effort she’d been making to convince him otherwise. “You’re shivering.”
She looked up, above their heads. “We’re standing in the shade.”
“Don’t do that, Darby.”
She slid her hand out from his, her fingertips fluttering nervously to her throat. “I was just a little unnerved in the elevator. That’s all.” She tried to step around him toward the rustic-looking restaurant, but Garrett shifted, blocking the path.
“Unnerved. Seems a puny word to me. You got claustrophobic. You don’t have to hide it.”
“I’m not. I just…just— There were so many people inside the elevator. I…I was fine when we arrived, you know.”
He wouldn’t go quite that far, but it was true enough. She hadn’t been ready to climb out of her skin. “There were only a few people on the elevator when we took it up to the courtroom,” he allowed. “So it’s just overcrowded small places that get to you?”
Her cheeks were red, her eyes embarrassed. Evasive. “Something like that.”
Embarrassment he could understand, even though it wasn’t necessary. The evasiveness was another matter.
“Does it have anything to do with this?” He rubbed his thumb gently over her throat, and he felt her nervous swallow. “The injury to your vocal chords?”
“Why does it matter?”
“It still affects you.”
“So?”
He kept his patience with an effort. “So I’m interested in—”
Her eyes widened.
“—in your…welfare,” he finished, taking his hand from her smooth neck and pushing it into his pocket. Everyone was entitled to their privacy, he reminded himself. Wondering when the hell he’d forgotten it. “You’ve helped me out. I owe you.”
“No.” She shook her head, her expression growing even more pained. “You don’t owe me anything, Garrett. You really don’t.”
She might as well have posted Keep Away banners around herself. Unfortunately, Garrett couldn’t remember why he should be glad of that.
He looked at her mouth. What he did remember was the way she’d tasted. Of sunshine and cold water from the hose. Of smiles and laughter from kids who were hardly even old enough to know they had little reason to laugh.
“Well, I hope that doesn’t mean you’ve decided against lunch.” He lifted his chin toward the restaurant. “Now that you’ve made me hoof it all this way.”
“Made you—” Her mouth snapped shut. “You’re teasing me again,” she finally said.
“Maybe.”
She sighed noisily. But he could still see the twitch at the corner of her soft lips. “Why?” she asked tartly. “Why do you do that?”
He shrugged and nudged her toward the restaurant. “Because I’m beginning to think you have had as few smiles in your life as I’ve had in mine.”
Chapter Nine
Darby shook her head when the waiter offered her coffee and watched him fill Garrett’s ivory cup. “I don’t know how you can just sit there so relaxed when Mayor Carson is right across this very dining room glaring at us.”
“His presence is bugging you a hell of a lot more ’n it’s bugging me.”
“Obviously.”
The corner of Garrett’s mobile mouth twitched. “But it does show that this town ain’t big enough for the two of us,” he added.
She twisted the linen napkin in her lap another knot or two. The small table she and Garrett shared was next to the window, and she shifted the last available inch to look outside. The mayor had come into the restaurant after Darby and Garrett had already been served. “I’ve always hated being watched.” She shifted again, uncomfortable.
“Then you should walk around with a bag over your head,” he suggested.
Pleasure darted guiltily through her. Three months ago she’d hacked off her waist-length hair with sewing shears and begun dressing in the most bland clothing imaginable. She’d wanted nothing to connect her to the woman she’d been. The woman who wore only vibrant, couturier clothing because her father expected it was no more.
“You said you wanted to talk about the kids,” she reminded them both. “That was the whole point of this lunch. Wasn’t it?”
“Which you ate very little of,” Garrett pointed out.
“It was enormous.” She’d dutifully poked and prodded at the elaborate mound of chicken and lettuce and fifty other ingredients because Garrett expected her to, not because she’d had any real appetite. The day’s activities had taken care of that. “The children…?”
Garrett’s large hand eclipsed the delicate china coffee cup as he lowered it to the saucer. “You heard the judge,” he said as he signed the credit slip and pocketed his gold credit card. “He’s not happy at all that I’m single. That I show none of the makings of a ‘family’ man.
“My only edge over Caldwell is that I’m not old enough to be their grandfather. I’ve only been awarded temporary custody. Six weeks to prove—or disprove, as Caldwell over there obviously hopes—my suitability as a guardian.”
“I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.”
His lips twisted. “So you think I’m a bad bet, too.”
“I didn’t say that. Garrett, honestly, I don’t think that at all.” Stunned, she sat forward, pressing her hand over his. “Do you?”
He was looking at her hand on his. Which made her look at her hand on his. Swallowing, she sat back in her chair, pressing both her hands against the twisted cloth in her lap. “Do you?” she asked again.
“I didn’t plan to be in Fisher Falls that long,” he said instead of answering.
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure where the flood of disappointment came from, but she knew she didn’t like it. “I didn’t realize. I, um, I thought you’d moved here. You know, permanently. To run that construction company.”
“I own that construction company. And I’m only here to get things up and running. Once that’s underway, I’m gone, leaving one extremely competent team behind.”
“Own?” She blinked. “Well. Don’t I feel the fool.”
“Why?”
“Ah…because. I didn’t know.”
“We could feast on all the information we don’t know about each other.” He stood. “I asked the hostess to call us a taxi. I imagine it’s here by now. You ready?”
Her stomach clutched a little. She dropped her napkin on the table and rose. He took her elbow, and she started.
“I thought you’d relaxed over the lunch you didn’t eat.” He guided her through the dining room toward the entrance.
It was only because she was no longer accustomed to a man escorting her around, she told herself. Not because it was Garrett’s hand on her arm. “I did relax. And I did eat. I just didn’t eat as much as you.”
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