I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea, but he does make a lot of sense. And honestly—if I thought posing for nudie pics or dancing on street corners would ultimately help the Center in some way, I’d do it in a heartbeat. This, by comparison, is nothing.
And so I smile for Asher’s camera. It isn’t much longer before he decides he’s captured what he needs.
“Well, it was wonderful talking to you, Lily.” He pulls a business card from the pocket of his sport coat and passes it to me. “Please feel free to contact me at any time if you think of anything else you’d like to add.”
“Of course,” I reply, popping the card into my pocket.
He clasps my hand in farewell, and his fingers linger on mine a touch longer than necessary.
“It was a pleasure,” he says, and this time there’s no denying the flirtatious tilt of his lips.
“Thank you for coming to speak with us,” I say, pulling my hand away. “And thank you for considering the Frazer Center for your piece.”
“Not at all,” he says, his blue eyes flashing. “You do this for a few years, and you start to get pretty good at sniffing out an interesting story.”
* * *
My phone rings as I’m leaving work that afternoon.
“Hello?” I say through the wrought iron. somethingpa, shoving my cell beneath my ear without even bothering to look at the screen. I nearly drop the armful of books I’m carrying, and I let out a curse.
There’s a familiar chuckle on the other end of the line. “Did I call at a bad time?”
“Calder! Hey.” I manage to balance the books. “It’s fine. How are you?”
“You sound surprised to hear from me.”
Yeah, well… I was beginning to worry that I wouldn’t hear from him ever again. But I don’t tell him that.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t in touch earlier. I’m afraid I got caught up in a few business matters.” He doesn’t elaborate on what those “matters” might be.
“Is everything all right?” I ask.
“Of course,” he answers too quickly. “But forgive me for keeping you waiting. I assure you, it wasn’t my intention.”
That makes me feel better, even though I’m still curious about the business that kept him so preoccupied. Does it have anything to do with the call he received on our date?
“Everything is forgiven,” I assure him.
“Good. When I realized it had been three days I was worried you might have forgotten about me again.”
“I never forgot about you or our date in the first place,” I say. “I lost track of time. And you never returned my underwear, you know.”
“We’ll have to remedy that, then.”
“You mean with another date?”
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
Tomorrow’s Saturday, so I have the day off, but I decide to tease him a little for waiting so long to call.">But Calder shakes his head.
“I’m afraid I have plans with one of my other suitors,” I say. “He’s been most attentive while you’ve been away.”
“Is that so? Well, I’m afraid he’s going to be unexpectedly detained tomorrow.”
“Is that a threat, Mr. Cunningham?”
“It’s a promise.”
I grin. “I guess I better send him away then.”
“You better. I’ll pick you up at three.”
“Three it is.”
By the time I hang up, most of my worries about Calder have dissipated. I can’t believe I allowed myself to get so worked up over the fact that he hadn’t called.
I’m concerned by the “business matters” that kept him occupied all week. I only hope that his call means that he’s sorted everything out, that he’s taken care of whatever left him so distracted during our dinner. Maybe he’ll even give up on the whole “waiting to have sex” nonsense.
Still, I’m pretty sure I’m grinning like an idiot right now. I’m so caught up in my happy little bubble that I don’t notice my dad has paused in my doorway.
“You’re cheerful,” he says. “Get some good news?”
“Oh—oh, no, I just…” I’m too flustered to come up with something quickly enough.
He smiles. “Who were you talking to on the phone?”
Uh oh. He heard that?
“Just a friend,” I say quickly.
“Ah, a friend. Well where this is going" aid="lp tell him hello for me.”
He continues on his way before I can make up any other lame excuses. Crap, I’m not very good at this secret-dating thing, am I?
It will all come out in time, I know. I’ll have to create a believable story about how we met. I don’t want to outright lie—not to my dad, not about someone important to me—but I’ll need to bend the truth a little. Assuming I don’t want Calder’s head to end up on a spike.
In the meantime, things are looking up. Between Asher’s article and Calder’s call, it’s been a pretty good day. And tomorrow, I’m certain, will be even better.
CHAPTER FOUR
I sense that something is wrong the minute Calder picks me up for our date.
He arrives at three o’clock on the dot, and in his jeans and fitted charcoal sweater he looks so sexy that I’m tempted to drag him into my apartment and jump him right there. He gives me a devilish smile and kisses me, but the minute I slip my hands beneath his shirt, he pulls away and teasingly shakes his head.
“A little eager, aren’t we?” he says, his eyes gleaming. That’s when I see it: a flash of something across his expression. It’s gone before I can give it a name—regret? Sorrow? Guilt?—but whatever it is, I know that there’s something, some worry, still lingering in his mind.
He doesn’t want me to know. He smiles and touches me and pretends that nothing’s wrong, and for the moment, I let him.
He takes me to a local park.
“It’s nothing fancy,” he says. “But my father used to bring my sister and me here when we were younger. I always thought it was beautiful.” He sounds almost apologetic, and I realize, with sudden clarity, that he is—after all, this is a man who’s used to giving women expensive gifts and taking them out to five star restaurants. Places like Ventine’s. He’s used to dating starlets and supermodels, not normal girls like me who are perfectly content to stroll hand-in-hand through a park.Zou: at