75. Sarah #2
He sometimes corrected my pronunciation, but he always told me about the person behind the card in my hand.
Not just their job title, but something of their life as well.
I heard stories about how they worked their way up, funny anecdotes, where they grew up, the names of their kids, their favorite drinks, their lifelong dreams, who tells the best joke, who has the best nose for a story, and who always pitches in to help when it’s down to the wire.
His knee pressed lightly against mine as he shifted.
With each revelation, another brick in my defenses crumbled to dust.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
“Do what?”
“Remember all those details about so many people. How do you even know all of it in the first place?”
George leaned back and looked upward, as if the answer hovered somewhere near the coffered ceiling. “Never really thought about it. People are interesting. And I suppose I’m easy to talk to.”
How could anyone resist a man who remembered everyone?
When I didn’t answer, he pitched his voice up an octave and said, “Yes, George, you are ever so easy to talk to. You should win an award.”
I snorted. “I don’t sound anything like that.”
He patted the stacks of RSVPs. “Worked alongside almost everyone at one time or another. Even the janitors, remember? Builds a different relationship than if I had immediately been put in charge.”
I said, “It makes sense.”
“My grandfather was wise like your Austen—and probably just as stuffy.”
“Did he believe in happy endings, too?”
“He loved a good story. Was why he started the paper. I haven’t much memory of him, but I have him to thank for my mopping skills.
When Father began at the paper, Grandfather made sure he started at the lowest rung, and Father made sure I did the same.
Someday, if I have a son or a daughter who wants to carry on in the newspaper business, I’ll make them work their way up from the bottom, too. ”
George huffed out a laugh. “Likely, they will curse my name over it until someday they find themselves sitting around, chatting about how wise I am to their… friends.”
I imagined his attention on me when he said friends. Had I imagined the hitch in his voice? The way the word sounded different tonight? I stole a glance toward him.
He smiled softly. “Must be the light… they’re almost entirely olive green tonight. Your eyes.”
After sorting the RSVPs into stacks corresponding to the tables, I made two lists.
First, a list of the tables with the names underneath each number, and then a master list of all the names in alphabetical order, with a table number listed beside each name.
It wasn’t difficult, but it was a lot of writing.
Disarming waves of his sandalwood soap ambushed me when I least expected it.
George leaned in, watching over my shoulder. His warmth wrapped around me like my favorite wool blanket.
“Your script is different from Viola’s. Hers is loopy and swoopy.”
“She says I write like a man.”
“No. Your script is elegant and strong. It would never be mistaken for a man’s, but it commands respect.”
“Trying to make me blush again?”
“Just facts, Goldie.”
I set down my pen and stretched my fingers.
He reached over, took my right hand, and drew it toward him.
I turned in my chair, rested my left elbow on the table, and propped my head on my hand. Forget manners—it was late, and it was George. What did he want with my hand?
He cupped his hands around mine as his surveyed the table. “Enough writing for tonight. Your hand will cramp.” He looked down. “It’s like an ice cube.”
“Ice queen, remember?”
He lifted my hand to his lips and breathed warm air across my fingers in the space between his cupped palms.
The moist heat on my skin sent a shiver racing through me. But it was a scorching chill that made the fine hairs on my neck stand on end. This was not how friends warmed fingers.
Of course my mind jumped to Viola’s description of her and Jacob’s first kiss—how he’d kissed the palm of her hand seconds before he kissed her lips.
What was he doing?
Then his emerald gaze caught mine before I recognized the danger. Before I had a chance to look away.
Stay calm. No cow eyes. No fluttery lashes. Think friendship. Friend-ship. But I wasn’t calm. My insides turned muddled and shivery, my breath snagged in my throat, and every molecule of his burning breath across the sensitive skin of my palm agitated me further.
George wasn’t smiling. Why wasn’t he smiling? Oh, no. Was I making cow eyes?
He said, “Blue has always been my favorite color… but olive green is growing on me.”
Oh.
His words slid warm across my hand, up my arm, and into my chest, loosening something reckless inside me. Scandalous, even.
How could my muscles be limp and yet frozen?
The room shimmered around us—dreamy, disorienting.
He shifted my hand until my fingertips brushed feather-light over his lips. Soft. Perfect lips. It was not a kiss. He did not move his lips.
My ragged breathing filled the space between us, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He guided my palm—slowly, deliberately—along his jaw.
In the quiet that stretched between us, something essential tilted.
He closed his eyes and tucked his cheek into the cup of my hand, covering my hand with his own. He tormented my fingers with the warmth of his skin and the hint of his stubble. His hot breath skimmed along my wrist. Under my touch, his jaw muscles tensed and released.
Long moments passed in silence except for our breathing and the frantic drumming of my heart. What did this mean? Affection? Comfort? Something else entirely?
My hand burned against him.
The hall clock chimed nine o’clock, and the sound faded. The house held its breath around us.
Finally, he lowered my hand from his cheek. “There now, all warmed up.”
I struggled to form a word—any word—but failed.
He looked dazed, as if waking in an unexpected location.
The scraping squeal of his chair across the wood floor broke the silence and made me flinch.
He pressed a brief kiss to the back of my hand, then started for the door. Halfway there, he turned back. “Night, Sarah.” He continued backward toward the hall, his expression inscrutable.
“Night.”
He spun and dashed out of the dining room, barely missing my mother, who was on her way in.
“What did you do to George?”
“Who can say, Mother?”
When I brought my hand to my lips, it smelled of sandalwood. If this was friendship, I no longer understood the rules…