Page 18 of What's an Earl Gotta Do?
“I hope you know that I would never—”
She ducked her head. She could have sworn he was at least thinking about kissing her. “N—never?”
He slashed his hand for emphasis. “Absolutely never.”
“Oh.” Anne was glad he was facing the other way because her face felt like it might crumple.
“Not in a million years—”
Now she was just annoyed. “Thank you, Michael! I understand. There is no need to keep explaining.”
He lumbered to his feet. “Excuse me,” he said, stumbling into a nearby copse of trees.
He returned five minutes later, looking sheepish. Anne found it difficult to meet his eyes. He sat beside her on the blanket.
“Anne, I—I’m so sorry.”
“You mentioned that,” she muttered.
“You’re not mad at me, are you?”
She sighed. She was embarrassed, and, if she was being honest, disappointed.
It was normal for a girl to feel excited about receiving her first kiss. That was probably all it was.
But it wasn’t Michael’s fault if he didn’t want to kiss her.
She looked up at him and did her best to smile. “No, Michael. I’m not mad at you.”
“Good.” She could still recall his expression in the split second before he dropped his gaze to the blanket. His eyes, emerald-bright in the afternoon sun, held anxiety, relief, and… something else she had never been able to pinpoint. He added in a rush, “Because I hope you know that you mean everything to me.”
She did know that.
They were best friends, after all.
“I do,” she said. “And you mean everything to me, too.”
They packed up the picnic, and Michael escorted Anne back home.
They never spoke of it again.
With time, Anne had come to see that Michael was right—they were friends. Nothing more than that. That moment on the blanket had been nothing but a passing midsummer madness. It didn’t matter that Michael felt nothing for her beyond friendship, because that was precisely what she felt for him, too.
Of course it was.
When Michael returned for Christmas break, it had occurred to someone that they were no longer eight years old, and that Anne needed to be chaperoned. And so that horrible picnic was the last time they’d been alone together.
Which was fine. She certainly wasn’t planning on tickling him again.
Anne blinked. Edward was speaking. “He said that?”
“He did,” Anne said.
Edward held Anne’s mare while she mounted, then they started toward the main road. “Did you ever consider,” Edward said, “that he might have said something reflexively to diffuse an awkward situation, but perhaps he did not mean it?”
Anne glanced over her shoulder at her brother. Why wouldn’t he let it go? “No. He was clear about it. Inescapably so.”
“I understand,” Edward said. “But sometimes a man will, uh, prevaricate. Perhaps he didn’t know what to say and he…”
