“Would you like to have dinner with me one night this week?” he asks, a drop of hesitation in his voice.
My throat burns as I prevent myself from answering right away. Of course I want to, who wouldn’t? But what good will it do? There’s very little chance he’d do or say something to make me not want to see him again, and the fact of the matter is, he’s a candidate in an election. He isn’t in a place for a relationship, and what I need, what Huxley needs, is for me to be serious and calculated in everything I do.
“Alison?”
“I’d love to,” I say, taking a deep breath, “but I’m going to have to decline.”
He’s taken aback, his steps faltering beside mine. “So . . . no?”
“Yes, no,” I laugh. “Is that the first time you’ve heard that or something?”
“Well, yes. More or less.”
I laugh louder as the lights ahead of us get brighter.
“This isn’t funny,” he says with a grin spread across his cheeks. “I really would like to see you again.”
I beam and hope that the darkness hides it. “I would like to see you again in a perfect world. But we both know that’s not what this is.”
“No, it’s not. Because you just told me no.”
“Oh my God,” I sigh, amused. “The timing is just bad, Barrett. You’re in the midst of a campaign and I . . .”
“You what?”
“I’m a single mom trying to do what’s best for her kid. And that’s not going to dinner with you.”
He stops in his tracks, his head cocked to the side. “Forgive me for asking, but what does you being a single mom have to do with you not going to dinner with me?”
“Look, I didn’t mean it like that,” I breathe. “It’s just that my marriage was sort of high-profile and it ended spectacularly bad. I have this fear of the media, of reporters, specifically,” I gulp. Then, before I can think about it, I add, “It’s not just my life that goes to dinner with you. Huxley’s life kind of goes too.”
“So you would rather not go to dinner with me than be tossed into magazines. That’s what you’re saying?”
I nod.
He grins devilishly.
“That just makes me want to go to dinner with you more, Alison.”
With every centimeter his smile spreads, it tugs my lips right along with it.
“It’s extremely hard to find someone that wants to have dinner with me—the stripped down version. Women want the photographs, everyone to know they’re with me. And you . . . don’t.”
I try to pull my gaze from his, but it’s near impossible. He searches me—not my facial expressions or the angle of my posture, but me. Through my eyes and deep into my soul.
Shivering at the feeling of exposure, I finally look away. “You’re right. I don’t,” I whisper.
He considers this, rocking back on his heels like I saw his brother do earlier. “What if I promised you we could do it at a place no one would see us? Just you and I. No agenda. No media. No expectations. Just a dinner between two friends.”
“We’re friends now?”
“I just saved you from your boss! You owe me one. And if that display of heroism doesn’t get me . . . friended . . . what will?”
“You, Mr. Landry, are lucky you chose the word friended.”
“What did you think I was going to choose?” he asks wickedly.
“You’re impossible.”