Daniel smiled. “You’re cute, youknow?”
Cute. The worst compliment to give a guy who was short and slim. Made me feel like I was one of those tiny collectible stuffed animals. A human BeanieBaby.
“Shit taste in books, though,” hecontinued.
“Thank you.” I smirked. “And this is why you can never be in Romance Novel BookClub.”
Daniel snorted. “Speaking of, have you started your new bookyet?”
“No.”
“Because I’m dying to find out if she conquers thebarbarian.”
“If you’re gonna give me shit aboutthis…”
Daniel laughed. “I’m only giving you shit because you’re so embarrassed and I like to see you blush. I reallywillread it after youdo.”
I’d believe that when I saw it. And what did he mean, he liked to see meblush?
“Oh, hey! I was out here with Honoria the other day and saw something I meant to ask youabout.”
“Yeah?”
The path wound uphill toward a natural clearing where the trees were a bit sparser and the sunlight gilded the leaves. There was a recently-fallen tree right in the center of the path, thickly covered with spindlybranches.
“Over there,” Daniel said, pointing at the tree. “I saw the weirdest thing. Totally worthy of an Animal Facts with Julianepisode.”
I rolled my eyes and he steered us in the direction of the tree, then pointed at a large pile of leaves right beside it, beneath the cover of the hanging branches. He threw an arm around my shoulder and squeezed me to hisside.
“So, I was sitting against the tree ponderinglife—”
He paused expectantly, and it took me a second to get that I was supposed to laugh at this, since I was too busy having an aneurism from his proximity. We’d never had anything approaching this level of physical closeness before; I’d been very careful to keep my distance, both for his comfort and my own sanity. When I finally did laugh, the sound was like a cross between a donkey braying and a balloon deflating, because I couldn’tnotbeawkward.
“Hey, you okay?” He moved his arm from around my shoulder. “My arm too heavy? You know I’m just kidding about the animal facts, right? I could listen to you talk allday.”
I sighed. The moment was over and I’d been too busy freaking out to memorize every single second. Story of my damn life. “Yes, I’m fine. No, you weren’t… heavy.” You demagnetized my brain, but you weren’theavy.“I just had something in mythroat.”
“Oh, good.” To my shock, Daniel put his arm over my shoulderagain.
For the secondtime.
Deliberately.
“Anyway,” he said, like this was all so normal, like my stomach wasn’t churning as I tried to analyze everypossiblemeaning and compare it to the mostprobablemeanings the way a NASA scientist calculates a moon landing. “I satthereand watched a squirrel carry an acorn overthere. He dug a hole, but then he just covered the hole with leaves and didn’t put the acorn inside. And he kept giving melooks.”
I glanced up, and Daniel looked so genuinely suspicious of the squirrel’s behavior that I laughed, distracted. “You think he was a squirrel spy? Maybe had some secret squirrel codes on a secret squirrel thumb drive shaped like an acorn and didn’t want you to getthem?”
Daniel moved his hand off my shoulder and tickled me right below the ribs. I made a noise that was half growl, half laugh, and jumped a foot in the air, but instead of jumping away like a normal person, I jumpedtowardhim, so it was less of a defensive move and more of an attack. We ended up in a pile on the ground, with Daniel flat on his back and me on my back atophim.
“Ow!” He twisted his hips, “I think I may have found the missingacorn.”
“Sorry.” I rolled off him, trying not to injure him further, and sat up. “Though actually, not really sorry. You tried to tickle me.Uncool.”
Daniel remained sprawled on the ground where he lay, staring up at the sky and the tree canopy. He smirked. “I didn’ttryto tickle you, Ididtickle you. Who knew competent, professional Julian Ross was so ticklish? I’m storing this information away forlater.”
I shook my head, desperately trying not to think of a future time when he’d put that information to use. The idea of his hands on me was almost worth my hatred of beingtickled.
Almost.
