“
An old Chevy, I think,” he was going on now. “It’s supposed to be back soon, though. Not really the same without it, is it?”
He actually sounded genuinely mournful. I was surprised to find myself battling back a quick, involuntary smile. He did seem to be more interesting than your average, run-of-the-mill BMOC. I had to give him that.
Get a grip, O’Connor, I chastised myself. “Absolutely not,” I said, giving my head a semi-vigorous nod. That ought to move him along, I thought.
You may not be aware of this fact, but agreeing with people is often an excellent way of getting them to forget all about you. After basking in the glow of agreement, most people are then perfectly content to go about their business, remembering only the fact that someone agreed and allowing the identity of the person who did the actual agreeing to fade into the background.
This technique almost always works. In fact, I’d never known it not to.
There was a moment of silence. A silence in which I could feel the BMOC’s eyes upon me. I kept my own eyes fixed on the top of the carless column. But the longer the silence went on, the more strained it became. At least it did on my side. This guy was simply not abiding by the rules. He was supposed to have basked and moved on by now.
“You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?” he said at last.
I laughed before I quite realized what I’d done.
“Not a clue,” I said, turning to give him my full attention for the very first time, an action I could tell right away spelled trouble. You just had to do it, didn’t you? I thought. He was even better looking when I took a better look.
He flashed me a smile, and I felt my pulse kick up several notches. My brain knew perfectly well that that smile had not been invented just for me. My suddenly-beating-way-too-fast heart wasn’t paying all that much attention to my brain, though.
“You must be new, then,” he commented. “I’d remember you if we’d met before.”
All of a sudden, his face went totally blank.
“I cannot believe I just said that,” he said. “That is easily the world’s oldest line.”
“If it isn’t, it’s the cheesiest,” I said.
He winced. “I’d ask you to let me make it up to you, but I’m thinking that would make things even worse.”
“You’d be thinking right.”
This time he was the one who laughed, the sound open and easy, as if he was genuinely enjoying the joke on himself. In retrospect I think it was that laugh that did it. That finished the job his smile had started. You just didn’t find all that many guys, all that many people, who were truly willing to laugh at themselves.
“I’m Alex Crawford,” he said.
“Jo,” I said. “Jo O’Connor.”
At this Alex actually stuck out his hand. His eyes, which I probably don’t need to tell you were this pretty much impossible shade of blue, focused directly on my face.
“Pleased to meet you, Jo O’Connor.”
I watched my hand move forward to meet his, as if it belonged to a stranger and was moving in slow motion. At that exact moment, an image of the robot from the movie Lost in Space flashed through my mind. Arms waving frantically in the air, screaming, “Danger! Danger!” at the top of its inhuman lungs.
My hand kept moving anyhow.
Our fingers connected. I felt the way Alex’s wrapped around mine, then tightened. Felt the way that simple action caused a flush to spread across my cheeks and a tingle to start in the palm of my hand and slowly begin to work its way up my arm. To this day, I’d swear I heard him suck in a breath, saw his impossibly blue eyes widen. As if, at the exact same moment I looked up at him, he’d discovered something as completely unexpected as I had, gazing down.
He released me. I stuck my hand behind my back.
“Pleased to meet you, Jo O’Connor,” he said again. Not quite the way he had the first time.
”
”