Page 16 of Love & Rockets

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Jake blinked, thrown off balance by the eccentric greeting, flashed an uncertain smile. “Uh, hi.” Shifting his gaze to the left, he spotted the deep red blush on Grace’s cheeks and determined she was clearly the saner of the two. “Hey, Grace. Nice to see you again.”

The girl’s shy smile told him he’d hit exactly the right note. “Hi, Dr. Dalton.”

“Jake,” he corrected. “And thank you for the, uh, invitation.” He held out the bottle of wine he’d been choking for five minutes and carefully stepped over the threshold. “I wasn’t sure what you liked, but Harley said something about his mom’s spaghetti sauce, so I went with red.”

Darla’s smile dimmed in wattage but warmed a little as she took his offering. She also blushed, though not as rosily as her daughter. The overall effect was mind-boggling.

“Thank you.” She read the label then dialed up her grin again. “I know nothing about wine.”

“Me either, but the guy at the store said it would be good,” he admitted as she closed the door behind him.

He opened his mouth to say he needed to run back out to the car to get the telescope he’d brought for Grace to use, but a tingling sensation at the base of his spine made him think maybe he hadn’t thought of all possible implications the gift might carry. Glancing at the younger girl, he wrung his hands, not entirely sure how to proceed.

“I, um, it smells good in here.”

Darla stared up at him for a beat too long, then started as if she’d forgotten about dinner altogether. “Oh! Yes.” She moved the wine from one hand to the other. “Well, come in and make yourself comfortable. I need to drop the pasta.” She backed toward the brightly lit kitchen, at the last moment skirting a small dining table set for three. “Grace, why don’t you show him some of your, uh, stuff.”

And poof, in the blink of an eye she was gone.

His senses swirling, Jake turned to look at the girl beside him, wondering if she might feel as completely at sea as he did. Instead, she rolled her eyes and gestured him toward the living room area.

“We don’t have people come over very often,” she explained, her expression every bit as frank as her words.

She motioned him toward a plush upholstered white couch before flopping into a disconcertingly masculine leather recliner parked in front of the television. Jake eyed the sofa, thankful Darla hadn’t opened the bottle of red wine yet. He gave ten seconds of thought to asking Grace to swap, but she didn’t look like she going to give up her seat without some significant inducement. Supercharged silence stretched thin and tight between them. Anxiety clawed at his stomach as he tried to think of something to say. Thankfully, Grace saved him.

“I guess I should thank you. I no longer have to worry about starting a kitchen fire the next time I warm a Pop Tart.”

Alarmed by her mention of kitchen fires, he leaned in. “Huh?”

“Never mind.” She darted a glance at the kitchen then folded her hands over her knee, striking a very business-like pose. “So, Dr. Dalton—”

He opened his mouth to protest, but she held up a hand.

“Dr. Jake?”

Inclining his head, he accepted this compromise and prompted her to continue. “Miss Grace.”

“Well, how about that Pluto? Not bad for a dwarf planet, huh?”

He smiled, both tickled and relieved by her choice of topic. “We’ll be getting mileage out of the data for a long time.”

She gave a good-natured groan. “No pun intended.”

He quirked a brow at her. “Oh, I intended the pun.”

“You should be sorry.”

Effortlessly, they fell into sync. Grinning at his new friend, he lifted a shoulder. “But I’m not.”

Grace rewarded him with a dramatic eye roll. “No one likes a science nerd.”

“Takes one to know one.”

He had to hand it to her. She had her mother’s glare of pitying disdain mastered. “Two advanced degrees and that’s the best you can do?”

“My brother and I never really got past the ‘says you’ stage.”

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