Pulling out onto the main road, I chuckled. “Probably the sort of punishment you’d enjoy.”
I reached for the radio at the same time Kat did and our fingers brushed. Static raced over my hand, jumping to hers. Kat jerked back with a soft gasp. Her eyes were bright, and it was suddenly so damn hot in the SUV, and it had nothing to do with the heat coming out of the vents.
I’d picked out an Italian restaurant and had stopped by earlier. The manager had been rather ecstatic when it came to helping me out with dinner. She most definitely developed a crush.
Kat eyed the red-and-white checkered tablecloths as we were led to a small table in the back. She blinked once and then twice when she saw the bare table lit with small candles and two wineglasses filled with water.
Kat sat across from me. “Did you…?”
I propped my elbows on the table and leaned forward. Light from the candles flickered across her face. “Did I do what?”
“Arrange this?” She waved at the candles.
I shrugged. “Maybe…”
Smiling, she tucked her hair back. “Thank you. It’s very…”
“Awesome?”
She laughed. “Romantic—it’s very romantic. And awesome, too.”
“As long as you think it is awesome, then it was worth it.” I glanced up as the manager arrived at our table. “Hi there…”
Rhonda, who probably didn’t normally take orders, smiled at me and then took our orders. Once she dashed off, Kat grinned at me and said, “I think we’re going to get extra meatballs.”
I laughed. “Hey, I’m good for some things.”
“You’re good for a lot of things.”
Her blush that immediately followed her words stopped me from pointing out all the things I was good at. Instead, I asked her about the book I’d seen in her room, one with a shirtless dude who looked like he could chest-press a truck.
“It’s a historical romance,” she explained. “About pirates.”
I arched a brow. “Pirates.”
She grinned as a ginormous pile of breadsticks was placed in the center. “Pirates were all the rage back in the day.” She plucked up a breadstick. “You’d look good on a book cover.”
“I don’t wear leather pants.” I bit into the garlic-and-butter heaven.
“Still. You have the look.”
I rolled my eyes. “You just like me for my body. Admit it.”
“Well, yeah…”
“I feel like man-candy.”
She busted out laughing, and that one laugh was worth a million bucks. Finishing off the breadstick, I wiped the specks of garlic off with the linen napkin. “What are you going to do about college?”
Kat blinked and then sat back, eyeing the candle. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s not really possible unless I go to one near a buttload of beta—”
“You just broke a rule,” I reminded her.
She wrinkled her nose. “What about you? What are you doing for college?”
I shrugged. “Haven’t decided yet.”
“You’re running out of time,” she pointed out.
“Actually, we’ve both run out of time, unless we do a late acceptance.”
“Okay. Rule-breaking aside, how is it possible? Do online classes?” she asked, and I shrugged again. “Unless you know of a college that has…a suitable environment?”
Our meals arrived, pressing pause on the conversation for a moment. Rhonda basically grated an entire block of cheese on my plate before turning to Kat’s.
“So, do you?” she asked when Rhonda left.
Knife and fork in hand, I cut into the lasagna. “The Flatirons.”
“The what-a-what?”
“The Flatirons is a mountain just outside of Boulder, Colorado.” I continued knifing away until the lasagna was in bite-size pieces. “They are full of quartzite. Not as well-known as some places or as visible, but they are there, under feet of sediment.”
“Okay.” She twisted her spaghetti noodles around her fork. “What does that have to do with anything?”
I peered up at her. “University of Colorado is about two miles from the Flatirons.”
“Oh.” She chewed slowly. “Is…is that where you want to go to school?”
“Colorado isn’t a bad place. I think you’d like it.”
Kat swallowed and then smiled faintly as she placed her fork down beside her plate. The sudden look on her face was distant, as if she were a million miles away as she stared at her plate.
Picking up a breadstick, I tapped the tip of her nose with it. Sprinkles of garlic puffed into the air. “What were you just thinking about?”
She brushed off the rest of the crumbs and smiled. “I…I think Colorado sounds nice.”
Yeah, I didn’t believe her. She was thinking about something that had stolen the light from her eyes. The possibilities of what it could’ve been were limitless. Stabbing a piece of lasagna, I changed the subject.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay with the movie I picked? I don’t want you to be scared,” I teased.
She pinned me with an arched look. “It’s going to take a lot more than a haunted box to scare me.”
My lips twitched. Haunted box. Ha. “Then again, if you do get scared, then you’d have to get super close to me.”