“Breakfast sounds good.” Where had that come from? My mouth was working much faster than my brain. A beaming smile broke across his face and his eyes lit up. I clarified, “I mean, I love eating breakfast for supper.”
He didn’t take the easy path, which led to teasing me for practically saying I’d love to be around for breakfast—or at least that’s what I’d secretly meant, but I didn’t actually want to say it.
Vaughn tried to hide his amusement, but the gleam in his eyes told me he was enjoying the whole situation.
“I do, too.”
“Okay, what time are you picking me up then?”
“What time will you be done with work?”
“Four-thirty or five, maybe a little after. Just depends.”
“And how long will it take you to be ready?”
“I don’t know—half hour or so?” I looked up into the rafters as if the correct answer was hiding up there. Whatever time I had, surely it wouldn’t ever be enough to make myself look like someone he would be with. Then my anxiety bloomed, but it was overpowered by anticipation and excitement.
“All right, I’ll be here at six.”
Crap. I should have said I needed more time, but who was I kidding? I couldn’t wait. And let’s face it, he knew what I looked like.
Unless, maybe he wanted the date to start early so it could end early? I hated feeling so insecure. It was completely new to me. I never had a reason to feel like this.
It was scary.
“Well, I interrupted you, so I’ll let you get back to it.” He glanced at my bench where I was working on a new spinner.
“You’ll have to show me how you do that sometime. I don’t know much about them, but that looks tricky.”
“They are tricky,” I said, following his eyes to the shaggy skirt I was attaching to the head of the one I was working on, thinking about how, at the moment, everything felt that way. Tricky.
I held it up for him to inspect.
“They’re pretty, but they can get ‘cha if you’re not watching it. Gotta take your time with them.”
His face sobered. “That sounds like good advice for lots of things. Take your time and be careful.”
He picked it up out of my hand, spun it around, and then placed it back on the workbench. I swallowed a lump of anxiousness, still a little insecure when he was that close. All of my flaws, or plainness in plain sight.
Our eyes locked, and something in his gaze reminded me that he’d just been through a breakup. And even though he said he was fine with the way things ended with him and Rachelle, it still had to hurt.
I might have been green when it came to relationships, but maybe that was better than experiencing such a terrible one. He didn’t seem sad, but my heart still thought of his in that moment.
I cleared my throat and tried to finish what we were talking about. Better yet, I tried to chase away my crazy thoughts, but it was difficult when his blue eyes looked like they were asking so many questions.
“I’m always careful and I have plenty of time.”
I stood up, and the space between us shrunk even further. Vaughn didn’t move, and in that moment I considered telling him my name and then grabbing his face and kissing him mad.
Then again, I had just told him I was fine with taking my time. That may have been a lie.
“Kimberly?” he asked quietly.
God, how I wished that was my name.
I shook my head, feeling my ponytail swing behind me. “Want me to tell you?”
He shook his head, then he squinted and some of his playfulness came back. “You know I don’t kiss women when I don’t know their name, but I didn’t explain myself. I just don’t kiss them on the mouth.”
I swallowed and my damn legs about failed me. I sat back down on the bar stool so I wouldn’t hit the dirt floor.
He stepped closer like he was going to catch me, but I only fell an inch or two back to the stool.
His hand came up to brace me, but when he realized I’d only sat, it gently touched my face. It was tender and maybe the first time anyone had ever touched me like that.
My eyes fluttered, feeling his hand on my skin, and my lips parted to let out the air that had warmed and expanded in my lungs.
Vaughn leaned in and, like before, his face was so close to mine that I could feel his breath lick across my flesh.
“I want to kiss your lips—so bad—but I want more than that is to know who you are. It’s important to me.” His fingers moved behind my neck as his nose ran along my ear. “So maybe I’ll just kiss you somewhere else.”
As I watched him lean in, not daring to stop him or even move, I fixated on his chest moving in and out before me. My eyes closed and my head rolled ever so slightly to the side, inviting him to place his lips wherever the hell he wanted. He moved closer still, until our legs were touching, and his other arm wrapped possessively around my waist.
I didn’t know what to do with my hands and I was having a hard time focusing, so they just hung limply at my sides. I was in a trance.