Seth was doing a fine job of it so far. His hands were moving all over her body as though he didn’t want any part of her to feel left out. It burned her up. When his hand traveled up her thigh, lifting her dress higher, she whimpered, impatient for him to touch her hypersensitive center.

But instead, his hand stopped its upward trajectory and quickly pulled her dress down to cover her hips again. To her utter shock and indignation, he pushed her away from him.

“How dare you?” she seethed as she tried to tug his mouth back on her lips.

“Later. I promise you we’ll resume later, but we’re here.” He sat her back on the seat and adjusted his pants and smoothed down his hair. “Our chauffeur’s going to open the door any second now.”

Tara quickly tugged down her dress and reached for her hair, which she was surprised to find still in good shape. Just as she noticed Seth’s lips smeared with her bloodred lipstick, the door opened. To his credit, the chauffer didn’t blink an eye at how disheveled the two of them must have appeared.

Her ears burning, she took his outstretched hand and accepted his help to get out of the limo. Seth climbed out of the car after her, and shared a grin with the chauffeur. She was surprised they didn’t high-five each other. But it was adorable seeing how proud Seth was of himself.

He reached her side in two steps and offered her his arm again. “Shall we?”

Tara reached into her clutch and took out a tissue. Once she’d cleaned his mouth free of her lipstick, he took the tissue from her and cleaned around her lips.

“Now we shall,” she said. When they turned around, she finally realized where they were. “Landon’s restaurant? What are we doing here?”

“Come with me and you’ll see.” He was positively vibrating with excitement.

“What are you up to?” She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, but his excitement was proving contagious.

“The best kind of mischief.”

She skipped a little to keep up with Seth’s long, impatient strides. When they reached the entrance, he reached out and covered her eyes.

“Hey,” she protested, tugging at his hand.

“Close your eyes. You can’t look, yet.”

“Okay. Fine. Just so you know, you’re raising the expectations really high with all this fuss.”

“I’m confident it’ll meet your expectations,” he said, sounding a smidgen smug. He led her by the arm into the restaurant and clicked on the lights. “Are you ready?”

“Just show me already. The suspense is killing me.”

When he took his hand away, her mouth dropped open and no sound came out. He’d moved all the tables and chairs to one side of the dining hall and strung the entire room with lovely droplets of decorative light. And glittering star garlands hung from the ceiling as though the stars were spilling out of the night sky. At one corner, silver helium balloons happily spelled out the word PROM.