“Is this seat taken?”
Sweet Lord. He’s got a British accent. There’s nothing sexier in the entire world, which makes that old tired pick-up line forgivable. I smile up at him, my heart racing.
“No.”
He doesn’t move. “Can I take it, then? I’ll share my breakfast with you.”
He slightly gestures with his gooey, pecan-crusted roll.
“Sure,” I answer casually, expertly hiding the fact that my heart is racing fast enough to explode. “But I’ll pass on the breakfast. I’m allergic to nuts.”
“More for me, then,” he grins, as he slides into the booth across from me, ever so casually, as though he sits with strange girls in hospitals all of the time. I can’t help but notice that his eyes are so dark they’re almost black.
“Come here often?” he quips, as he sprawls out in the booth. I have to chuckle, because now he’s just going down the list of cliché lines, and they all sound amazing coming from his British lips.
“Fairly,” I nod. “You?”
“They have the best coffee around,” he answers, if that even is an answer. “But let’s not tell anyone, or they’ll start naming the coffee things we can’t pronounce, and the lines will get unbearable.”
I shake my head, and I can’t help but smile. “Fine. It’ll be our secret.”
He stares at me, his dark eyes shining. “Good. I like secrets. Everyone’s got ‘em.”
I almost suck in my breath, because something is so overtly fascinating about him. The way he pronounces everything, and the way his dark eyes gleam, the way he seems so familiar because he’s been in the intimacy of my dreams.
“What are yours?” I ask, without thinking. “Your secrets, I mean.”
He grins. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Yes.
“My name’s Calla,” I offer quickly. He smiles at that.
“Calla like the funeral lily?”
The very same.” I sigh. “And I live in a funeral home. So see? The irony isn’t lost on me.”
He looks confused for a second, then I see the realization dawn on him.
“You noticed my shirt yesterday,” he points out softly, his arm stretched across the back of the cracked booth. He doesn’t even dwell on the fact that I’d just told him I live in a house with dead people. Usually people instantly clam up when they find out, because they instantly assume that I must be weird, or morbid. But he doesn’t.
I nod curtly. “I don’t know why. It just stood out.” Because you stood out.
The corner of his mouth twitches, like he’s going to smile, but then he doesn’t.
“I’m Adair DuBray,” he tells me, like he’s bestowing a gift or an honor. “But everyone calls me Dare.”
I’ve never seen a name so fitting. So French, so sophisticated, yet his accent is British. He’s an enigma. An enigma whose eyes gleam like they’re constantly saying Dare me. I swallow.
“It’s nice to meet you, Dare,” I tell him, and that’s the truth. His name rolls off my tongue like I’ve said it a thousand times before. “Why are you here in the hospital? Surely it’s not for the coffee.”
“You know what game I like to play?” Dare asks, completely changing the subject. I feel my mouth drop open a bit, but I manage to answer.
“No, what?”
“Twenty Questions. That way, I know that at the end of the game, there won’t be any more. Questions, that is.”
I have to smile, even though his answer should’ve annoyed me. “So you don’t like talking about yourself.”
He grins. “It’s my least favorite subject.”
But it must be such an interesting one.
“So, you’re telling me I can ask you twenty things, and twenty things only?”
Dare nods. “Now you’re getting it.”
“Fine. I’ll use my first question to ask what you’re doing here.” I lift my chin and stare him in the eye.
His mouth twitches again. “Probably the same thing as you. Isn’t that what normal people do in hospitals?”
I flush. I can’t help it. Obviously. And obviously, I’m out of my league here. This guy could have me for breakfast if he wanted, and from the gleam in his eye, I’m not so sure he doesn’t.
I take a sip of my coffee, careful not to slosh it on my shirt. With the way my heart is racing, anything is possible.
“Was I right? Why are you here?” Dare asks.
“Is that your first question? Because turn-about is fair play.”
Dare smiles broadly, genuinely amused.
“Sure. I’ll use a question.”
“I brought my brother. He’s here for… group therapy.”
I suddenly feel weird saying that aloud, because it makes my brother sound less than somehow. And he’s not. He’s more than. Better than most people, more gentle, more pure of heart. But a stranger wouldn’t know that. A stranger would just slap him with a crazy label and let it be. I fight the urge to explain, and somehow manage not to. It’s not a stranger’s business.
Dare doesn’t question me, though. He just nods like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
He takes a drink of his coffee. “I think it’s probably kismet, anyway. That you and I are here at the same time, I mean.”
“Kismet?” I raise an eyebrow.
“That’s fate, Calla,” he tells me. I roll my eyes.
“I know that. I may be going to a state school, but I’m not stupid.”
He grins, a grin so white and charming that my panties almost fall off.
“Good to know. So you’re a college girl, Calla?”
I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about why you think this is kismet. But I nod.
“Yeah. I’m leaving for Berkeley in the fall.”
“Good choice,” he takes another sip. “But maybe kismet got it wrong, after all. If you’re leaving and all. Because apparently, I’ll be staying for a while. That is, after I find an apartment. A good one is hard to find around here.”
He’s so confident, so open. It doesn’t even feel odd that a total stranger is telling me these things, out of the blue, so randomly. I feel like I know him already, actually.
I stare at him. “An apartment?”
He stares back. “Yeah. The thing you rent, it has a shower and a bedroom, usually?”
I flush. “I know that. It’s just that this might be kismet after all. I might know of something. I mean, my father is going to rent out our carriage house. I think.”
And if I can’t have it, it should definitely go to someone like Dare. The mere thought gives me a heart spasm.
“Hmm. Now that is interesting,” Dare tells me. “Kismet prevails, it seems. And a carriage house next to a funeral home, at that. It must take balls of steel to live there.”
I quickly pull out a little piece of paper and scribble my dad’s cell phone on it. “Yeah. If you’re interested, I mean, if you’ve got the balls, you can call and talk to him about it.”
I push the paper across the table, staring him in the eye, framing it up as a challenge. Dare can’t possibly know how I’m trying to will my heart to slow down before it explodes, but maybe he does, because a smile stretches slowly and knowingly across his lips.
“Oh, I’ve got balls,” he confirms, his eyes gleaming again.
Dare me.
I swallow hard.
“I’m ready to ask my second question,” I tell him. He raises an eyebrow.
“Already? Is it about my balls?”
I flush and shake my head.
“What did you mean before?” I ask him slowly, not lowering my gaze. “Why exactly do you think this is kismet?”
His eyes crinkle up a little bit as he smiles yet again. And yet again, his grin is thoroughly amused. A real smile, not a fake one like I’m accustomed to around my house.
“It’s kismet because you seem like someone I might like to know. Is that odd?”
No, because I want to know you, too.
“Maybe,” I say instead. “Is it odd that I feel like I already know you somehow?”