“Looked like he had a bit of a crush on you to me,” I poke.
“Yes,” she answers, wincing. “I thought he’d be over that after our date, but…”
After their… what now?
“You went on a date with that guy?” I ask, thumb pointing over my shoulder toward the windows, where he’s no longer in view. “Thatguy?”
Her nose scrunches, and she tosses the wet rag into the dirty laundry bucket. “Yes,” she huffs. “Thatguy happens to be really nice.”
Happens to be really…
“Sweet, he could be my twin.”
Her already wrinkled nose wrinkles further. “He could not,” she says. “Just because he’s tall and a redhead doesn’t mean he looks like you.”
“He was almost exactly my height, breadth, width, and weight. His hair was cut like mine, his beard had the exact same growth pattern as mine, and his freckles were enough of a match to mine that I felt like I was looking in a mirror. The sole difference I could see is that he has golden flecks in his eyes, and I do not. He said himself we look the same. You’re seriously going to stand here and tell me you don’t see that? At all?”
She shrugs. “Yeah,” she lie, lie, lies, before hedging her way to the truth. “I mean, kind of a little bit if you squint, maybe he looks atinybit like you.”
“So you’re attracted to a man whokind of a little bit if yousquint maybelooks like me enough to have gone on a date with him?” I ask, one eyebrow raised.
She scratches her nose and shrugs again.
My lips twitch, then, of their own accord, part, spreading wide in a smile that shines unfamiliar on my face.
Elodie’s eyes bug out, and she lets out a whispered curse. “Put that away!” she hisses. “You look evil.Evil. You’re going to scare away the customers!”
“You think I’m hot,” I gloat, a sense of victory puffing my chest. “You think I’m hot, and I bet you justhateit that you think that.”
She points at me, pink-painted nail a mere inch from my nose. “Character grown people don’t act like this!” she accuses. “Not to mention, I donotthink you’re hot. I thinkSorenis hot. And he barely looks like you at all!”
Mmhm. Sure. And Clark Kent doesn’t look like Superman.
Yeah, right.
Still, she might be right about that character growth thing… unfortunately.
I sigh, tapping my fingers on the tray under my arm as my smile drops. “Fine, fine,” I capitulate. “I’ll drop it.”
Her shoulders sag, then tense right back up as I move on to another interesting fun fact Soren dropped while he was here.
“Iferous Tech, huh?”
Chapter Nineteen
Oooh, they’re sharing secrets.
Elodie
I shrug, avoiding Roman’s searching gaze.
Just play it cool, El. Super cool, and he won’t ask about—
“Does Ruby know?”
That.
He won’t ask about that.
