page 35 of Airhead

She snuck a peek at him. There was no missing the shit-eating grin on his face.

Oh yeah, he for sure heard it.

Then the smug, lying jerk had the gall to wink at her. That's when her need to win the silent game lost out to her need to call him out on his bullshit.

"It's not your DeLorean," she said.

The tips of his ears turned almost as red as his hair. "Is that a question?"

"No." She did her best to glare at him, but it was hard when she was also doing her best not to find the response adorable.

It wasn't. It wasn't cute or sweet or endearing. She barely even noticed it. Just a minor blip on her radar.

Uh huh. Keep telling yourself that.

"Too bad," he said, with a bashful grin that showed off his dimples as he took the exit for the museum district. "I like your questions."

Katie rolled her eyes at the obvious fib. Except for her family—and even they had their limits—no one liked her questions, at least not after she'd asked the first twenty-five. Most folks thought she was weird because of them and found a way to avoid her in the future.

But not Frank.

From the first time she stopped by the firehouse to drop off her dad’s lunch, Frank had answered every one of her questions, and then he'd asked if she had any more. She did. She always did, and he never seemed to mind.

She didn't want to think about why that made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside, so she shoved that thought away and asked, "What are we doing in Harbor City? And don't you dare try to sell me that bullshit of having to be here again. What's the truth?"

He shot her a grin that made her stomach do a loop-de-loop.

“Because you’re about to have the best night of your life.”

Chapter Eighteen

Once again, Frank had let his big mouth do the talking before his brain had even started walking. How many times was he going to do that tonight with Katie?

The best night of her life? How in the hell was he supposed to deliver on that? She wasn’t the kind of woman that he could impress by flashing his dimples and buying her a beer. Tonight was probably his last, best chance to win her over, and he was all fire hose and no water.

He squeezed the steering wheel tight enough that his knuckles turned white as he flipped through every date idea he’d ever had in his life.

The movies? Too boring, plus they’d both just gone.

Dinner? Yeah, no one had ever taken her out to eat on a date before.

A concert? The ticket offices were all closed by now, and he only had a five and a half torn single in his wallet, so scalpers weren’t an option.

Think, Hartigan.

He was about to make a left onto Vine when he saw it. The massive elephant skeleton stood three times higher than an actual elephant and had been on the news the other night when he’d been on shift. They’d just finished watching the Harbor City Giants lose in the tenth inning when the news started with a story about the new elephant exhibit at the Harbor City Natural History Museum.

A rookie had groused that no one gave a shit about elephants, and before Frank even realized he was going to, he’d dropped a mini-dissertation on African Elephants. Everyone in the station’s living room had stared at him, mouths open wide enough to catch the cross-town bus.

“That’s it,” Collin Madigan had said, tossing a balled-up fire pamphlet at Frank’s head. “My sister is not allowed at our poker nights anymore.”

And that’s when Frank had realized why he’d known more than the old dad joke about how to eat an elephant. About six months ago at poker night, Katie had insisted they leave on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom during the game and had then oohed and ahhed over the baby elephants—calves he now knew—while claiming the night’s pot.

Frank’s grip now loosened on the steering wheel, and he crossed three lanes of traffic, ignoring the blaring honks of the other drivers, and drove into the museum’s parking garage. He pulled into the first spot he found and cut the engine, then got out and hurried to her side of the car so he could open her door for her.

She thanked him as she got out and stood in the small space between him and the car. They weren’t so close they were touching, but they were near enough that he could pick up the vanilla scent of her perfume and spot the dusting of pale freckles across her nose. He wondered—not for the first time—where else she had those barely-there dots. The supply closet at Marinos had given them privacy, but not the kind where they could shed any more clothes than necessary. He’d spent every day since then regretting that.

“Here you go,” he said, handing the keys to her.