He’d invested an unusual amount of care in planning a successful evening, enough that rearranging his day to guarantee he’d be on time—something he rarely did for social commitments—had delivered him twenty minutes early. The final thing to do now was to make it look like no planning at all had gone into the date, which his early arrival clearly contradicted. To avoid mulling over his expectations for the evening, he ordered a whiskey. The concentration required to pace his sips over twenty minutes provided the needed distraction from his anxiety. She appeared on time and he rose to greet her. Audrey. She was a touch underdressed, but he suspected there was less to read into that than there might have been with other women. He didn’t know her to play games, at least not the subtle sort. Besides, if she turned any heads, it was because of her simple, uncultivated beauty, not for the offense of some common pantsuit that didn’t quite live up to the candlelight and thick tablecloths.
