“Yes, they even invited me. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up. We’re never going to be the Waltons.”
“Nobody is the Waltons, not even my family, which may be as close as you get.”
We reached the Avenue of the Americas, where cabs came by often enough that it didn’t even require any of Owen’s magic to hail one. Once we were in the cab, the taxi wheels weren’t the only ones turning, as I could tell Owen was already furiously pondering the current puzzle with every cell of his powerful brain. He paid off the driver in front of my building and walked me to the front door, his attention clearly elsewhere. “Thanks for the evening,” I said. “It was certainly memorable.”
“It was, wasn’t it? And thank you for making it pleasant in spite of everything.” He bent forward to give me a quick kiss, then said, “I’ll see you in the morning.” He was gone down the sidewalk before I even had a chance to kiss him back or to turn it into a proper kiss good night, and I was left standing there with my lips slightly puckered.
“I’ll see you in the morning, too,” I muttered under my breath to the thin air where Owen had just been before suppressing a sigh of disappointment. I reminded myself that this sort of thing came with the territory when we had so many other distracting priorities. And, after all, it was only the first date. We’d have plenty of opportunities to intensify things.
When I went down the stairs Monday morning, I felt a familiar flutter in my stomach. Owen had been commuting with me almost every morning since not long after I’d gone to work at MSI, and every morning I’d found myself all atingle with the anticipation of seeing him again. This morning, the first since we’d gone beyond being just friends and co-workers, the tingle was even worse. I’d always known that the main reason he escorted me to work in the morning was that we made a good team for keeping each other safe from our enemies. My magical immunity meant I could spot the bad guys even when they tried to disguise themselves or make themselves invisible. Owen, as a magical person, could be affected by magic and might not notice the danger, but once I alerted him, he could do something about it. He lived a few blocks away from me, so he didn’t have to go too far out of his way to meet up with me, but I’d always hoped that he might have really wanted to spend that time with me in the morning. That had turned out to be the case.