Sunrise Cabin. Stacey Donovan

I hadn’t gotten that far yet.” They both laughed. “Dinner, next Saturday night? I’ll pick you up.”

      She bit her lip. “You know…” Was she backing out of it, after all? “I don’t really know you. I don’t even know your last name.”

      “Oh. Cain. It’s Dylan Cain.” He didn’t blame her for being hesitant. There were a lot of creeps out there, and while he hoped he didn’t seem like one, there was no way for her to know for sure. Maybe his suggesting to pick her up had set off an alarm in her head. “We could meet for lunch.” If she drove herself, in broad daylight, she might feel better about it.

      Her shoulders relaxed. “I’d like that. Sorry to be weird.”

      “You weren’t. It’s fine.”

      “Well, here,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’ll put my number in your phone.”

      Yes. She trusted him that much, at least. He pulled up his contact list and then handed the phone to her. As she typed in her name, he asked, “Is next Saturday good?”

      She smiled. “It’s perfect. I don’t have much of a lunch break during the week.”

      “What do you like for lunch?”

      “Um, places with breakfast food? But I mean, anything’s fine.”

      “Breakfast for lunch is great. I think some people call that brunch.” She rewarded him with a laugh.

      “Uncle Dylan!” Connor peeked around the corner. “We went that way, but it was a dead end. Are you coming?”

      “Where’s your brother?” Dylan asked. He hadn’t been paying attention to them at all, and the last thing he needed was to lose him in a maze.

      “He’s right here.” Connor gestured as Noah came into view.

      “Just a minute, you guys,” Dylan told them.

      Paige gave the phone back to him along with her own. “Give me yours, too.”

      With a great sense of satisfaction, he complied. After he handed it back to her, she fiddled with the phone for a moment, then held it up and took a photo of him.

      “Hey,” he said in mock protest.

      “I need your face next to your name.” Her mouth twisted. “You don’t really mind, do you?”

      He’d already pulled up the camera on his phone. “Not as long as I get to take one of you.” She shook her head, and he insisted, “Fair is fair.”

      “I hardly have any makeup on,” she mumbled.

      “Paige, come on,” he said, more seriously. “You look beautiful.”

      Her expression softened and her mouth curved upward. He snapped the picture.

      “Uncle Dylan, let’s gooo,” Connor said.

      Okay, the kid was killing the moment. But Dylan couldn’t complain. If it hadn’t been for his nephews, he might never have met up with Paige again, and this had been the most fun he’d had in a long, long while.

      chapter seven

      On Monday afternoon, Paige read the latest installment of the story to her classroom. “‘The knight said, Come with me’—Yes, Neveah?”

      “How can the night talk?”

      Paige sat puzzled for a moment, and then understood. “Oh! It’s not ‘night’ like ‘night and day,’ it’s ‘knight’ with a silent ‘k.’” She got up and wrote it on the board. “Does everyone know what a knight is?” Clara raised her hand. “Yes, Clara.”

      “It’s like a prince but he has a sword.”

      “Yes, very good! But only for scaring away bulls and monsters,” Paige added. She still didn’t want to promote fighting. Clara raised her hand again. “Yes, Clara?”

      “I think princes are boring.”

      “No they’re not!” another girl shouted.

      “It’s funny you should say that,” Paige said. “Because this prince—I mean this knight—seemed boring at first. But then, it turned out he wasn’t.” Clara’s hand went up again. “Yes, Clara?”

      “Is he a real person?”

      Paige’s face heated. “This is a story,” she said, not exactly lying to the children, even under pressure. “I’m going to keep reading it.—‘The knight said, Come with me to the magical orchard!’”

      The bell rang. Paige put the journal away and helped the children gather their coats and belongings. Once they’d gone out to the busses, she stopped by Jessica’s classroom.

      Jessica was standing on a chair to put up a new bulletin board display. A border of colorful fall leaf cutouts surrounded a half-finished message. When she saw Paige, she smiled. “Hey! How was your weekend?” As she stepped down, she scrunched up her face and added, “I bet it was better than mine. You would not believe how complicated wedding centerpieces can be. I was going to have tropical flowers in square vases, but then the vases looked too big, so I…” She cut herself off. “Aaand that’s all super boring.”

      “I like hearing about it,” Paige protested. “And you don’t think it’s boring. You love planning all that stuff.”

      “I do.”

      “I think you’ll miss it once the wedding is over.” Jessica looked sheepish at Paige’s words. “What?” Paige asked.

      “I may have signed up to help organize a charity ball at the shelter.”