Page 72 of The One You Want

He was almost to the door when I remembered something. “Grant, there’s a dress code in the diningroom.”

He looked over his shoulder to wink at me. “I wasn’t planning on wearing my work jeans, Jenny. Don’tworry.”

I should have been worried. Oh, not that he wouldn’t fit the dress code—quite the opposite, really. When Grant showed up at my condo precisely an hour later, dressed in a dark grey suit, I was pretty sure I was in danger of swallowing mytongue.

“You…you’re…wow,” Imanaged.

He cast a glance down at his suit, eyebrows furrowed. “Is it too much? Your grandfather was in a suit at the festival so Ifigured—”

“No. It’s not too much. He’ll definitely be in a suit today. You just look so…different.”

His eyebrows went up. “Different bad or differentgood?”

“Good,” I blurted out. “Definitely good. You look…good.”

Good didn’t begin to cover how he looked, but it was the best I could do right then. I was too busy trying to refrain from jumping him in the doorway to utilize my Harvardvocabulary.

Grant in a suit was…wow. There was something about the contrast between his big, broad farmer’s body and the suave cut of his suit that had my heart beating out of my chest. His thick hair was neat and styled, a far cry from the mussed waves he usually sported, a product of distractedly running his hands through his hair too often whileworking.

Even his beard looked neater than usual. Had he trimmedit?

In spite of my stunted vocab, Grant must have been able to read what I was thinking in my expression, because his mouth tilted up in that smirk I was beginning to get familiar with. Then his eyes roamed over my body and the smirk faded into something that looked a lot morehungry.

“You’re looking prettygoodyourself.”

Those simple words had a flush coming to my cheek and Grant laughed, holding out his hand. I took it and he pulled me through the door, waiting with a hand at my lower back while I locked up behindus.

“How were my buddies doing after I left?” he asked as we made our way up the hill towards the OttawaHotel.

“Oh, they protested your absence pretty vehemently. My living room curtains will never be thesame.”

He winced. “Guess I’ll just have to hang out there more often,” he said in a causal tone. “Wouldn’t want you to lose any more of your curtains,right?”

I grinned at him, happiness bubbling in mystomach.

In the hour that he’d been gone, I could admit to some second-guessing. What if he’d just been caught up in the romance of the night? The twinkling lights and soft music and hum of anticipation that always seemed to linger in places where large crowds of people gathered to have fun. It would be easy to get carried away in that kind ofatmosphere.

But his easy assertion that he’d be spending more time at my place had my doubts fading away under the unseasonably warm autumn sun. Grant’s big hand holding mine the entire way didn’t hurt,either.

The nerves didn’t kick in until we got to the hotel. But now it wasn’t Grant’s commitment that was worrying me. It was the fact that I had condemned him to spending an entire morning with mygrandparents.

“This was a bad idea,” I muttered while we waited in the lobby for theirarrival.

He squeezed my hand. “It will befine.”

“I shouldn’t have asked you to dothis.”

“You didn’t,” he reminded me. “Your grandfather did. And I said yes because I wantedto.”

“You said yes because you felt like you had to since you agreed to help me convince them we weredating.”

His body went rigid next to mine. “You think that’s why I saidyes?”

Shit. “Grant, I didn’tmean—”

But before I could explain, before I could try to soothe some of the hurt I saw clearly on his face, my grandparents arrived. We said our hellos in a flurry of handshakes (for Grant), hugs (for me), and a cloud of Chanel no. 5 from mygrandmother.

“Have you given him the tour yet?” my Grandfatherasked.