Well Met(73)

“No. Hey . . .” He reached for my arm again but stopped himself, his fingers flexing in the space between us. “Why would you think that? What did I do?”

“Nothing.” This was terrible. He’d looked so happy the morning before at his kitchen table, and I’d ruined it all. Could I fix this? I reached for him this time, and he let me take his hand. “This is all me. This is your town, you know? These are your people. And I . . .” I took a shaky breath as his thumb stroked lazy, soothing circles along the back of my hand. Even when I had hurt him he was trying to make me feel better. “I’m not very good at this.”

“At what? Living in a town?”

I laughed weakly. “At relationships. At knowing when I’m in one.”

The uncertainty on his face turned to even deeper confusion. “But you said you’d been with your ex a long time.”

“Five years.” I nodded. “But it was a drunken hookup that kind of became . . . comfortable. It wasn’t like he ever asked me out.”

“And neither did I.” Understanding dawned on his face, and his confusion became horror. “Oh, Emily, I never meant . . . I don’t want you to think . . .”

“No, it’s okay!” After talking over each other, we both fell silent together. Finally Simon took a breath.

“Can we start over?” He tugged a little on my arm as he stepped closer, and we met in the middle. “Emily?”

“Hmm?” I could never get over how many colors were in his eyes. From a distance, they looked like a plain brown, almost dull, but up close they were a riot of color. He was my very own pointillist painting.

“Hi.” I caught a flash of his smile as he bent to kiss me. His lips were warm and his kiss was sweet. Gentle. He only deepened the kiss a little while his hand slid into my hair and his other hand curved into the small of my back.

I smiled as he pulled away. “Hi.”

“That’s better.” He cupped my cheek in his hand, his thumb tracing the curve of my cheekbone. “I’ve missed you since yesterday. Is that weird? Does that make me one of those stalker guys?”

“Only if you follow me home. Cut off a lock of my hair while I sleep. Something like that.”

“I thought I’d save that for next weekend.” He bent to kiss me again but swerved at the last second to brush his lips against my cheek instead. “I have a theory about you, Emily Parker.”

“You do?”

“I do.” Another kiss on my cheek, and then his teeth grazed my earlobe, and I shivered. “I don’t think you’ve ever been wooed. Have you?” The words were a low whisper in my ear, and the shiver intensified.

“Wooed?” The word felt strange in my mouth.

“Wooed,” he repeated, punctuating the word with a kiss on my other cheek. “Courted. Swept off your feet. Had someone show you how you make him feel.”

“I . . . I can’t say that I have.” That was an understatement.

“Then brace yourself.” He straightened up and backed away from me a step or two. “I’m going to woo your ass off.”





Nineteen




Despite his promise to woo my ass off, the rest of the week went by without my feeling particularly wooed. Sure, Simon dropped by the bookstore a few more times, and he never left without giving me a kiss that made my toes tingle. And Friday night we went on an actual, proper date: flowers, dinner, a movie, the whole bit. Now that our bad first impressions of each other had been shattered, we had everything to talk about over dinner, and having Simon next to me in the dark of the movie theater, lightly stroking the side of my throat before trailing his fingertips down my arm to hold my hand, made me want to do things that had nothing to do with what was on the screen.

It was all lovely. But not particularly woo-ful. Still, as he led me up the walkway to my front door, I decided it didn’t matter. He was making an effort, and I was more than happy to play along. So when he bent to kiss me good night I stretched up onto my toes, and his mouth took mine under the amber of the front porch light. A perfect kiss to end the night.

I smiled as he pulled away, more content than I’d felt in years. I reached up to brush his hair off his forehead because I couldn’t stop touching him quite yet. “Thank you.”

He raised his eyebrows as he leaned into my touch. “If you’re going to thank me every time I kiss you, it could get pretty repetitive.”

I shook my head. “For tonight. This was wonderful. Consider me wooed.”

“Oh.” A knowing, slightly wicked smile tinged his mouth. “Oh, no. This wasn’t wooing.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Nope.” He bent to kiss me again, a quick punctuation on the evening before he left. “This was just a date. When I woo you, you’ll know it.”

The next morning at Faire he was scarce as we all got ready. I glimpsed him once across the tent, but he disappeared before I could get to him. While I sighed with frustration as Stacey and I started up the hill, I also had to laugh at myself. A few weeks ago, he was the last person I wanted to see. Down, girl, I told myself. Maybe he’s trying to be professional while we’re at Faire. You can hold out till tonight.

When we got to the tavern, there was a single red rose laid across the bar.