“Oh.” I fiddled with my pen. “I hope it’s not too serious.”
“He’s just getting way up there in age and doesn’t know when to slow down.” Grady laughed. “Things are kind of crazy over the next couple of weeks with mid-terms and then finals, but when things calm down, I really want to do that dinner with you.”
“I understand.” Flipping the pen, it shot from my fingers and rolled across the desk, dropping off the other side. I sighed.
“Are you sure? I feel like a jerk—”
“It’s totally okay. I had to reschedule on you, so please don’t stress about it.” I rose and walked around my desk, grabbing the pen. “I’d love to grab something to eat when . . . when things calm down.”
“I’m holding you to that.”
I raised my brows, unsure if he actually planned on following through on that. I mean, it seemed kind of weak. He was going to be that busy from now until some undetermined time?
“Okay,” I said as I plopped down in my seat. “Talk to you then.”
“Bye, Jillian.”
Hanging up the phone, I didn’t know what to make of the call. Truthfully, I wasn’t exactly disappointed or relieved. I was sort of apathetic about it, but I didn’t expect him to call again. I guess after turning my head when he tried to kiss me and canceling on the original dinner date, he was looking for a way out. Couldn’t really blame him.
Tuesday saw the return of the pumpkin spice latte. On Wednesday and Thursday, those lattes were once again reunited in my belly with pumpkin spice bread and an amazing slice of pound cake.
On Friday, Brock took me out to lunch, to this new sushi place in town. Brock asked about my upcoming weekend, and he’d told me he had some work to do at his place. We didn’t talk about work or our past. I told him about the bookcases I’d bought but hadn’t put together yet. He offered to assemble them for me, but I didn’t take the offer too seriously.
On the way back to the Academy, we stopped at a flower nursery. I stayed in the car while he darted across the gravel driveway, entering one of the tented buildings, since he said it wouldn’t take that long.
About five minutes passed before he returned, carrying two bushy flowers, one with burnt orange blossoms and another that was deep violet. He placed them on the floor of the backseat.
“Mums?” I asked when he climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Yeah. What about them?”
“Why did you pick up two mums?”
“Why not?” A sheepish grin crossed his face. “I like them.”
Brock was absolutely the last person I’d ever expect who would like mums, or any flower to be honest, but there were two of them sitting behind me, proving me wrong.
Proving there was something new about Brock I never learned. Something almost ridiculous . . . and so damn cute.
He glanced over at me as he backed out of the parking lot. “Almost had it.”
Looking up at him in confusion, I asked, “Almost had what?”
“A smile,” he said, watching me for a few seconds and then he eased the Porsche down the gravely road. “Almost got a smile out of you.”
“Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell.”
—Joan Crawford
Chapter 15
A week turned into two, and Halloween came and went as November was ushered in. The air grew chillier with each passing day, and the weatherman on the local news warned this would a record-breaking winter, colder than the last several years, with feet of snow. Feet. Not inches.
I still hadn’t put the bookcases together.
I didn’t hear from Grady except for the occasional text from him checking in, which I always responded to. He didn’t bring up dinner and my earlier suspicions were confirmed.
Thinking about Grady, I wished that I . . . that I was upset, because at least then I’d have known that I actually felt something for someone that was more than a passing interest. I guessed it wasn’t to be, because I wasn’t spending time with wishful thinking, hoping he’d make good on the promise of dinner.
However, I was spending a decent amount of time with Brock and things . . . things were really okay. We worked well together, in and out of meetings. There’d been no more dinner meetings or random appearances at my apartment, but every day he either showed with coffee, lunch, or dessert, and sometimes all three things in one day.
I began to wonder if he was trying to fatten me up.
Not that he needed to try. I did that all on my own.
But it was sweet of him, and I guessed maybe it was his way of making up for what had happened in our past or him trying to make up for lost time, because he used to do things like this years ago. Not as often, but he’d come to my parents’ house when I got home from school, carrying a slice of pie or cake from the bakery down the street from the Lima Academy. Instead of delivering coffee to the office, he’d bring smoothies and milkshakes to my bedroom.
Things were kind of like before, but not.
Brock flirted like he used to, which meant he had this amazing ability to turn almost every comment into something that dripped sex. And it might’ve totally been my interpretation, because seriously, I currently existed in a several years long dry spell, so there were moments when I could turn almost everything into a sexual thing. Like seriously. I could be watching Walking Dead and suddenly be fixating on Daryl’s biceps or Rick’s baby blue eyes a little too long.
But the difference was I resisted letting myself get wrapped up in the way I thought I’d catch him looking at me. I didn’t fixate on how it seemed like his hand brushed mine whenever we walked to the conference room together. I refused to pay attention to how his fingers grazed mine and lingered when he’d hand me my coffee or whatever treat he’d brought me. Those moments were often.