Page 26 of Making Over Maris

Her face froze. “Tristan? You told him?”

“I told him I had a date.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t tell him with whom.” Or that it was a fake date. Damn, but that rankled.

“Oh. Okay.” She opened the door wider. “Come on in. I’ll put these in water.”

He followed her slowly. He’d been here before—this was where they always had movie night—but he’d never studied her place, not the way the Demystifying Women website suggested.

It was a small condo, and neat. According to the website, neatness was a sign of a woman who appreciated order. The art on the walls was funky and reflected her sense of humor. He stepped up to a series of photographs in the hall and analyzed them as she puttered in the kitchen, hunting for a vase. He was surprised to notice the photos weren’t portraits—he’d been expecting a gallery of family and friends. Old boyfriends perhaps.

She had a lot of those. Enough to fill a gallery.

But these were all landscapes, all black-and-white, all exquisite. Amazing that he’d never noticed them before. But then he’d missed a lot. Before.

He turned as she came back into the room. “These are nice.”

“Thanks. I took them.”

He blinked. “You…took these?” He turned back and examined them again. Damn. The girl had game. “You should be a photographer.”

She laughed. “I am.”

Yeah. She’d always had a camera around her neck in school. “I mean a professional.”

She set the vase on the coffee table. “Really?”

“Oh yeah. This one’s…phenomenal.” It was a long, narrow shot down a snow-covered forest. Haunting, beautiful. Like her.

She stepped closer to study the photo and her perfume teased at his sanity. “Oh, yeah. I took that one in Vermont.”

“Gorgeous.”

“Thanks. Are you ready to go?”

No. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay. “Sure. I hope you like Italian.”

She grinned and grabbed her shawl. “Love it.”

They didn’t talk much on their way to the restaurant. Jack was focused on her legs. When she sat in the bucket seat of his BMW, her legs tipped up and the dress slipped down. Only a tad. He swallowed heavily. When she crossed her legs, it exposed more of her silky thigh.

If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was trying to seduce him.

But he knew better.

When he parked in the restaurant’s lot and switched off the engine, she put her hand on his arm. “Now listen, Jack. This date is a training session.”

His heart plummeted. “Okay.”

“You’ve done great so far. The flowers were awesome. And I appreciate that you were on time. But now we have to get serious. Work on the nitty-gritty.”

The nitty-gritty? “Okay.”

“So I’m going to give you hints throughout the night, you know, what a guy should do to attract a woman and all that. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Crap.

Crap crap crap.