Page 71 of The Party Line

I checked my reflection in the mirror and brushed out my hair one more time. “I’d give you both if it was possible.”

Gina Lou cocked her head to one side. “I hear a truck pulling up in the driveway.”

I grabbed my sweater and purse and started out of the room. Gina shook her head and pointed to my bare feet. “Might be best if you wear shoes.”

I slipped my feet into a pair of flats. “Yep, I’m more wound up than I was when I went on my first date.” Connor was taller than me, but heels would put me right at eye level with him, and I enjoyed the rare feeling of being short.

“Did you get lucky that night?” Gina Lou giggled.

I gasped. “I did not!”

“Well, you can make up for it tonight,” she teased as she hurried down the stairs and headed toward the kitchen.

The back door slammed seconds before Connor knocked. I opened the door and motioned for him to come inside. “You are right on time.”

“Grandpa and the army taught me that. You are stunning, Lila.” He scanned me from my toes to my eyebrows. “Are you ready?”

“I am, and you look pretty nice tonight, too.”

He held his arm out for me. “But I pale in comparison to you, darlin’.”

“That is a bit clichéd, but thank you,” I told him.

“I’m not much of a romantic,” he said on the way to his truck, “but I was speaking the truth.”

He looked sexy that evening in his T-shirt, which stretched over his chest and defined every ripped ab and muscle. From that and the fact that his boots weren’t polished and his jeans weren’t creased, I guessed that we would be eating dinner in Poteet. Annie’s Café had reopened sometime early in the week with a different name—the Ambrosia. That sounded pretty fancy for a café in Poteet, Texas. I wondered what the menu would offer. Somehow it didn’t seem like they would have sausage gravy and biscuits.

“Are you listening to me, Lila?” he asked.

“Yes,” I nodded. “I heard every word. I was just admiring your body.”

He shuffled his feet like a little boy flirting with a girl on the school playground. “I won’t ever have to worry about you not telling me the truth, will I?”

“No, you will not!” I declared. “I’ll be truthful with you every time. When I was a little girl, Aunt Gracie told me that I might hide things from people, but I could never hide anything from God—not even a little white lie. So do the same for me. If I ask you if a dress or my hair or any other thing about me looks all right, tell me the truth, not what you think I want to hear. That way, when I ask you something really important, I’ll have confidence that you aren’t lying to me.”

“Yes, ma’am, I can do that.” He slipped my free hand into his. “But what if it causes a big fight between us?”

“Then we’ll argue, settle it, and go to the bedroom to make up,” I said.

He chuckled. “What if I start a fight just so we can do that?”

“What ifIstart the fight?” I was flirting and it felt so good.

“Lady, you are going to be a handful,” he said as he opened the passenger door for me.

“You wouldn’t want me to be any other way, would you?”

“No, I would not.” He closed the door and whistled all the way around the front of the vehicle and slid in behind the wheel.

“Is that fried chicken I smell?” I asked.

“Busted,” he grinned. “I thought I could keep our destination a secret until we arrived. We’re having a picnic by the river. I wanted us to have an evening all alone.”

Mama’s words about where Connor and I would go on our first date came back to my mind:If he gets a six-pack of beer and a couple of bologna sandwiches and drives out to the river ...

Is fried chicken a step up from bologna sandwiches?I wondered as he drove toward the Atascosa River. Driving time was a little less than seven minutes. I knew because more than once, a bunch of us high school kids had driven down to the river to party. My weekend curfew was eleven o’clock, so I could leave ten minutes before the hour and make it home on time.

I’m not a high school senior,I reminded myself.And this is not an adult dinner date, no matter how good that chicken is.

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