A Great Kisser

by Donna Kauffman

Genres: Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Buckle up. Enjoy the view.

Jake McKenna fixes planes, not people. Compared to an engine, humans are high-maintenance and unpredictable--which is why Jake has zero interest in indulging his sister's request that he play tour guide and rent-a-date to her boss's visiting stepdaughter. Still, Lauren Matthews is nothing like the uptight, reed-skinny workaholic he expected. She's curvy--deliciously so. Funny. Open. And convinced that there's more to her mother's hasty marriage to the local mayor than meets the eye.

Leaving her fast-track Washington career is the most impulsive thing Lauren has ever done--right until the moment she arrives in Cedar Springs, Colorado. Everything about sexy, enigmatic pilot Jake tempts Lauren to unleash her inner bad girl and let him take her places she's never been. . .even as her snooping around town provokes some extremely hostile reactions. At this altitude, losing your head is easy. Trusting your heart can cost you everything. . .

Release date: October 27, 2009

Publisher: Brava

Print pages: 433

Sample

Jake McKenna was good at fixing planes. Not people. It was easier to rebuild a P-51 Mustang that hadn’t been in the air since World War II than it was to endure a single phone call from his baby sister.

Ruby Jean could be an absolute doll—with other people. She didn’t confide in other people. She didn’t call every other day and cry her heart out with other people. Because somehow, she’d gotten it into her head that the only one who could solve her problems—and he’d never met a person who thought they had so many problems—was her big brother.

“Don’t—” he cautioned. But it was too late. “Cry,” he added, uselessly. “Ruby Jean, it’s not your problem.” It rarely was. Ruby Jean made a habit of taking the whole world on her tiny shoulders. Whether the world wanted to be there or not.

“But that’s just it, Jake. It is my problem!”

“How is entertaining your boss’s new stepdaughter suddenly your job? You’re his personal assistant, not a cruise director.”

“You don’t understand, Jake.”

And that was Jake’s problem. He rarely understood anything where his little sister was concerned. Or, for that matter, women in general. Which was why, at the ripe old age of thirty-three, he was a happy, well-adjusted bachelor. “I’m sure you’ll explain it to me.” He wiped the sleeve of his ragged sweatshirt across his face, heedless of the grease smear now decorating both sweatshirt and skin, and sat on the overturned oil drum. He stared at the regulator that two straight days of work hadn’t come close to fixing, and half listened to everything he never wanted to know about Ruby Jean’s crisis du jour, which he had no intention of fixing.

“So, that’s why it’s so important that you do this. I finally have some room for advancement, Jake, and you know in this town that’s not a small thing. I can’t let this one little thing screw up my chances.”

Personally, Jake didn’t see where working for Arlen Thompson, even if he was the mayor of the mountain resort town of Cedar Springs, was a job worth holding on to. He thought the man was a bit of an egocentric who took full advantage of anyone who might help him and not require his help in return, and Jake’s softhearted sister, who worked like a dog as his personal assistant, was near the top of that list.

But there wasn’t a great deal of commerce in Cedar Springs, Colorado, that wasn’t directly related to the ski resort, which was, more or less, the reason for the town’s continued existence at this point in its long history. But Ruby Jean didn’t ski anymore. Nor, thanks to Swing Thatcher, now the head of the resort ski school and the bastard who broke Ruby Jean’s tender heart when they were both in high school, did she want anything to do with anyone who did.

Jake had encouraged her to take her dreams east, at least as far as the front range, and find a job in Denver or one of the suburb cities, where she could build the kind of future she desired. But Ruby Jean was all about family sticking close, and as they were the only family each other had, he supposed he was stuck with her and the drama that accompanied her. Not that he minded. Usually. He loved his sister and would defend her to the death to anyone else. But Jake had no intention of leaving Cedar Springs. He loved the central Rockies. Being surrounded by their snowy peaks did his heart and soul good. If Ruby Jean wanted to be within wailing distance, that was up to her.

Then she was sniffling, and the sniffling was threatening to turn into a full-blown sob, and his attention was pulled back to the drama.

“Just say yes, okay, Jake? I’m only asking for you to show her around a little. That’s all.”

“Wait, what did you just say? You want me to what?”

There was a long, wavery sigh. “You never listen to anything I say.”

He couldn’t really argue with her there. “RJ, you know I have a race to prepare for and Betty Sue here needs a hell of a lot of work.”

“As she always does. I’m just asking one tiny favor.”

