Shit. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to factor in the whole clown-shoes effect she had over him. Could that have been any more clumsy? He wasn’t even facing her. He couldn’t seem to be able to tear his eyes away from the girl in plastic gloves brushing salt off his pretzel. Stop watching that, dumbass!

Serafine turned to him and, unfortunately, so did the woman next to them, obviously extremely curious to hear how all of this was going to pan out.

“Uh,” Serafine said, her bright eyes on the side of his face. It became immediately clear to Ty that he’d just clicked on a swinging light bulb in a dark room, tied himself to a chair and begged a concession’s line worth of Cyclones fans to mock him.

Tyler made himself meet her eyes. He was an eye-contact sort of person, dammit! He believed in introducing oneself with his full name, in firm handshakes, in looking a person full in the face when talking with them. He’d been doing it his entire life! Why was this so hard with her?

“If you want to,” he added on lamely. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Because I want to. Go out with you, I mean.”

She just sort of stared at him for a moment.

“I mean that I want to take you out,” he tried one more time. “I mean that if you’re into it, I’d love to take you out sometime.”

“Order’s up,” the kid with the food called. Ten seconds later, Tyler found himself with two arms full of food and drinks and no answer yet from Serafine. He looked down at the hot pretzel and popcorn, the beers balancing in a tray, and felt like he was tumbling through the air with his arms too full to catch himself as he fell. He wanted to toss the food in the trash and bike home. Why had he thought this was somehow a good idea?

She stood there, the water bottles under one arm and her fries in the other hand. “Tyler...”

Yikes. He could practically see the dot dot dot lingering in the air after his name. She’d dot dot dotted him. Not a good sign, my friend.

Copyright © 2020 by Cara Bastone

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank my husband, who is just as proud of my imagination and accomplishments as I am. Who walks our dog by himself when there is no pulling me out of whatever scene I’m currently cannon-balling into. Who did an actual happy dance when we found out this book was going to be published. If there’s a scene in this book that particularly rang true for you, reader, chances are my husband was in my heart when I wrote it.

I’d also like to thank all the readers of the romance genre. Without your voracious appetite for the written word, I wouldn’t have my dream job. What a positive, hopeful, hilarious community of people we are.

Lastly, to all of the people who have lent their brilliance and expertise to this book in order to get it where it needed to go: thank you. Tara Gelsomino, my unbelievably talented and hardworking agent, thank you for believing in this manuscript and fighting hard to get it published. Thank you, Jess Verdi, the very first person to take a chance on me in this industry! Thank you to Allison Carroll, my genius editor. I’m grateful for your vision and ideas every single day. Thank you to Chris Wolfgang and all the copyeditors at HQN who painstakingly strive for perfection. You’re my heroes! And finally, to the entire team at HQN, I’m so humbled, honored and grateful to be a part of your Harlequin family.