Page 23 of A Lesson for Laurel

“Considering you didn’t help me do anything today, then that would be a no.”

She laughed. “Good point. Would we call this being neighborly or more along the lines of a date?”

He angled his head. He was pretty sure she was yanking his chain and putting him on the spot to give it a name.

He was wondering where the hell his confidence went with women that he had to pause before he said, “A date unless you want it to be neighborly?”

“A date sounds great to me,” she said.

“Good,” he said. He looked at his watch. “How about five? Or is that too early?”

“Five works,” she said. “If it goes well and we just want to chill out and have another drink, we can come back here. It’s not like either one of us has far to drive.”

“I like your thinking,” he said.

He turned and went back to his place. He’d have enough time to get a bit of work done and shower.

A little before five he realized he didn’t have her number and they hadn’t planned on if they were meeting, which would be stupid since they lived next door to each other.

He was losing his mind not paying attention to the details.

Rather than waste brain power on whether he should make the move or not, he grabbed his keys and his jacket and went next door.

He didn’t even have a chance to knock when she was opening the door. Hell, he hadn’t even made it to the front porch. Guess she didn’t use the back porch much, which was a good thing or they could have been at each other’s house knocking and no one home.

“Hi,” she said. “I was just going to come get you.”

“Beat you to it,” he said. That sounded stupid to his ears, but she only smiled.

They climbed into Abe’s truck. His car was in the garage. No reason to drive it around and he didn’t want to keep moving the truck out of the way to just get his car anyway.

“Where are we going? You know this area better than me.”

He couldn’t very well say he hadn’t been here in a while so turned to say, “You pick this time. I chose the last place.”

“That’s nice,” she said. “How about Mona’s?”

He frowned. He didn’t know where that was. “Mona’s?”

“Oh, you probably know it as another name. It’s the restaurant at Wright Marina. Used to be Whitney Marina.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Hard to keep track. I know where it is.”

He pulled off the street and turned in that direction.

When he got there ten minutes later he was stunned to see how nice the building looked on the outside.

He parked and got out. There were more cars than he expected considering the time of year for the marina, but then he suspected people were just getting ready for an early spring and setting their boats up.

They got to the hostess stand and were directed to a booth.

“Not sure if you know this or not, but Jasmine, who manages the greenhouses and all the flowers for the whole operation at Blossoms, this is her husband’s marina now. They met here when Mona, Wesley’s mother, wanted to set up flowers for events.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t keep up to date on those things.”

“I’m still struggling to get it all straight,” she said. “It seems everyone at Blossoms has some kind of connection to another person.”

“Everyone?” he asked. The server came over and took their drink orders and they got appetizers too.

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