“The difference is, now I have willing sponsors chomping at the bit, but they’re demanding some kind of proof that we have a chance to really compete or they’re taking their money elsewhere. And I have to keep the flying school going, or what’s left of the roof over my head also goes. So, I really don’t have time to do…whatever it was you just asked me to do.”

“Her name is Lauren Matthews. She’s your age.”

“Wow, that old, huh?” The way Ruby Jean had said it made the woman sound positively prehistoric. But then, given RJ was eight years younger than him, anyone over thirty was ancient to her anyway.

Ruby Jean sniffled. “I’m just saying you might even have something in common. You could even like each other.”

“Don’t. I have enough problems at the moment. No matchmaking.”

“I’m not, really. I know I promised to stop that, and I have. This really isn’t that at all. According to Mayor Thompson, she’s a bit of a workaholic—she works on Capitol Hill for a senator, which is so exciting I think, but doesn’t leave her with much of a social life. She completely hates the idea that the mayor has married her mother, because, you know, they eloped after barely meeting and all. So, now she’s finally coming out here to check him out, and he’s all freaked out that he needs to make this great impression on her, probably because of his own political aspirations, and being as he’s the mayor, he wants her to see how great Cedar Springs is, and—”

“Okay, okay, take a breath. What political aspirations? He’s been mayor forever.”

“Oh crap, I wasn’t supposed to—just forget I said anything.”

Jake was perfectly willing to do that. “I don’t want to know.”

“So, you’ll help me then?”

Jake swore under his breath. “What am I supposed to do? I’m not the mayor’s idea of a town ambassador. I can’t believe this is his idea.”

“Well…”

“RJ?” he said, a note of warning in his tone.

“See, there’s this other thing that he sort of mentioned, that made me think of you and…” She trailed off. And sniffled a little more.

“Ruby Jean McKenna, what have you done now?”

“Don’t get mad, okay?”

“Oh, I’m sure I will, just as I’m sure you’ll cry huge crocodile tears, and then I’ll feel like a schmuck, and then we’ll make up because I hate you being mad and sad and upset, and I’ll do whatever you ask me to, then you’ll do it all over again.”

“Good,” she said, sounding amazingly better. “Then why don’t we just skip over that part and you can just agree to do this one teensy little thing without giving me a hard time.”

“Which brings me back to why me? Arlen is not my biggest fan—”

“Because you wouldn’t fly that banner for him when he was running for re-election.”

“I run a business. I’m bipartisan.”

“He was going to pay you.”

“So do my students, and I’m not pissing half of them and their families off by flying a banner for one side or the other. Besides, that was two years ago and he managed to get re-elected anyway. As he always does. No one really runs against him, Ruby.”

“Well, here’s your chance to make it up to him.”

Jake clamped his jaw and fought the urge to yell. Or beat the wrench in his hand repeatedly against his forehead. One would have done about as much good as the other. “I don’t have anything to make up for. Other than the fact that he’s your boss, Arlen Thompson can kiss my ass.”

Ruby Jean sighed. “Can we get back to my problem then?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, and, remember you promised about not getting mad. So,” she hurried on when he just growled, “…according to the mayor, he thinks Lauren is just so career driven that she’s a little uptight, which is why he thinks she doesn’t understand about the whirlwind courtship and elopement between him and her mom. He thinks if she gets out here and, you know, relaxes a little, and finds out how good it can be when you’re not working every single minute of the day, that—”

“I get it, I get it. Thompson thinks she’s a repressed man-hater who needs to get laid so she’ll ease up on judging him for having sex with her mother. At least he married her. And did it ever occur to anyone that his stepdaughter might like what she does for a living and is perfectly happy dedicating her life to the pursuit of the happiness it brings her? And did anyone stop to consider that maybe her opinion of Arlen Thompson is right up there with my opinion of the man? And I’m not the least repressed, nor do I need to get laid, which brings me to my other point—”

“Jake, just listen a moment—”

“No, you listen, RJ. I love you, and I love that you like your job and want to stick with it. I’m proud of you, I am, and really happy that you seem to have found your niche. I think Thompson totally takes advantage of you, but you are good at what you do and I support that. But not only am I not the town ambassador, I am definitely not the town gigolo.”

“But, you’re single, and her age, and I’ve seen a picture of her and she’s not even that bad looking. If you ignore the black-framed glasses. You don’t have to, you know, sleep with her, I didn’t promise that, I just—”

“You promised? What, exactly, did you promise?”

