18

Rachel curled on the leather recliner in the living room of the Carriage House. She turned her face into a shaft of sunlight, sighing as it warmed her.

Ian moved about in the kitchen, opening and closing drawers and cabinets. He’d followed her all the way here and insisted that he stay until Ann got off work. He’d initially wanted to drive her himself, but Rachel had declined. Aside from the fact that she really did feel fine, she didn’t want to bother with arranging to have her car picked up later. The sooner this whole episode was behind her, the better.

Ian entered bearing two cups of coffee. He swiped coasters from an end table and sat down on the edge of adjacent sofa, setting the coffees on the low wooden table between them. One of them, heavily creamed, he pushed toward Rachel. She leaned forward without fully sitting up and sighed into the steam. She could hardly bear to look him in the face.

He watched her, his expression impassive, eyes nearly translucent in the slanting afternoon sun. “I don’t know a lot about you, but I know how you take your coffee.” He raised his mug and took a cautious sip.

“What else do you need to know?” Rachel asked, her voice light.

“I want to know all of it. Everything.”

“You mean about Craig Crocker?”

“Well, yes. That too.”

“There’s nothing going on between him and me.” She was surprised this needed to be clarified. “At least, I didn’t think there was. It turns out I was wrong. Again.” She looked down at her hands. “I’m wrong about so many things, Ian. All the time. If you want to know everything, that’s the first thing you should know.”

Ian set down his mug and leaned forward, bracing his elbows against his knees and fitting his fingers together. He studied his hands. At length, he cleared his throat and lifted his gaze. “Rachel—”

Rachel’s heart stalled. This was it. “I have something I want to say first.”

He leaned back. “Say it.”

“I owe you an apology. That’s the whole reason I wanted to meet you today. I wanted to apologize. I brought ice creams and everything.” When he said nothing, she continued. “You say all you know about me is how I take my coffee, but that’s not true. You know by now I’m not very good at relationships. I’ve been working on that. I’ve made all kinds of resolutions, and I’ve been praying about it and asking the Holy Spirit to change me.”

“That’s good. Rachel—”

“I’m not finished. The point is, in trying to fix some of the mistakes I’ve made in the past, I went too far the other direction and started making completely different ones. I mean—I liked you. I like you—present tense, just to be clear. But you never really clarified what was going on with us, and I didn’t want to assume anything, so…” She trailed off, hoping he would interrupt. He didn’t. “Am I making sense?”

“I think I get the gist. Rachel—”

“Let me just say everything while I’m at it. Ever since I met you—this whole time—Ann and Lynn have been telling me you were interested in me. I knew they were probably right, but I was scared. What if I was just overreacting and reading into things, like I’ve always done? I wanted to be sure you liked me before I let myself get even the tiniest bit close to you.”

“To be clear, I do like you. A lot.”

The edges of his eyes didn’t crinkle—not one bit—but Rachel’s heart still fluttered. She pushed back against the rising joy. “I know now.”

“I could tell I was scaring you,” he admitted. “Which was why I decided to try stealth-dating you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Stealth-dating,” he repeated.

She nodded slowly, certain events clicking into place. “That day with the sandwiches.”

“Even before that. Back when I met with your associate pastor on a Sunday instead of any other day of the week, just so I could see you. It was all stealth-dating. The church services, the requests for rides, the Cubans, the ice creams.” He dropped his gaze to his interlaced fingers. “I was so worried about coming on too strong and sending you into one of your tailspins that I just, well—”

“One of my—what?” Rachel’s voice jumped an octave.

Ian sipped his coffee. “Do you prefer another term?”

So embarrassing. Rachel cleared her throat. “Perhaps that wasn’t the best idea you’ve ever had.”

Ian shrugged, his gaze steady. “Could you suggest an alternative course of action? Because I’m running out of options.”

Rachel blinked. Under that quiet look, her insides slowly liquified. When he stood and crossed to sit beside her on the leather loveseat, throwing one arm across the back as he turned his body to face her, her blinking lapsed into positive eye-fluttering territory.

Goodness. This must be what Sharon Day felt like all the time.

It wasn’t terrible, actually.

But now wasn’t the time to think about Sharon. She needed to focus.

Ian’s voice was firm and his gaze serious. “Rachel, listen. We don’t know each other very well, but you know enough to make an informed decision.”

In the clear light, she could see flecks of green among the gray of his eyes. “About what?” she asked dreamily.

Low as it was, his voice cut through the soft-tone haze.

“Are you in or are you out?”