Page 17 of Sweet Spot

She started. “Fort Myers. You?”

Just south of here. So close and yet so very far for two kids. “Calusa Key.”

She smiled. “We grew up just an hour from each other. We might have met before and don’t remember it. Are you that kid who dropped ice cream on my feet at Sea World?”

When I laughed, her eyes lit up in a way that made my skin heat. “Are you the girl who photobombed my family photo at Cape Canaveral?” It was strange to think it was possible. Improbable, sure, but not impossible. “Have you ever been to Calusa Key?”

She nodded. “Twice. Once on a field trip and once with a friend.”

“Field trip?”

“My high school had an environmental education track. Nerd, remember? We took field trips to different ecosystems to study them in person.”

“You’ve been to my sanctuary.” For some reason that made me excited. It wasn’t like it was mine when we were teenagers. “I was the ranger for the Calusa Key Sanctuary for the last five years.” We regularly had school groups through the sanctuary. It was one of my favorite parts of the job, actually.

“You’ve…been a ranger for the last five years?”

I guess she hadn’t gotten to my resume yet. “Yep. Bet you’re wondering how a guy like me ends up in an office like this.”

“I am utterly fascinated.”

A wonderful, terrible idea hit me. “Have you had dinner yet?” Was it pushing things to have dinner alone with the woman I was desperately attracted to? Yes. Was I going to stop myself?

Hell no.

“No,” she said slowly.

I hopped to my feet. “Excellent. I’ll tell you the story over dinner then.”

“Isaac.”

“Just dinner, Kate. I’m hungry, you’re hungry, and we have some work-related conversations to have.” I held my breath while she stared at the wall behind my desk.

“Just dinner,” she muttered, then nodded once and stood. “Where to?”

“How do you feel about sushi?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I love sushi, but that’s somewhere I usually go on a date, not a business dinner.”

With us, did it really matter? “When I’m stressed I like to eat delicious meals. I have a tendency to skip them because I work straight through.”

“Fine,” she said with a sigh. “I could use some comfort sushi, too.”

I held open the door. “Stirling’s giving you a hell of a time?” I loved her jeans. They cupped her ass in just the right way.

She glanced over her shoulder just as I pulled up alongside her, almost as if she could feel my eyes looking where they shouldn’t. “Harder than most. It comes with the job.”

We pushed out of the glass doors into the parking lot. “The restaurant is about a mile up the road.”

“I’ll follow you.” She dug out her keys.

I almost asked her to ride with me but then thought better of it. I could already feel myself slipping away. The man I had been since Rosie was born faded into the background with Kate.

The restaurant wasn’t busy, which was good because it wasn’t large either. Only two other tables had couples at them and we took a booth near the back. At first the air crackled a little with awkwardness, but then I started telling the wild and weird story of how I wound up being offered the job with the Mantas and Kate relaxed against the booth.

“Chris Kaine? The pitcher?”

“Yep. We met when we were kids on the island. He was only there a year, but we all played in the same league. Anyway, after he signed with the Mantas, he decided he wanted to live on the island again and bought a house next door to the girl he’d had a crush on all those years ago.”

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