They were getting closer now. Her gaze had dipped to his mouth. It was all coming together… except for the wailing saxophone that suddenly blared from the other room. And had the lights just dimmed down low on their own?
Kylee shut her eyes and groaned. “It’s Molly.”
Kylee pulled away from Ron and stood. She went into the other room; the sunroom just off the kitchen which had been turned into a library complete with a stereo system. Ron saw Molly’s coat on the office chair, but the girl was nowhere in sight. How long had she been back?
“I’m sorry.” Kylee turned off the sappy sax music with a flick of a button. “Like I said, Molly’s decided I should date you. And, like I said, it’s ridiculous.”
Ron took a deep breath. Instead of holding back, he let his tongue run free and speak for his heart. “It’s really not that ridiculous.”
Chapter Eleven
“That’s not any kind of a test question I’ve ever seen.”
Kylee looked down at her pad of paper. Instead of the bubbles of multiple-choice questions or the straight lines of fill-in-the-blank answers, she’d drawn a series of hearts and pointy arrows. Ron’s name was filled in on a couple of the arrow shafts.
She turned the paper over and looked up to address Anthony. His man bun looked particularly tight today. As usual, he wasn’t looking at her. His gaze was glued to his handheld device.
Kylee wasn’t sure if it was a phone or a tablet or something in between. It was larger than his palm. But she’d seen him hold it up to his ear and talk. His thumbs moved at a rapid clip as he spoke to her.
“I hear you landed a pitch meeting at Barton Elementary School.”
“Yes,” said Kylee, straightening her array of number two pencils. Her cell phone, an Android that was five years old, sat quietly next to the pencil holder on mute. “I know the principal there. He and I, we… We’re…”
She didn’t know what they were? Last night at dinner, Ron had opened a door she’d never known was there. A door where they could be more than friends. Kylee was curious to poke her head inside the crack of this just barely opened door and see where it might lead.
“You got the deal.” Anthony tapped his thumb a number of times in one spot. Then he pressed his index finger down, paused, and swiped right. “Good for you. Now you just have to close it.”
“Oh, there’s no guarantee they’ll choose us. Ron, I mean Principal Kidd, has always been very fair in things like this. He’s the type of guy who’ll weigh all the options and pick the best one regardless of personal feelings.”
Anthony’s fingers paused and he looked up. It was the first time Kylee had seen his eyes. They were a shocking shade of blue. That, with his dark hair, made him quite handsome. If he ever took the time to look a woman in her eyes, she’d likely fall hopelessly in love with the color alone.
“You call him Ron?” said Anthony.
“I… uh, yeah. We’re… friends.”
Friends seemed the safe word to Kylee. It was also the most-true word. They hadn’t gone through the door from friends to… more. Ron had just put it out there. He hadn’t pressed. That wasn’t his way. She’d always admired that about him.
Ron was the best listener she knew. He was the most level-headed person she knew. He was the fairest, most balanced person she knew.
She’d known all these facts when they were kids and he’d urged her not to run off with Jason. He’d warned her that it would ruin her life. It was the one and only time they’d argued outside of a class assignment. Ron had made a level-headed assessment of the decision that Kylee was making and called foul.
Kylee wished he had rescued her back then. She felt she was floundering now. Except for these past few days he’d been back in her life. She felt grounded around him, like her old self.
“Work that angle.”
Kyle blinked. Anthony’s blue gaze came back into focus. “Angle?”
What was this angle people were constantly bringing up? She knew she worked for an education company, but somehow, she didn’t think this had to do with math.
“The friendship angle,” Jason said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“I’m not going to use my friend to get ahead in my job.”
That might happen in the capital, but here in Adalia people helped each other because it was the right thing to do. There were no angles in the small town. There were only straight lines that got people to the points they wanted to go and circles of unity to include all of the community.
“Close the deal and you could get put on the high-level testing team.”