One Night With The Cowboy. Brenda Harlen

seem to expect a response. Instead, he set the bread on her plate and drew another slice out of the basket.

      “Tell me how you know Grace and Lily,” he suggested, as he dipped the knife into the butter.

      She latched onto the neutral topic gratefully and spent the next several minutes telling him about her first weeks at Columbia and the development of her friendship with the other two women.

      When the waiter returned with their meals, they stopped talking to focus on their food. After dinner, they lingered over coffee and warm apple cobbler with vanilla bean ice cream drizzled with brandy caramel sauce. Though Brie had insisted that she couldn’t eat another bite, Eric brought two forks with the dessert and Caleb urged her to try a bite, and somehow one little nibble turned into more.

      She didn’t know what time it was when they finally got back to their hotel. She wasn’t thinking about the clock as they made their way, still hand in hand, through the lobby where enormous chandeliers hung from the ceiling, casting glittery light over everything below. They skirted around the towering fountain, its basin filled with coins of various shapes and sizes, to the bank of elevators.

      Caleb punched the call button, and while they waited for the doors to open, Brie realized that she wasn’t quite ready to walk away from him again.

      She’d agreed to see him tonight because Grace and Lily had insisted that it would give her a sense of closure, but now that it was nearing the time to say goodbye, she knew she couldn’t bring herself to utter the words. Not yet.

      Instead, she kissed him.