Page 6 of Arrested By the Deputy

She doesn't say anything right away, just watches me, and I brace myself for pity, because that's usually what I get when I let this much slip. Instead she just nods, like she understands it plain and simple, no drama attached. "That's a good reason."

"Doesn't feel like it lately." I sigh heavily, nodding toward my phone.

I hope she knows I’m talking about the Facebook group. I just don’t want to talk about it out loud. It gives them power.

"The Facebook group doesn't know you. They know a video and a nickname. That's not the same as knowing somebody."

"You knew me in high school and you still had a crush on me," I say, testing her, watching her face go pink.

"Tiffany has a big mouth."

"I didn't hear it from Tiffany."

"Then who—" She stops, narrows her eyes. "You're bluffing."

"Maybe." I grin at her, and she throws a napkin at me across the table, and just like that, whatever tension had settled in my shoulders since yesterday afternoon eases up.

The pizza comes out hot, and we spend the next hour talking about nothing in particular. Her bakery, my job, the teachers we both hated in high school, the fact that neither one of us can stand cilantro. She tells me about the cakes for the event venue, how they turned out, how relieved she was when the photographer said they were exactly what he wanted. I tell her about my dog, a rescue mutt named Biscuit that I adopted two years ago, and she laughs so hard at the name that she nearly chokes on her soda.

"Biscuit. You named your dog Biscuit? Did you name him for my bakery?” She raises her eyebrows as she tilts her head to the side.

I shake my head. "He came with the name. I just kept it."

"Sure he did."

It doesn’t sound as if she believes me.

"I'm sticking with that story,” I say, crossing my heart.

By the time we're done eating, the restaurant's mostly cleared out, and Sandra's started stacking chairs up front, a not-so-subtle hint that it's closing time. I pay before Hazel can even reach for her wallet, ignoring the look she gives me, and we walk out into the warm night air.

"I had a really good time," she says, once we're back at my truck. "Better than I expected, honestly."

"What'd you expect?" I’m really interested, because so many people have expectations about who I am, and most of them are completely wrong.

She tilts her head back, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Oh you know? An awkward apology, some stiff conversation, and you checking your watch every ten minutes, hoping like hell you’d be able to get away from me.”

"I wasn't checking my watch."

"No," she says, smiling up at me. "You weren't. You didn’t check it once, actually. Not until you saw that they were starting to stack the chairs."

I open her door again, and she climbs in, and the drive back to her place is quieter than the one there, but it's a comfortable kind of quiet. When we pull up outside her building, I cut the engine and walk her to her door, same as I would've wanted somebody to walk my mother to her door, if my father had ever been the kind of man to think that way.

"So," I say, standing on the top step with her, close enough that I can smell whatever she's got on, something like vanilla and something else I can't place. "I know we said dinner was the apology. But I'd like to see you again, if that's alright. Lunchtomorrow, maybe. Nothing official, nothing for the group to comment on. It can be just us."

"I'm closed tomorrow," she says. "So I'm free whenever."

"Noon?" I ask, hoping that it doesn’t have to be any longer than that. I’ve really enjoyed our time here tonight. I want to see her, and I’d prefer it to be sooner, rather than later.

"Noon works,” she agrees, her head tilting slightly to the side, biting her lip, almost as if it’s an invitation.

Neither one of us moves. She's looking up at me, and I'm looking down at her, and I know I should say goodnight and walk away like a gentleman, but there's something about the way she's chewing on her bottom lip that makes it impossible for me to do the smart thing.

"Cal," she says, her voice breathless and quiet.

"Yeah?"

She gusts out a breath. "You gonna kiss me or just stand there?"