“I didn’t get arrested!” she interrupts in a not-whisper as her eyes flare in outrage. She slides into the chair across from mine and lowers her voice. “I did not get arrested. I was simply detained for a couple of hours,” she says with a little shake of her head, trying to play it off as no big deal when I know damn well it totally freaked her out.

 “Still.” I shrug. “Such an entertaining story…” I trail off. I’m not going to have to push this very hard. She’s putting up a token fight, but she’s curious about me and she’s got to at least want to find out what my request is.

 “Shouldn’t I be protected by agent-suspect confidentiality?”

 “You mean something like doctor-patient privilege?” I ask her. “Or lawyer-client?”

 “Yeah.” She nods. “Exactly.”

 “Nope.” I shake my head. “Sorry.”

 “So what do you want?” she asks, shoulders hunched and her gaze suspicious.

 “I need a date to a wedding next weekend.”

 The tension drops from her shoulders and her suspicion is replaced with confusion. “Like you can’t get a real date?” It comes out kinda snarky and exasperated and makes me want to grin.

 “I could, but they’re so much work.” I drag my hand over my jaw as if I’m seriously contemplating this. “If I bring a real date she’ll read into it and think I brought her so I can introduce her to my family. And if I go alone my mother will ensure I’m sat next to some horrible woman she’s picked out for me.”

 “But why would you want me to go with you? I’m a disaster, as you so eloquently put it. Won’t I embarrass you?” She bites her lip and stares at me, eyes wide.

 “Since it’s not a real date I assume you won’t be nervous and thus less disastrous,” I answer. “Unless I make you nervous?” I add slowly, with a slight frown, as if the idea has just occurred to me. It hasn’t. I know I make her nervous and it probably makes me an asshole, but I like it. “Besides, it’ll be good practice for you.”

 “Practice?”

 “Your abominable dating skills,” I remind her, shifting my eyes to the empty table beside us, recently vacated by Joe. “We can work on appropriate conversations you should be having with an adult male.” As long as that adult male is me.

 She bites on her bottom lip and stares at me for a moment, thinking. I can wait because I already know what her answer is going to be. I pick at a piece of lint on the sleeve of my suit coat and straighten the cuffs. Finally she nods. “Okay,” she says. “I guess I do owe you,” she adds, then rolls her eyes in my face and sighs. I nod, keeping my smile to myself.

 “You’ll need a dress,” I tell her and wait for the objection I know is coming.

 “I have dresses,” she replies, but tiny lines of concern mar her forehead and I’ve been with enough women to know what’s going through her head. Does she have the right dress for this? How fancy is the event? What will everyone else be wearing? Add to that—she can’t have the budget for a dress. She’s fresh out of college and on a teacher’s salary, both of which tell me it isn’t likely she has an appropriate dress hanging in her closet. Shit, this entire scheme is pure genius, I think, as I make a mental note to cancel the date I had lined up for this wedding when I get home.

 “This is a formal event. We’ll pick up a dress this weekend.”

 She gives me a dirty look. “What do you mean we’ll pick up a dress this weekend?”

 “I mean shopping. I’ll pick you up at ten on Saturday.”

 “I can find a dress by myself,” she says firmly.

 “Please. You were wearing pants with donuts on them the second time I saw you. If you can even call those things pants.” Fucking leggings left nothing to the imagination. And I’ve done a lot of imagining. Mostly involving her legs wrapped around my hips. “Half my family is going to be there. I’ll pick out the dress.” I could give a fuck about the dress. I want to spend time with her that she thinks isn’t a date, so she’ll relax and be herself.

 “Well, that was rude,” she deadpans.

 I shrug. “Besides, you’re doing me a favor,” I remind her, “so the dress is on me.”

 “Whatever,” she agrees sullenly.

 “You’re welcome,” I reply.

 “You’re impossible,” she says with a shake of her head. “I should go,” she adds a moment later with a glance towards the window. “It’s getting late.”

 I walk her outside and she stops, standing on one foot and tapping the toe of her other on the sidewalk. “Well, bye,” she says and turns to walk away.

 “You walked here?” I ask, stopping her.

 “Of course, it’s less than a mile.”

 “Well, you’re not walking home,” I inform her while simultaneously flagging a cab.

 “Boyd, the sidewalks are well occupied the entire route back to my apartment and it’s before ten. Perfectly safe.”

 A cab stops and I open the back door for her while passing the driver enough cash to cover her fare home. “Oh, no, safety girl, I can’t let you walk home after that story about how you walked all the way over here because you don’t meet dates within a three-block radius of your apartment,” I tell her with a lazy grin while resting my arm across the top of the open cab door. “I feel a male responsibility to ensure you get home safe after that fascinating tidbit.”

 “You’re a jerk,” she tells me. But she gets in the cab and I smile. This girl isn’t going to be easy.

Seven

 Chloe

 Boyd Gallagher is… something. I’m not sure what, exactly. But he’s something. He thinks I’m awkward, but at least I’ve never crashed someone’s date. Or sat silently and watched. Or whatever he was doing. I suppose he gets away with whatever he wants because he’s good-looking; no one’s ever had the nerve to tell him that his behavior is strange.

 I can’t believe I have to go to a wedding with him, but he’s right, I do owe him and I do need the practice. And that thought brings another horrifying thought to mind—what if there’s dancing at the wedding? No, not what if, of course there will be dancing at the wedding. He said it’s formal, what formal wedding doesn’t have dancing? None that I’ve ever heard of. I don’t know how to dance, not really. I haven’t been to a dance since high school and no one had any idea what they were doing at those dances. When a slow song came on you just shuffled back and forth with your date until the song ended.