Page 53 of Falling into Place
He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s been what? Two months since Sasha put up that first post? Just two more to go.” He gave her a wide-eyed look and she laughed.
“Aren’t you supposed to be writing things up for her? About your dates or something? I don’t remember seeing anything last week.”
“Yeah, I texted her in a panic a few days ago because I’ve run out of things to say, so she said we could do it as a Q&A format and sent me questions to answer. I haven’t looked at them yet.”
“Judging by how you did on your style questionnaire, I’m not sure that was Sasha’s best idea.”
“Hey, I tried my best on that!”
“We don’t give participation points at Mode. You skipped half the questions, including the one asking you to name your favorite body part.”
“You said my answer wasn’t useful.”
“I can’t dress your brain, can I?” She gave him a pointed look. “At least when that guy said his dick, I was able to shift the conversation to pants.”
There she went again. “How can you say that so casually?” He could talk about penises in the medical sense without embarrassment all day, but the D-word coming out of Carly’s mouth didn’t feel the same.
At all.
“Say what? Dick?”
He took a deep breath. In through his nose, out through his mouth.
“Because I’m an adult,” she said, as if that explained everything.
Which it kind of did.
Yes, he’d brought it up, but he couldn’t talk to Carly about dicks any longer. He was about to bring up the shirt—the entire reason he’d stopped by—when a gray-striped cat sauntered into the room.
“Is this the infamous Pepper?”
She walked to the small table next to the couch and picked up a half-full glass of wine. “Infamous? Do I talk about him that much?”
“No. But he’s a cat, so I figure an accolade like that will start me out on his good side.”
“He’s a dog-cat, remember? You don’t have to pander to his whims.”
Brooks smiled and crouched as the cat approached. “Hey, bud.” Pepper allowed him to slide a hand down his back, arching and flickinghis tail. “Maybe we should get him and Oreo together for playtime. Do cats do that?”
Her brows came together in thought. “Ours might.”
He almost suggested they make a date out of it, but that would probably be a bad idea.
Pepper leaned into his hand and Brooks smiled and looked up at her. Big mistake—she was smiling back at them with a sort of dreamy expression that was making him less inclined to care about the fact she was his stylist and wasn’t one of the women he was supposed to be dating. In public, anyway ...
He quickly looked away before he entertained that thought any further, and his gaze landed on the paused scene on the television.
“Is that Ryan Gosling?”
“The one and only.”
“So that’s why you’re watching this movie.”
“What? No, it’s not. It’s objectively one of the best movies of all time.”
“Dude’s a good-looking guy; I’m not judging. I’ll take your word for it being the best. I never saw it.”
“You’ve never seenThe Notebook?” Her reaction was worse than when he’d said he thought he wasn’t supposed to wear black and brown together (all neutrals match, apparently).
