Finally, a while later, she pulled away.
“I have to get up early tomorrow, so…”
Beau slowly let go of her. “See you tomorrow, Izzy.”
She smiled at him before she turned to go upstairs. “See you tomorrow, Beau.”
As she walked to the kitchen in the morning to get coffee, she heard his laugh from down the hall.
“What’s gotten you in such a cheerful mood this morning?” Michaela asked him, right as Izzy walked into the kitchen.
“Oh, you know, the weather was great this weekend, it’s probably that.” Beau turned when she walked in. “Good morning, Izzy.”
She tried to smile at him like normal, in the same way she’d done before. How exactly had she smiled at him before? She couldn’t remember now. At first it had been her fake cheerful smile, she knew that. But at some point, it had changed. And then it had changed again. She knew she couldn’t smile at him the way she wanted to, the way that said “I had a great time kissing you all weekend, and if Michaela wasn’t just a few feet away, I’d be kissing you right now,” especially since Michaela was looking right at her. She hoped she just looked sleepy and walked straight to the coffee maker.
“Morning,” she said, trying to direct her greeting to both of them.
“How was your weekend?” Michaela asked.
Izzy could feel Beau’s eyes on her as she moved to the fridge for milk.
“Oh, good,” she said, without looking at him. She poured the milk into her coffee and replaced it inside the fridge. “Apparently, there was a snowstorm in New York this weekend, so I feel very smug about being here, obviously.”
Beau and Michaela both laughed.
She looked over at the baked goods corner. There were lemon poppy-seed muffins, and Izzy put one on a plate. “Okay, well, I’d better go back upstairs. I um, have a call in a few minutes.” She started to leave the kitchen.
“Izzy.”
She turned back around at the sound of Beau’s voice. His eyes looked so warm. “Yeah?”
“Two thirty? In the library?” His smile was tiny, but she could feel it all the way across the room.
“Yeah,” she said. “Two thirty in the library. See you then.”
When she walked into the library that afternoon, Beau was already there, sitting at the table, his laptop open.
“Finally,” he said when she walked in. “I’ve been waiting forever.”
She pursed her lips. “First of all, I’m only five minutes late, I had a call that ran over. Second, we usually meet at three, so I’m actually twenty-five minutes early.”
Beau grinned at her. “I know. But I couldn’t wait that long today.” He took the notebook that she pushed across the table to him. “Also. Before we start work, I’d like to request a slight amendment to the rules.”
She tilted her head as she flipped her laptop open. She was pretty sure she knew what was coming.
“Mmm, that might depend on which rules we’re talking about,” she said.
She liked that look in his eyes. But then, she was realizing that she liked almost every look in his eyes.
“The rules about the library. And what we can—and can’t—do here.”
She tried to keep a straight face. “I see. What kind of amendment are we talking about?”
He tented his fingers together and looked at her over them. “Well. I think that when we—or rather, when you—made this rule, we—you—didn’t consider that on weekdays, Michaela would be around, and so this time in the library would be our only time alone during the day. So I think we should at least get to bookend work time with…other time. Say, five minutes at the beginning and at the end, to do…whatever we want while we’re in here.”
She grinned at him. “Nice try. But this is our work time. Work only in here.”
He let out a sigh. “I knew you would say that. But I had to try.”
She laughed at him and set the timer.
When they walked out of the library Beau looked from side to side. Then he grabbed her hand, tugged her across the hall into the TV room, and closed the door behind them.
“You had better not try to tell me,” he said, as he leaned down, “that there’s no kissing in this room.”
She put her arms around his neck and pulled him closer. “I believe this room is actually the shut-up-and-kiss-me room, as a matter of fact.”
He smiled. “Well, I’d guess I’d better do what the room says.”