For too long, his concerns had centered on party favors and place settings, permission forms, and whether Becca was going to call. Now it was all behind him, and he was glad. Even if, in the end, the party couldn’t have been declared a rousing success, at least those distractions were out of his life. Mostly. Through no fault of her own, Becca remained a distraction. She couldn’t know how many times per day he was tempted to dial her number and shoot the breeze—to let her know how Olivia was, or to talk over an irritating thing that had happened with work, or just to hear her husky laugh. If she knew how much he thought of her, she would have been horrified. He wasn’t too pleased about it himself. As mortifying as it had been to have Olivia ask him point-blank if he and Becca were involved, it was even worse to remember how emphatically he’d responded in the negative. Technically, it wasn’t a lie, but to his own ears, in his own gut, the denial hadn’t rung true. He liked Becca.
