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make him cheat or
whatever idiotic excuse you can think up not to go out with him.
He’d be lucky to have you and you remember that!”
    I heard Dex
shout out a, “Yeah!” in the background and had to smile.
    Such good
friends.
    “Go meet Zeke
for drinks. It’ll be fun. What’s the worst that can happen? You get
free drinks from a hot guy? Or you finally get to have some fun in
your life?”
    And that’s what
I was afraid of, that by going out with Zeke I would have
fun. And I’d like it. I’d like him. And my plans would all go to
shit .
     
     
     

 
*Week One—5 th Encounter*
     
     
    To say I was freaking
out would be an understatement .
    When I walked
into the office, I saw that Dean Moreland had gone home and hadn’t
left anything on my desk for me to do, so I grabbed my purse and
headed for the bathroom to see if I could make myself a little more
presentable.
    When I came
out, it was five till seven, so I sat at a desk and called Grammy
to let her know I’d be late then tried to act busy. When it was
straight-up seven, my heart was about to beat out of my chest in
anticipation but when Zeke didn’t show, the beating in my chest was
there because of my apprehension.
    Seven-thirty
and still no Zeke. Well, that was it. He wasn’t coming. I’d been
duped by a guy yet again.
    And I was
pissed at myself for allowing it to happen.
    I stood with a
sigh, pulled on my coat, grabbed my purse and headed out, locking
the door to the office and pulling it closed behind me. As I walked
down the long hallway to the front where Jezebel was parked, I
found I could hardly contain the tears that were threatening, damn
it. I knew better than to agree to go out with him. Having been
burned three times, I thought I would’ve learned by now.
    Stopping at
the first set of double doors, I blinked several times, putting my
head back to stare at the ceiling trying to dispel the waterworks. No crying over a guy! I told myself. God knew I’d cried
enough in the past. So finally getting my emotions under control
and telling myself I didn’t need anyone, I blew out a breath and
went through the first set of doors, then the next set, and out
noticing it was snowing a little harder now. So pretty. At least
there was that. And just as I started down the steps, what I saw at
the bottom made me want to cry for a different reason now.
    Zeke stood
looking up at me, hands in the front pockets of his jeans, wearing
a friggin’ Hallervan baseball cap that made me bite my lip because,
damn, he looked so good it should’ve been illegal, and he was
smirking (seriously, how could someone make a smirk be that
sexy?).
    And he’d
shown. He hadn’t stood me up.
    I took in a
shuddering breath, still a little emotional at thinking he’d blown
me off then continued down the steps to meet him.
    “Hi,” I said
when I reached the bottom.
    “Hi.” And now
he grinned. Good God, just his facial movements were disarming.
    I was in so
much trouble.
    “I, uh,
thought you, um, changed your mind,” I said quietly, looking up at
him only to be held captive by those devastating eyes of his.
    “Funny story,
that,” he answered with a snort.
    “Oh,” I
replied then stood there not really remembering the protocol of
chatting with a guy who was a potential date since I’d been out of
the loop for a while. How pathetic was I?
    He full-on
smiled now, then lowered and shook his head. When he looked back
up, he asked, “Walk with me to my truck?” When he held his hand out
to me, I stared at it for a second then looked up at him, my brain
having suddenly left the building. At my lack of acting as if I had
even one brain cell in my body, he chuckled, reached for my hand,
took it in his huge one, gave it a squeeze (now giving me that
knee-buckling half grin) and led me to his truck.
    As we walked,
I rolled my eyes, mentally castigating myself for behaving like, as
Grammy would say, a nitwit. I was a four-point-oh student, for
chrissakes! But this guy just