Page 55 of Kiss Me Now
I blinked at him and pressed a hand against my racing heart. When he pointed to my phone and gave me a questioning glance, I nodded, and he moved to it and turned down the volume.
“You can’t walk into the house of a single woman living on her own,” I told him. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I knocked a bunch of times, but I had a feeling you wouldn’t hear me over the music.”
“When did you get here?” I asked.
“I only knocked for a minute.”
“I meant to Creekville. I didn’t think you were coming this weekend.”
“Miss me?” he asked with a crooked grin.
“You wish.”
“I do, actually.”
My heart gave an extra beat, and I frowned.
He held up his hands, misunderstanding the frown. “I know, I know, you have no time or interest for dating. Got it. Just here to help with some renovation. And...air guitar?” he asked as Bon Jovi began singing about living on a prayer.
I glanced behind me at the mess and the sheer amount of wallpaper left to remove. Suddenly, it was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to say, “Forget it and let’s go wade in the creek,” but my busy bee setting wouldn’t quite let me get away with that. “Mushrooms,” I blurted.
“Mushrooms?” he repeated. “Like at Caps? Or are you into some recreational activities I probably don’t want to know about?”
“Both and neither,” I said. “I want to go mushroom hunting. It wasn’t a super great first week at school, so I think I’m going to redeem myself by bringing in samples of different local mushrooms for them to look at under microscopes and practice taxonomy.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad a first week as you think.”
“I walked down the hall with my skirt tucked into my underwear.”
A laugh tried to escape him, but he pressed his lips together for a moment then said, “Did you tell them it was an anatomy lesson?”
It wasn’t funny to me yet. It would be. Scraping together a little more dignity each day as I stood up and faked calm, cool professionalism had helped reassure me that Pantygate wasn’t going to be a career-defining moment. But it was going to take more than a week to be able to laugh about it. At this moment, stomping through the woods felt like a good way to beat back the lingering humiliation.
“Are you a fun guy ready to hunt some fungi?”
“Is it a thing where you become a teacher and suddenly you have bad jokes?” he asked.
“Yeah. We get a class roster and an app with joke of the day. Fungi or bye-bye.”
“Fungi,” he said.
I ran a glance over him. He was dressed to work in board shorts and a T-shirt with some sandwich shop logo I’d never heard of. “Let’s go then. Did you drive your convertible?”
“Of course. That’s the only reason I’ve been driving out the last three weekends. Gives me an excuse to put the top down.” He grinned, and I knew it wasn’t true, but I still sort of wished that he’d add a flirty qualifier, like,And to see you, of course.
And it annoyed me again to feel that way, of course.
“Let me grab some supplies and we’ll go,” I muttered. I could be honest enough to admit to myself that I had invented a reason for us to spend time together, but I didn’t have to be happy with myself about it.
Twenty minutes later, I directed him to a parking lot at the head of a walking trail that wound along the creek, and we climbed out, my tote full of supplies. Instead of setting us on the trail, I led him across the bridge and into the woods on the other side.
“Hey, that bag doesn’t have murder tools in it, does it?” he asked.
“It definitely does. I’m luring you out here to kill you and steal your car. Miss Lily may have some questions when she sees me driving it every day and you’ve been missing for weeks, but I’m smart. I’ll figure something out.”
“Okay, as long as I know what the plan is.” He slipped the bag from my arm and slung it over his shoulder. “Teach me how to find mushrooms, Ms. Spencer.”
