“What do you think about coming with me to a family barbecue at my parents’ house?” he asked, changing the subject like a pro. “The family is excited to meet you.”
All the good tingly feels left her body.
“Too soon?” he asked.
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re as white as my napkin.”
She fidgeted in her seat. “It’s just that I don’t do well around large crowds. And in this case, we both know I would be the object of a lot of curiosity.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
She shoved a piece of sushi roll into her mouth, chewed, and then washed it down with water. “Are they huggers?”
“My family? No.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Okay, maybe Mom would be considered a hugger, but Dad, not so much.”
He offered her the last of a sushi roll and finished it off when she declined. “I can warn them off. Tell them you have poison oak or something so they don’t touch you.” He chuckled.
“God. No. I don’t want them to think I’m a stressed-out woman whose anxiety is so off the charts that she can’t even meet her boyfriend’s family.”
His gray eyes sparkled. “So I am your boyfriend.”
Heat rushed to her cheeks.
He reached across the table for her hand. “It’s been so damn long since I’ve had a girlfriend. I feel like I’m back in junior high and I should officially ask you to be my girl.”
She laughed. “Is that how it worked way back then?”
“Hey,” he said with a smile. “It wasn’t that long ago. But, yeah, that’s basically how it worked. I would ask a girl to be my girlfriend, she would say yes, and then two days later I would get a message on the computer at home, usually from her friend, telling me she liked someone else.”
“How many girls did you ask?”
“Lots. Too many to count.” His smile was infectious. “How about you? I bet the boys lined up to talk to you between classes.”
She didn’t want to think about what was going on in her life when she was thirteen or fourteen. “I was shy,” she told him. “I kept to myself.”
“Lucky you. Getting dumped over and over again is definitely not for the faint of heart.”
She shook her head in wonder. “Who would ever dump you?”
“Mindy Waxer, Charlene Finnigan, Deb Shady . . . the list goes on.”
She chuckled. “Sounds horrible. How does anyone ever know when they have found ‘the one’?”
“Easy,” he said without hesitation. “There are basically five stages to every relationship. It starts with attraction, you know, when all those endorphins are working overtime. And then reality hits, which means both people might see flaws in the other but they’re on a high and so nothing seems so bad but they know the highs can’t last forever, so it’s worrisome. And then comes disappointment.”
Sawyer frowned.
“The dreaded first argument. Conflict isn’t fun, so you begin to doubt what the two of you share.” He was still holding on to her hand, and he gave it a squeeze. “But if you can hang tight and make it through the disappointment stage, you can move on to stability. Stability can be a lot of hard work. But don’t worry. It can also be fun. You just have to be willing to make the effort to spice things up.”
“Hmm.”
“Yeah, hmm. You might get bored because the chase is over. You no longer gaze at my face overly long because you’ve seen it a zillion times and it’s the same face you saw yesterday and the day before that.”
“So how do people get through the bored stage?”
“It’s not easy. If there’s still a spark, it’s not easily ignited. The romance is gone. I might stop shaving or brushing my hair before you come over”—he shook his head—“that won’t happen, but I’m just trying to throw out examples of what could happen.”
“I see. Sounds horrible.”
He smiled. “It is. But it’s also wonderful because if you make it that far, something deeper awaits you. If you choose to be with this person, with all their flaws mingled together with all your flaws, communication is key. And compromise. It can’t work without communication and compromise.”
She thought of Harper and Nate. Her sister and brother-in-law had made being a loving couple look so easy and doable. But then everything seemed to have imploded—all at once, in the blink of an eye. “It doesn’t sound like any fun at all.”
“It’s magnificent. Trust me.”
She wanted to do just that. She wanted to trust him.
It was dark by the time Derek pulled up to the curb outside Sawyer’s apartment, set on the bottom floor of the building. Raccoon sat on the windowsill, looking out at her, judging. Always judging.
They both got out of the car and walked hand in hand to her door. As she reached inside her purse for her key, she looked up at him. “I had a great time.”
“Me too.” He was looking at her again, giving her that jittery feeling in her stomach. It was an odd feeling, unfamiliar. She wasn’t sure whether or not she liked it. Mostly because she didn’t know what it meant. Not really. “When do I need to let you know about Sunday?”
“Not this Sunday,” he said, “but next. You can let me know anytime. And don’t worry, I won’t let them cross-examine you.”
She smiled, pretending she wasn’t worried at all.
He leaned down to kiss her, his eyes intense, smoldering—or maybe she was imagining it—but his gaze was more of a caress than it was anything else. His lips touched hers. Warm, inviting lips that heated her insides and rushed through her body like a wildfire.
No sparks needed to set off this fire.
She wanted him. Every bit of him. Crazy that she’d never felt anything like it before. Not ever. She’d grown up wary and distrustful of the opposite sex. Her last boyfriend, Connor, had been nothing more than an experiment. She’d never felt even a flicker of what she was experiencing at the moment.
Derek was no experiment.
There was no putting out the wildfire consuming her. Her only thought was to get him inside so she could drag him to the bedroom and strip off his clothes. She liked to be in control, so she imagined him on the bed, climbing on top of him, and—
Honk.
She ignored it. They both did.
That quickly, the kiss had grown into much more than a kiss. With their bodies pressed close, his hand at the back of her head, keeping her steady, the kiss had become all-consuming, bordering on reckless.
She wanted more.
So did he. She could sense it. Hell, she could feel it.
Honk! Honk!
He pulled away first.
They both looked to the street, at the source of the blasting horn.
Sawyer narrowed her eyes. It was a white BMW. Lexi Holmes was at the wheel. The passenger window was rolled down, and Lexi was frantically waving her over. “A possible murder linked to the Black Wigs,” Lexi said loud enough for the neighbors to hear. “We have to hurry.”
Sawyer looked from Lexi to Derek.
“Go,” he said, nudging her along.
“But—”
“No buts—we have all the time in the world.”