“Oh, come on!” I said. “You were trying hard. I saw your scrunched up face when you were concentrating.”
“I don’t scrunch up my face,” he said.
I gasped. “Yes, you do!”
He closed one eye and shook his head in disbelief.
“Would it make you feel better if I gave you one?” I asked. I lifted the big purple gorilla and handed it over.
He reached out and touched my wrist. With him feeling the sensitive inner part of my wrist, my mind went blank. I couldn’t think of anything at that moment.
“Let’s have a rematch on another day,” he said.
“Deal,” I breathed.
His fingers moved to my hand, and he guided me to putting the gorilla back onto the bench. He slid them down to my palm.
My breath hitched in my throat. For a moment, I thought he was going to squeeze or hold my hand. But he didn’t. Instead, he turned to watch Gina on the ride. I stood there for a moment, staring at him.
It took Gina’s gleeful laugh to snap me back to reality. What had just happened between us?
I was no closer to getting an answer by the time we reached Noah’s house. With Gina in the car, it wasn’t an appropriate time to talk about us. It seemed like there never would be an appropriate time.
It was past her nap time, so when we arrived, she hopped out of the car, ready to lie down. She really was the perfect kid. I knew plenty of other kids who fought with me about their nap times.
Noah gave Gina the key to the house. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Bye, Jess,” she said and hugged me.
I kissed her cheek. “Sleep well.”
She yawned and nodded, trudging up the walkway to the side entrance.
“Thanks for having me today,” I said. “I’ll see you M—”
“Join us for dinner tomorrow,” Noah said quickly.
“Tomorrow?”
His shoulders lifted. “I’m taking Gina downtown to Eclisse. She likes to dress up for the fancier places.”
“Are you sure you want me to come?” I asked.
His eyebrows knitted together. “Of course.”
“I’d love to,” I said.
“Great,” he said then leaned over and kissed my cheek. “See you then.”
I nodded, unable to speak. I floated over to my car, unable to feel my feet touching the ground. I bit down on my bottom lip to keep from smiling. I had to play it cool, at least until I was alone. After spending an incredible day with Noah and Gina, our weekend together would continue, and I couldn’t be happier.
Chapter Seventeen
Noah
All day, I couldn’t stop thinking of Jess and the fantastic time we had the day before at Playland. Offering to take her to dinner was the second part of my plan. I wanted to show Jess that she would and always be a part of our family, even though she’d only been with us for a short amount of time. There was something special about her, and I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could. I wanted to get to know every detail about her life and share every detail of mine with her. It would take time, but it would be worth it.
Jess was to arrive around five-thirty for our six o’clock reservation. I made sure I was ready before I started with Gina. She had a tendency to mess up her clean outfits before we even left the house, so getting her ready was last on the list before going anywhere nice.