“Because a really good date with me doesn’t end with an art exhibit,” he said silkily. “A really good date won’t end until the next night. Not until I’ve spent hours making sure it’s the kind of date my woman never wants to end.”

Oh.

Oh gosh.

Flustered, I squirmed as I stared at my coffee. I had no idea what that would be like, to be the sole focus of the kind of man like Brock all weekend long.

“You guys going out again?” he asked.

I lifted my gaze, feeling oddly hot, like I’d been sitting out in the summer sun. “We’re having dinner Wednesday night.”

Rising, he walked around the desk, and I tensed, having no idea what he was up to when his dark eyes held a wealth of secrets. “That’s a shame.”

Confusion swept through me. “How so?”

He walked until he was in front of the desk and leaned back against it. “You’re not going to be able to have dinner with him on Wednesday.”

“And why not?”

Stretching out his long legs, I tensed even more when his knee brushed mine. Deep in my chest, my heart fluttered like a hummingbird taking flight. “Because you’re going to dinner with me.”

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

I opened my mouth, but immediately snapped it closed because my heart was suddenly entering cardiac territory. Was he . . . was Brock Mitchell seriously asking me out? Well, not asking me, but telling me we were going to dinner, like him and me? Us? But that didn’t make sense. He had a fiancée—a real life fiancée.

“What?” I croaked out, a mix of wild emotions slamming into me from every side. Despite knowing he was engaged and there being that barbed-wire wall and mile deep line that I knew he would never cross, a sweet burst of anticipation lit up my chest. Seconds later, a bitter acid washed it away, because I was not her. I was not the kind of woman to get involved with a man who was already with someone else, not even if it was the man I’d spent the vast majority of my life being in love with.

Not that I was still in love with him or anything.

He knocked his knee off mine. “We have a dinner date.”

“I heard that, but I . . . I don’t understand.”

“We’re going to that steakhouse in Martinsburg. The one right on Queen Street?” he explained. “We’re going to leave work and head straight there.”

I put my coffee down on his desk so I didn’t drop it, because my hand was starting to tremble. “Okay. I have no idea why you think we have a date, because I clearly do not remember you asking me, and you have—”