She tipped her head to one side and looked up at him. “I don’t quit, either.”
He shrugged. “Hence the trouble between us.”
“Hence?” she repeated, smiling in spite of the situation.
Rafe blew out a breath. “Are you getting in, or do I pick you up and put you in?” he asked.
Katie sent him a hard glare. “All right, fine,” she confessed. “I might be a little too tired to drive.”
He smiled and Katie’s toes curled in her comfortable flats. Oh, boy. For all of her fine notions about keeping her distance, about not letting herself fall for a guy, she was certainly doing a lot of stumbling around him.
“Now that we’re on the same page, so to speak,” Rafe said, “will you please get in the car?”
Her mouth twitched into a smile at the way he’d changed his command to a request. She nodded, climbing up into the passenger seat. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He closed her door, walked around to the driver’s side and slid her key into the ignition. Then he looked at her and said, “So, how does it feel to be going on our second date?”
Her eyebrows winged up when she turned her gaze on him. “Delivering cookies is a date?”
“If we say it is, yeah.” He fired up the engine and looked at her again. “So? Is it?”
Katie stared at him and remembered that night. Then she remembered the last few days, being so close to him and so far away all at the same time. She remembered every haunting dream she’d had and how she would wake up, aching for his touch.
Was she being an idiot by shutting out the first nice, normal guy she’d met in way too long? Okay, yes, he was a little bossy, but she could handle that. Would it really be so bad to take a chance? To spend some time with Rafe? To see if what she already felt for him might grow? After all, she could concentrate on her business and have a life, couldn’t she? Isn’t that what Nana and Nicole both had been trying to tell her?
Memories of Cordell rose up in her mind, but Katie fought them down with determination.
Watching Rafe, she finally said, “It’s not a date unless you spring for a cup of coffee at least.”
He grinned at her, clearly victorious. “One latte, coming up.”
Eight
An hour and a half later, Katie looked a little more alert and Rafe was enjoying himself immensely. “No wonder you like doing this,” he said, sliding into the driver’s seat after making the last of the deliveries. “People are excited to see you when you bring them cookies.”
She grinned. “How did the pink baby-rattle cookies go over?”
He laughed and held up a five-dollar bill. “I got a tip!”
He looked so pleased with himself, Katie had to laugh, too. “Congratulations, you’re a delivery person.”
“She cried, too,” he said, handing Katie the five. Shaking his head, he remembered the expression on the woman’s face when she opened the door and saw him standing there, holding the basket of pink frosted cookies. “The woman? The new mom? She took one look at those cookies her friend ordered from you and burst into tears. She was laughing and crying and for a minute.” Then he added, “it was terrifying.”
Katie reached out and patted his arm. “Not what you’re used to as a carpenter?”
“No,” he said simply, looking into her green eyes. She was so pleased with him, having so much fun, he couldn’t help but suddenly feel like a first-class rat for lying to her.
He thought back to his conversation with Katie’s grandmother and realized that she had been right. Ever since talking to Emily, he’d been rethinking this whole keep-the-lie-going thing. His lies hadn’t seemed like such a big deal when he had started out on this job. But now, every day with Katie made him feel that much more like a jerk. He should have told her the truth before now.
Sure, he’d told Emily that he was sticking to his plan, but she’d made him start to doubt the wisdom in that. But he couldn’t think of a good way out of this mess. Because, he realized with startling clarity, the moment he told Katie about his lies, what his real name was, it would all be over between them.
Odd that he hadn’t considered that possibility before. But then, he hadn’t thought that he would want to keep seeing her once this job was finished. Now though, he knew he didn’t want her disappearing from his life at the end of this job. He wanted to keep seeing her. And the chances of that happening looked slim.
He imagined blurting out the truth right there and then. Telling her that he wasn’t the man she thought he was. And in his mind’s eye, he saw her features tighten with betrayal, saw the shine in her green eyes dim and then flash with fury, and he told himself that it didn’t matter if he was starting to get uncomfortable with his lies.
She wasn’t ready to learn the truth.
He wanted her to care for him before he told her who he was. And then? a voice in his mind whispered. But he didn’t have an answer to that yet. All Rafe knew was that he wanted to be with her now. And he didn’t want the King name ruining that.
So he was stuck with his lies, his plan, whether he wanted to be or not.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, suddenly changing the subject.
“A little more awake, thanks. The latte helped.”
“Not enough,” he decided. Her green eyes were shadowed and her face was too pale to suit him. The fact that he was worried about her bothered him, but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about that. “You still look tired.”
“Well, don’t I feel pretty?” she asked wryly.
“You’re beautiful.” Two words, softly spoken, and they seemed to echo in the air around them. He hadn’t meant to blurt that out. It had been a knee-jerk reaction.
“Rafe—”
“Don’t,” he said quietly, before she could start in on her speech about how nothing had changed and she still wasn’t interested in being with him. He could feel her reaction to his closeness. Her skin was warm and though her eyes were tired, he still noticed the gleam of desire in their depths.
Leaning in closer to her, Rafe reached out, touched her cheek with his fingertips and tipped her face up for his kiss. “Just, let me…”
She sighed and moved into him, meeting him half-way, taking what he offered, and Rafe was relieved. He didn’t know if he could have taken her turning from him or pulling away. He’d been thinking about doing just this for the last few days. Thinking about her. The first touch of her mouth to his eased everything inside him, yet rekindled a fire that had been nothing more than glowing embers since their one night together.