“Do I have clueless tattooed across my forehead?" Narrowing my eyes,I leaned toward him. "Yeah,I think maybe you do.”

“He finally cleared his throat. "Well, huh." "Yeah," I said. "What now?" "Well"—he cleared his throat again—"I guess you and I go. I mean, unless you really don't want to." Why put it on me to bail out? "Do you want to?" I asked. "Yeah. I really do. I had to talk Dad into giving me the afternoon off. And since I don't usually go to a lot of trouble to fix lunch, it seems a shame to waste the effort. Besides, there's the thing I want you to see." He said all of this while staring at the door like he was talking to it. I almost expected it to respond.”

“But I just couldn't seem to get excited about the fact that we were sorta having a date.I mean, he'd asked me to go skiing with him, and so here I was, and my heart should have been pounding.But it wasn't.I could have been going to the grocery store to pick up a bag of potatoes for all the thudding it was doing.”

“You're my favorite sister." I snorted. "Gosh,I'd hate to be your unfavorite sister. I might not survive.""Hey,Kate,you know I'm just teasing when I give you a hard time.""Yeah,right,and the teasing just keeps me laughing.”

“And then the squirrel ran up my legs searching for nuts.' I nearly spewed my coffee and my eyes went wide as I jerked my head around to stare at Daniel.He gave me a wry grin and chuckled. 'I thought that would get your attention.”

“I can't believe you'd rather hold handle bars than a girl."He angled his head thoughtfully."I hadn't considered that.""Maybe you should."He hopped over,gingerly swinging his bad leg over to the other side and settled down behind me on the seat."You got rules on how I can hold you?""Nothing distracting while I'm driving," I tossed over my shoulder, meeting his gaze."We don't need another accident.""And when you're not driving?""The Kate-have-a-good-time fund is getting low.Maybe you should think about making a deposit.”

“She won't reveal your secret handshake.""It's not my handshake I'm worried about.""Pretend it is.Because as far as I'm concerned,thats all the two of you do. Shake hands.Even if I see you kissing? In my head,I'm going to tell myself that you're shaking hands.”