Page 27 of #Awestruck

I figured it was better to stick to the truth as much as possible so that I didn’t trip myself up later. “At the moment I’m using my degree to fetch coffee from Starbucks and make copies. I’m an intern at ISEN.”

“You mentioned you still want to be an announcer. Is that why you’re working there?”

Yes, that hadn’t changed in the last two days. He might also have remembered that from before. I’d talked about it all the time with him when we were younger. He’d been very supportive, even though back then no woman had ever announced a televised NFL game. “I do still want that. And yes, that’s why I’m there.”

He picked up a butter knife and twirled it back and forth. “I seem to recall you telling me about how you’d gone to that sports announcer camp in Pennsylvania.”

Slightly humiliating that that was what he’d chosen to remember from the time we’d spent together. “It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do.” There were plenty of female sideline reporters, but no announcers at a national level for the NFL. Not until Beth Mowins. She was kind of a personal hero of mine. And even then she’d been relentlessly attacked by trolls on the internet for being “too shrill” or “annoying” as she called the game. She’d cracked the glass ceiling hard, and I hoped to follow in her footsteps. “I’ve spent a lot of time calling whatever I can—college volleyball games, Pop Warner football, the local junior high soccer team’s games.”

“Do you have a demo? I know some people.”

I actually always had one of my demos in my purse. Something my grandma had insisted on. I pulled the CD out of my purse and slid it across the table to him. It probably wasn’t very cool of me to accept his offer to help when my plan was to bring him down, but that’s how badly I wanted this job. I would go through whatever door opened up to me.

His fingers brushed against mine as he took the CD, and I bit down on my lower lip to prevent myself from gasping. That burning, melting sensation returned wherever his skin touched mine. And he was only touching my fingers. What would I do if he ever touched the rest of me?

Probably spontaneously combust.

Jeannie came back in with the appetizers. Evan stuck the CD in his suit jacket while I contemplated what had just happened. Why did I respond to him like this? Was it residual teen angst? Or something more?

If nothing else, he’d been exceedingly clever to distract me by asking about my career ambitions. That always made me let my guard down.

“Here you go,” she said, placing the plates on the table. She announced their French names, but they meant nothing to me. It all sounded ... disgusting. I didn’t recognize any of the so-called food in front of me, and I was too embarrassed to ask her about it.

“What is this?” I asked when Jeannie left the room.

“I don’t know. I told the hostess to bring me the chef’s signature appetizers.”

“You do know that the man studied in France, right? For all we know this could be snail antennas and frog tongues.”

“Aubrey said you were a foodie.”

“I’m not. I like eating, and I enjoy cooking, but I’m not one of those people who take forty pictures of their meal and put it on Instagram. Or who thinks that life is unfulfilled if you haven’t tried yak’s milk, ostrich eggs, or hissing cockroaches.” I was perfectly happy living a less fulfilled life with normal food.

He leaned forward, his hand near mine on the table. It took all my willpower not to move it away in a pathetic attempt to show him he didn’t affect me. “Let’s be adventurous and try it.”

I never backed down from a challenge. I grabbed the gray stuff in front of me and dished some onto my plate. I took a small, tentative bite. And whatever this slimy meat-like substance was, it was extremely salty. I spit it out onto my plate. My mother would have yelled at me, using my first and middle names as some kind of curse words, if I’d done that at home. “I’m sorry, but that is truly awful. There should be a calorie refund on things that taste that gross.”

For some reason that struck Evan as completely funny, and he was laughing with a mouthful of food. He did finally manage to swallow his but only barely. He had the kind of laughter that was contagious, and while I did keep my own laugh in check, I couldn’t help but smile.

“Smile Number Four,” he said after he’d started breathing normally again. “And you were right earlier. I was trying to impress you.”

“Swing and a miss.”

“Wrong sport.”

“Fourth and ten, then.”

Another brilliant smile from him that had my baby-making parts giddy with excitement. I told my glands to chill the freak out. I reached for my napkin, intending to drape it across my lap. Evan was going to think I’d been raised in a barn, given how I’d been acting all evening. My hands were shaking. Why were my hands shaking?

In my effort to be quick, I dropped the napkin ring on the floor, where it rolled under the table.

“I’ve got it!” he said before I could even react.

He reached for the ring and held it aloft to me, bending on one knee. “Ashton?”

It was such a magnificent picture, him on his knee like he was going to propose, that it took me a second to respond. “Yes?”

He took my hand, and explosive flames enveloped my skin. My heart beat so fast and so hard I was sure he could hear it. He dropped the napkin ring into my open palm, and my fingers curled around it.

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