Really, she looks incredible and Caroline rakes her gaze slowly up Hannah as she tells her, “You look… really beautiful. I wanted to tell you the second I saw you.”

But Abbie had been with them, sits unspoken.

There’s a pleased flush on Hannah’s cheeks as she smooths a hand over the skirt of her dress. “I know you said it’s casual but I wanted to, well, make a nice impression.”

Caroline arches an eyebrow at her. “My family loves you. My mom would put me up for adoption and take you in, if she could get away with it.”

She loves the light laugh Hannah lets out. “Yeah, I think thirty-four was the cut off. She just missed it.”

“Too bad she’s stuck with me.”

“Yeah. Would hate to be stuck with you,” Hannah murmurs, holding her gaze as they stand on the porch. Before she breaks the eye contact a second later, shaking her head. “You have to stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

Gray eyes are dark as Hannah arches a challenging eyebrow at her. “Like you’re thinking about kissing me. You do it all of the time and now I know exactly what that look is,” Hannah whispers, her own eyes falling to Caroline’s mouth.

“I’m really not sure I can make that promise,” she admits, the truth of it almost alarming. Caroline typically does have a great poker face, when need be. “But I’ll try.”

There’s still a hint of a smile on Hannah’s lips even as the look she gives Caroline is serious. “I don’t want your entire family to know.”

Caroline thinks about the knowing look her mom had given her the day she’d joined them at the bake sale and wants to say there’s a good chance she already knows. It’s not a big deal to her, not really.

That is new in and of itself; she never has been big on sharing her relationships with her family. She doesn’t hide them, either, but she’s never fallen for someone so hard that someone would be able to tell with just a look. And now… well she wants to share this news. She wants to walk into the room with Hannah and have everyone know that she loves this woman.

That’s certainly not where Hannah is, though, so she nods.

“Right. Okay. No looking at you like I’m thinking about kissing you. Because I’m definitely not.”

Hannah chortles and opens her mouth, but before she says anything, Caroline’s mom startles them both.

“What are you two doing out here? It’s freezing; get inside.”

It is cold, but honestly Caroline hadn’t even noticed.