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“How does a double date sound?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Darin wants to take Maddie on a date.”
“You prevaricated, right? Led him down another path.”
“I… Not successfully.”
“So you’re thinking we should let them go, but go with them?”
“I’m saying I have to help him take Maddie on a date and I’m asking you if you would like to accompany me.”
Oh. But… The wine was too good going down.
“You want us to be on a date, though.”
His hesitation was sexy. And worrisome, too. What if he didn’t want to date her but felt he had to? What if he was only asking her for Maddie’s sake? What if he’d asked her because he thought doing so was the only way The Lemonade Stand would agree to let Maddie go on the date?
Maddie didn’t need their permission to go. She wasn’t a prisoner at the Stand.
“I want to emasculate my older brother as little as possible.” Grant’s belated answer was offered softly.
“You want Darin and Maddie to think we’re on a date with them.”
“I want it to be a date.”
Oh, boy. She needed to not be naked in the bath at the moment. Covering her pubic area with her hand, as though she could stem the flow of feeling down there, and shield that part of her from a man who saw far too much, she said, “When?”
“Tomorrow night. That’s why I’m calling tonight. Otherwise, we could have talked about this in the morning.”
Right, so he was still coming in the morning. Good.
“My thinking is to get this done as quickly as possible,” he said. “I don’t want the date to build into something bigger than it is.”
Was he talking about them? Or Maddie and Darin?
“And Kara’s going to be gone tomorrow night.”
Maddie was her usual sitter, but not her only one. Occasionally, when Maddie was otherwise engaged, other residents watched over Kara for her.
“Okay.”
“Really? Just like that?”
She sipped again. Pushed water up over her nipples, stimulating them further. “Yeah, I think so, just like that.”
It made logical sense. Put the elephant on the table. Take the bull by the horns. Face the issue.
“Great, then. I’ll plan something. Unless you’d rather…”
“No, you go ahead.” Mistake. Mistake. Mistake. She used to love it when Brandon surprised her with a special night out, when he took care of the details. She’d felt spoiled. Cared for.
And she’d been left bereft when the details he’d taken care of had no longer included her.
She been brokenhearted, too, but hearts mended. It was the way the life one was building could be completely deleted without warning, when one allowed one’s life to be tightly woven with the wants and needs of another, that had nearly killed her.
It was that joining of hearts and lives that she would never again allow.
But she could date. Have sex. Be friends.
Grant asked about her culinary likes and dislikes. She told him Maddie’s, too. He asked if she liked the beach. She told him she and Maddie both liked the beach.
He wanted to know her taste in music. She told him about Pachelbel, happening to mention that she was listening to him right then. And added, “Maddie likes country music.”
“You’re listening to Pachelbel?”
Scooping more water over her breasts, she reached for her wineglass and said, “Mmm-hmm.”
“Is that water I hear?”
She’d tried to keep her activities quiet. Until that last time. She’d forgotten.
Taking a sip of wine, she allowed a drop to spill onto her breast. Watched it trickle into the water and set her glass back on the porcelain edge. “I don’t know, probably,” she said.
“You listen to Pachelbel while you do dishes?”
“I’m not doing dishes.”
His pause was quite lengthy. She dipped her hand in the water and wiped the wine off her nipple.
And dipped her hand in the water again, not even trying to be quiet about it.
“You’re in the bathtub.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You leave me no choice but to picture you there.”
“I’m under bubbles. All you’d see is white.”
