ignored them and levered herself upward on her own, taking a good look at her surroundings. Tag had spread a blanket out beneath the window of her office right next to the garden gnome that Sanjeev, Dixie’s right-hand man at the Big House, was so fond of. He’d laid out some paper plates and napkins, apparently, now scattered in every direction when she’d fallen on them. “What is this?”
Tag pulled some matches from his pocket and scraped one to ignite it. He held up a small candle and struck a match, illuminating his angular face and making his dark eyes look even darker. “This is dinner. Remember our date?”
For a couple of seconds, Marybell was speechless. No one had ever done something like this for her. Not in all her thirty years. The gesture stole her breath. It was sweet and thoughtful and utterly unexpected.
And under the window of her office. “I don’t remember confirmin’ our date.”
He popped open a bag of chips and dumped them on her plate with another grin. “Ah, but you didn’t deny it, either.”
“So if I don’t say no, it’s automatically a date?”
“That’s what the rule book says.”
“Who wrote this rule book?”
“Probably some desperate guy who couldn’t get a firm yes for a date.”
She laughed, or maybe she giggled. The silly noise coming from her throat sounded suspiciously like a giggle. The kind of giggle a woman uses when she’s enamored with a man. When everything he says is charming and a total orgasm to her ears. Marybell clamped her lips shut. “I thought I told you I wasn’t dating.”
Tag handed her a plate, complete with a sandwich cut neatly in a triangle, some fresh fruit and a pile of chips. “I don’t think you got that far.”
She hesitated. No food. She couldn’t have a sandwich with this man. She’d been an unwitting party to ruining his life. You didn’t have a sandwich with a man whose life you’d annihilated. “I’m not dating.”
He ignored her and thrust the plate at her again along with a bottle of ginger ale. “I know this is your favorite.”
He’d gone out of his way to find out what she liked to drink? Bits of the icy formation around her heart broke off like chunks of an overheated glacier. Marybell took the plate and the ginger ale and set them beside her on the blanket. “Thank...you.”
Tag leaned back against the guesthouse and grinned again, letting his long legs unwind in front of him. “That’s more like it. I like gratitude in the women I’m not dating.”
She quashed the smile she was fighting with a vengeance. “As long as we’re clear this isn’t a date, I’ll eat your bologna sandwich, but it’s only because I’m starving and you’ve left me little choice now. Madge will be closin’ up shop soon, which means I can only get whatever she has left. Usually that’s eight-hour-old meat loaf.”
Tag took an enormous bite of his sandwich and nodded, swallowing hard. “Bologna’s better for you than meat loaf. All these by-products put hair on your chest.”
Her laughter tinkled from her lips before she could stop it. She nibbled at a chip to keep from making any more unfamiliar mating noises, but her mind was racing. “Why did you do this?”
“Do what?”
Make me feel something for you. Make me fight a dreamy sigh. Make me want to twirl my Mohawk in centuries-old, ritualistic gestures of flirtation. “Here—this—under my office window.”
He shrugged his wide shoulders. “Because I had a funny feeling you’d try to skip out on our nondate. I figured this was the best way to catch you skipping.”
“I’m not dating.”
“Anyone, or just me?”
“Anyone.”
“Where do you come from, Marybell Lyman?”
“Did you just hear me?”
“Just because you’re not dating doesn’t mean you can’t have polite conversation.”
Everywhere and nowhere. “Atlanta.” Atlanta was big. That seemed safe enough.
“Me, too. The last name Lyman isn’t familiar, though.”
That’s because it’s not really mine. “I get the feeling we didn’t travel in the same social circles.” No truer words.
“Did you go to college?”
She stiffened. He couldn’t possibly know—could he? Why was he asking so many questions? That’s what people do when they want to get to know you, Marybell. They make conversation. “Did you?”
“Yep. Got a degree in architecture.”
“Which led you here to Plum Orchard where big buildings are just linin’ the streets.” She was doing her best to be surly, but Tag wasn’t having it, and she was having trouble sustaining it because he was blatantly ignoring her efforts.
“Nope. My sister’s death led me here.”
Damn. Now she was just being a jerk. She knew from Em that his sister, Harper, had died, but she didn’t know that was why he was in Plum Orchard. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so rude.”
“Sure you did. You want our nondate to be over. But you know what, Marybell Lyman, that’s all right. To be rude, I mean—because we’re on a nondate. If this were a real date, I’d make you pay the tab for being so rude.”
“I think I can rustle up some spare change for the bologna sandwich.” She stopped then. He wasn’t attacking her safe place knowingly. He wasn’t threatening everything she loved and held dear to be a malicious jackass.
Lighten up. At least enough to appear civil.
Marybell reached out and put her hand on his arm, softening her words. “And I really didn’t mean to be rude about your sister. I just didn’t know your reasons for comin’ to the PO. I’m sorry for your loss.” No one understood loss better than she did.
Tag grabbed her hand and used it to slide her closer. “I’m sorry, too. She was a great sister.”
The brief flicker of pain in his eyes made her wonder what had happened beyond what Em had told them. It was deep and it was personal, if Tag’s face lined with some raw emotion she couldn’t pinpoint was any indication. But then he smiled without letting go of her hand. “Why phone sex?”
Her hand in his felt so good, so warm against her icy fingers, Marybell forgot to pull away. “Why not?” she said on a smile.
“Hey, no judgment here. Just curious. I mean, if we’re honest, not many little girls dream they’ll grow up and be phone sex operators.”
Not this one, either. This one had wanted to grow up and be a ballerina and wear a pink tutu. “The economy stinks.”
“And that’s what led you to phone sex? Even in a bad economy,
