Page 24 of Until Joy

Graham set down his fork and took a swallow of his beer. Then he gave me a look that made me tingle. “Aw, damn, the scary date question,” he muttered.

“If you think that’s scary, wait until you hear some of my follow-up questions.” I smirked.

“It gets worse?” His eyebrows crawled up his forehead.

“Oh yeah.” I smiled. “Go on, Graham, tell me about yourself.”

He sighed. “Is there any particular place you want me to start?”

Graham might have sighed, but he asked his question good-naturedly. I liked that about him. Hell, I liked a lot of things about him.

“Nope. Gentleman’s choice.”

“How about when and where I met Miss Laverne.”

“Oh, I would love to know that story.” Graham might have sat back, but him telling me a story meant that I still had time to eat, so I scooped up some more of his heavenly mac and cheese.

“I saw her in the grocery store parking lot.”

I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess. She was trying to handle too many groceries, and you dove in to help.”

“Nope, you’ve got it totally wrong,” he laughed. “But good guess. There was this woman with three kids. Two were in a stroller, and one was on her hip. She was trying to put things into her trunk, but every single kid was crying, and the little girl on her hip was hanging on like a monkey and the mom could hardly move.”

“Poor thing, I can just picture it.”

“Yeah, the mom was close to tears. So Miss Laverne swooped in. Soon she had the toddler in her arms, and immediately the kid wasn’t crying anymore. The mom got the two babies to stop crying and then she could handle the groceries. Miss Laverne worked magic.”

I swallowed my food and took a sip of beer. “I’m stunned you didn’t try to help.”

“I know what operations I can win and which ones I’m going to lose. This was not a mission where I could be of service. Miss Laverne had it under control.”

Hmm. Mission, huh?

Interesting.

“I could totally see Miss Laverne doing that.”

“The mom was Kathy Bowers, by the way.”

“Oh, I know her. She’s stopped by a couple of times. I love those kids. But that still doesn’t tell me how you got to know Miss Laverne.”

“She saw me watching everything. I stayed around and saw her trying to wrestle all her groceries into her trunk, and I offered to help. Of course she offered to make me lunch.”

“Of course she did.” I grinned.

“I declined. I didn’t want to take advantage of her. When I got back to work the next day, I told Wes what happened. Wes told me about her and how she probably felt bad not being able to return my favor, so I realized I’d screwed up. I made sure to do my shopping on the same day and time the following week, and she was there. I helped her with her groceries again, but this time I said yes when she invited me to lunch.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said as I leaned forward and squeezed his forearm in approval. Or maybe I squeezed his arm because I’d been dying to touch some of those luscious, hard muscles. He looked down at my hand and then up into my eyes. He gave me a slow smile that had butterflies winging through my stomach. Oh, the man knew what I was doing, and he liked it.

“Anyway, Wes was spot on. She sure was happy to make me lunch.”

I looked down at my empty plate. Graham did, too. “Would you like some more food?” he asked.

“No, I’m full.”

“Are you done with the inquisition?”

“I’ve barely started,” I teased him.