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It was the rain that did it. Maybe. Or the rose. Something made the next words come out of her mouth. “If you’re not busy tonight, I... would you like to go with me? I have an extra ticket, and it’s for a good cause.”
She didn’t want to be alone tonight. Not yet, anyway.
He stared at her for a moment as the rain fell even harder. “I’d like that.”
“Good. Rafe and Jillian and probably Lacy and Travis will be there, too.”
“Great. I’ll dance with both of them and drive their husbands nuts with jealousy.” He grinned at her again. “Why don’t I follow you home? Then I’ll head to my place and get into my tux. I make a great penguin.”
“That sounds like a plan.”
She hurried into her car, feeling far more awkward than she had in a long, long time.
She had never asked a man on anything resembling a date before. She didn’t live like a nun or a puritan, but after what had happened to her when she’d been seventeen, trusting a man required a lot of energy she just didn’t have much time to expend.
The dates she’d been on in the last ten years had been ones she’d been asked on. Not ones she’d instigated.
But this...this wasn’t a date.
This was just her attending a charity event, with an extremely handsome, successful, and unbelievably kind man.
She could so deal with that.
Margo called as she was getting ready. Fin spilled everything—except about the note and rose. Margo had met Virat and she had a lot to say about him.
Most of it good.
She thought Fin would be remarkably stupid if she let this opportunity to turn just friends into something more pass her by.
But they weren’t really friends yet, either. They were colleagues.
They’d pass each other at the nurses’ station or in the cafeteria or staff meetings with the surgical department, but that was about it.
She’d been one of the ones totally convinced he’d had a thing for Lacy. And when Logan Lanning had shot Lacy, everyone had seen how Virat had felt.
Fin’s heart had broken for him.
No, there wasn’t anything there except just friends.
That was all Fin was going to let it be.