Free Suddenly a Bride by Kasey Michaels

button must have come open when you were carrying Mikey.”
    Elizabeth looked down in shock to see Will’s tanned hands, his long fingers, working with the material of her blouse that had, indeed, come open, revealing the line of her fairly utilitarian bra. He didn’t linger, didn’t do anything more than slip the button back into its buttonhole, but Elizabeth had to fight a shiver at the unexpected intimacy.
    He looked into her eyes. He smiled. His eyes smiled. Teased. Then he backed off.
    “Coffee’s ready,” she said, turning to grab two mugs from the cabinet, congratulating herself for not having fainted dead away or begun drooling or some such idiocy. “What would you like with it? Sugar? Cream?” Me?
    “I’m fine with it black,” Will told her. “Where should I put this?”
    She looked over her shoulder to see he was now holding the laundry basket. Was any of her underwear in it, or just all those little pairs of briefs with cartoonanimals or superheroes or race cars all over them? “Oh, anywhere,” she said lamely. “That shouldn’t have been there. I’m sorry. I don’t have guests very often.”
    Will pulled the cookie jar to the center of the table and removed the lid, reaching inside to grab one of the cookies. “Don’t worry about it. You have two kids, and you have a full-time job. I may have a full-time job, but the rest of my life is my own. Do you have your own life, Elizabeth?”
    The suddenness, the seriousness of the question, startled Elizabeth. “I’m very happy,” she answered, wondering if she sounded as defensive as she felt. She also realized that she hadn’t answered Will’s question.
    So, obviously, did he. His eyes, his slight smile, both hinted to her that he did. But his next question really proved it.
    “When was the last time you went out for dinner, Elizabeth? Not counting taking the boys someplace where you order by talking into a clown’s mouth or a dinner that could be served on a napkin at a ballpark?”
    She couldn’t remember. Dear God, she couldn’t remember! “I don’t know. A while?”
    “Okay. How about this one. Name the last movie you saw in a theater.”
    Elizabeth wanted to get up, leave the room. Will was a lawyer, and he was interrogating her. But why? “It was…something the boys wanted to see. There was this prehistoric cartoon squirrel, and he was always chasing a—I don’t know. What difference does it make?”
    “None, probably,” Will said, sitting back in his chair,the coffee mug—the one with a superhero dog stamped on the sides—clasped in both of his hands. “You’d never been to a baseball game until tonight. That was setting the bar pretty high. I didn’t want our next date to be a letdown. So dinner and a movie?”
    She carefully set down her coffee mug, which was better than having the hot liquid splash all over her fingers because her hand was shaking. “Tonight was a date?”
    “Technically, probably not. I thought we could try again, this time without the kids. Not that I don’t like them,” he added quickly. Too quickly?
    “No, of course not. You were very good with them. Very…understanding. But I—I don’t date. I mean, I haven’t been on a date since before I was married, and I really don’t know how to—” She looked at him in appeal. “Could you help me out here? I’m being an idiot.”
    “Happy to be of service. A date, Ms. Carstairs, consists of two people who wish to—”
    “I know that part, smarty-pants,” she said, and then winced. Who called a grown man smarty-pants? Women whose usual verbal confrontations begin with “take your fingers out of your mouth, young man, and answer me,” that’s who. “How about I just say yes? I would love to go to dinner and a movie with you.”
    “Terrific.” Will stood up at the same time she did, which brought them into rather close proximity to one another. “Tomorrow night?”
    “I’ll need to arrange for a babysitter,” she said, not backing up