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first."
    Carter smiled. "Sounds like a good idea."
    Thankfully, our food arrived before I could reveal any more intimate and embarrassing details about my life, like how I got my first period in school. I dug into the salad, trying to keep my eyes off of the pastrami sandwich that the waitress set in front of Carter.
    After we'd both taken our few bites, Carter, perhaps sensing that I didn't want to spend any more time discussing my failed marriage than I had to, wisely changed the subject. Instead, he chatted about some of the local businesses in the area, many of which existed in buildings that he'd managed or helped to buy or sell. To someone else, this might have come off as bragging, but I saw Carter's eyes light up when he talked about these businesses, and I realized that he really cared about them. For many of the smaller businesses, he named the owners as if he still kept up his personal connection with them.
    "You really like our little city of Davis, don't you?" I asked, when he finally paused for breath.
    With a slightly abashed grin, Carter reached up and ran a hand through his short hair, mussing it slightly. "It's obvious, isn't it?" he let on. "Yeah. I might not have grown up here, but I've been living in Davis for nearly a decade, now. It really is the kind of place that you just fall in love with, sometimes without even realizing it."
    I tried not to wince a little at his mention of love, but he must have seen the pained expression flash across my face. "Sorry. Not that kind of love."
    "No, it's okay," I defended myself. "So, um..."
    I stalled, not sure how to ask if Carter was currently seeing anyone. How could I possibly raise the question without it coming across as hypocritical, especially when, just a few minutes earlier, I'd been talking about how I needed to spend some time on my own without a man in my life?"
    Carter just smiled back at me. "At some point, I'm sure I'll find a woman who shares the same passion that I do," he said, and returned his attention back to the other half of his sandwich, pointedly not looking at how my cheeks flushed at the potential implication of his words.
    As he'd promised, Carter tossed down his credit card on top of the check, holding up a hand at my half-hearted protests and my attempt to reach for my purse. "Maybe in exchange for this lunch, you'll give me a heads-up if any nice pieces come into the gallery, so that I can snatch them up before they get sold off to little old retired ladies," he teased me.
    "Well, you'll have to give me your number, so I can give you a call," I replied, smiling back at him. And I only wanted his number for the purpose of selling him art, I added firmly in my head. I definitely didn't want to ask him out, maybe let him take me out for a couple of glasses of wine before seeing where the night went.
    I suspected that, as a real estate, he probably had an amazing apartment of his own.
    When the waitress brought back our receipt, Carter flipped it over and used the pen to scrawl some digits on the backside. "Here you go," he said, handing it over to me. "And that's my personal cell, too, so you don't need to worry about restricting your calls to business hours only."
    That was flirting, wasn't it? I might be a bit rough and rusty at this, but I could still recognize flirting when someone hit me over the head with it! This handsome, sexy guy was really flirting with me!
    Still, just to be sure, I glanced quickly over my shoulder. Nope, no wildly attractive woman standing behind me. I'd made that mistake before, when I saw Tommy Gallager waving at me in tenth grade, but it turned out that he'd been waving to Lisa Evanson, standing behind me. I hadn't been able to show my face for the whole rest of the day, and ended up convincing the nurse to let me go home with a sick note.
    "You probably ought to be getting back to the gallery," Carter said, rising up from his chair. "Shall I walk you back?"
    "Thanks," I said, wondering vaguely if this walk