Page 21 of The Dating Contract

She nodded. “That works.”

And then he took the next step, wondering how she’d react.

“And kissing?”

*

Leah was aboutto lose her mind. Talking to Samuel, negotiating with him even, was a whirlwind of emotion and just…

She tried to pull herself together, focusing on the scratching of his pen on the paper. “Kissing?”

He nodded. “Yes. It might come up, it might…I don’t know. I want to be prepared and I want you to be prepared.”

Prepared. Right. Nothing would or could prepare her for what kissing Samuel would do to her emotionally. And even thinking about it made her take a long drink of the closest liquid available. Thankfully it was water. “Even though I think it’s a horrible idea, we need to have kissing in the contract. We need to…prepare each other though.”

He raised an eyebrow; if he’d said no, she’d have left or done something. But he didn’t. He was quizzical, curious, not dismissive. “You mean some kind of signal that we’re going to kiss?”

She nodded. “You were always a good kisser. That way leads to trouble if we’re not prepared.”

“Keeping our heads out of it, you mean?”

Glad he was on the same page, or at least didn’t dismiss her out of hand, she said, “Exactly.”

But this time he didn’t just take her words in; this time he seemed to think about them as he took a bite of a bagel. “Maybe we should work through it? Work up to it?”

She nodded, steeled herself. Shoved the suddenly appearing emotions down deep inside. “Yes. We should.”

Leah held her breath and reached for the hand he offered, grasping his fingers through the spaces he left her. It wasn’t that hard, she reminded herself.

She felt the calluses, which he’d built from hours of time spent at his craft, massaging her palms. She could wrap herself in the peaks and valleys of his hands, forget they were touching and just exist like that indefinitely.

“How are you?”

“I’m okay,” she managed.

But even he could tell she was lying. Because when she let his hand go, she flexed and then loosened her fingers, as if she was trying to slow down her pulse and her emotions.

This was dangerous.

“We’re done for the day?”

“We haven’t discussed the consideration,” she said, annoyed that she knew way too much about the law to neglect that when all she wanted to do was leave. “What I mean is we need to talk about what you’re going to want me to give you, you know, in exchange for this whole thing?”

“How about something easy?”

“What doyoumean easy?” Because many different people had many different interpretations of easy. She didn’t know his. Not yet. And it could be the furthest thing from easy.

“One favor to be named later that is within your power to grant.”

Something that was within her power to grant was fine; it wasn’t her choice for the thing she was bargaining this contract with, but she’d take it. She needed this too much. “Okay,” she said. “Yes.”

Which meant the deal was done in all but the writing.

*

Samuel was exhaustedand grabbed a bagel. As he took a bite, he realized that she’d run their conversation as tightly as a meeting, taking refuge in procedure when things got too emotionally hard. It wasn’t a fight, wasn’t combat, and yet…

Because the agenda he’d put together was there, laid bare by the end of hers. He swallowed. “Do you have time?”

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