“Well, maybe promise is too strong a word.” She rushed on. “I just sort of said that you might be willing to, you know, show her a good time. I didn’t elaborate. And the mayor didn’t ask me to. But it might be that he kind of has the impression that I meant you’d, you know, take her out. She just needs to understand a little more about romance and—”

“I am not romancing the mayor’s stepdaughter. I like his wife. Charlene seems like a very nice woman. I haven’t a clue what she sees in Arlen, but she appears to be an upbeat, positive woman, and if that can have any impact on him, then all’s the better. But I have no intention—”

“If you like Charlene, then you’ll probably like her daughter, right? Just…do this for me, will you, Jake? My job is important and this is so important to the mayor that if I can pull this off, I know he’ll keep me on staff when he runs for—” She broke off abruptly. Very abruptly.

“When he…runs for what, RJ? Is that what this is really about? These ‘aspirations’? Does Arlen have plans to try and move to the big pond of state politics? And maybe he could care less what his stepdaughter thinks of him, except that she has contacts in D.C. that might help? Because that sounds a hell of a lot more like the man I know than a guy who just wants his stepdaughter to like him.”

“I don’t know that. Really, I don’t. I only know he wants to make a good impression and it’s very important to him. And Charlene is a nervous wreck and I think it’s affecting their marriage. Apparently Lauren hasn’t spoken to her since shortly after she found out they eloped. That was six months ago now. Just…help us all out. Okay? One date, Jake. That’s all I’m asking. Just…make it a really good one. Okay?”

Jake sighed. Then he swore. “I don’t want to get tangled up in this.”

“One date is not tangling. It’s just a date.”

“With your boss’s politically connected stepdaughter.”

“You can be charming. I know you. Just…do something fun.”

He sighed again. And swore again. “Daytime date. I’ll take her up for a ride. Show her the sights from twelve thousand feet, and make the town and surrounding area look good, which won’t be hard because it’s the most beautiful place on earth. But I’m not going to preach any propaganda about our esteemed mayor. And I’m not romancing her. Cedar Springs can romance her, but I’m out of this after the plane ride.”

Ruby Jean sniffled a little, but when he didn’t say anything else, she finally dried up and said, “Okay. That sounds like fun. Make it really fun, though, okay? And don’t bash the mayor.”

“I’m fine with letting her draw her own conclusions. Deal?”

“Deal,” Ruby Jean said, not sounding entirely confident but being smart enough, for once, not to push him further.

“I really need to get back to work. What day is she arriving? How long will she be here?”

“Um…twelve thirty.”

“Twelve—you mean December thirtieth? It’s August, Ruby—”

“I mean twelve thirty, as in her plane lands out in Holden then, and I was kind of hoping you could go pick her up. In one of your planes. Because that’s way more impressive then just having her rent a car.”

“What might be impressive is her mom and stepdad driving out to Holden to greet her personally.”

“They can’t. They have that Chamber of Commerce luncheon thing that Charlene is sponsoring for that charity she started, and the mayor is the keynote speaker. So, having you there, to pick her up in a private plane, that’s perfect. But that can’t be your date! It’s not far enough. A thirty-minute hop doesn’t count. She needs a bit more…time. Okay?”

Jake looked at the clock on the wall. It was ten thirty.

“I love you, Jake. You’re the bestest brother in all the world. Thank you a million times over for helping me with this. I owe you so much. And I will make it up to you. Promise. Kisses!” And then she hung up.

Which was a good thing. That way his eardrums were the only ones assaulted by the loud clanging of metal on metal when he threw the wrench and let it bounce off the curved wall of the hangar. “It’s a good thing I love you, too,” he muttered, then rolled his tool chest closer and turned his attention back to the automatic manifold pressure regulator, which was, up until five seconds ago, the biggest pain in his ass. Now there was competition for that honor. But he didn’t have to think about Lauren whatsername for another two hours. And he didn’t plan to.

Lauren Matthews was going to die. Her life was going to end in this tiny little gum-wrapper-size plane, which, given the way it was bouncing around in the air like a Ping Pong ball, was surely going to drop from the sky any second now and burst into flames as it crashed into the side of the nearest mountain peak. Of which there were thousands, so the chance of missing one and miraculously surviving was slim to none.

“Sorry for the turbulence,” the senior pilot called back. “Storm coming, but we’ll beat it in. Not to worry.”

She knew how he’d gotten every one of his gray hairs, too. And did he announce his reassuring tidbits over the intercom? No. He just called out the information over his shoulder. Because she was less than ten feet away. And she was at the back of the plane. In fact, she was the only passenger filling one of the ten available seats. “Not much call for trips past the front range during this time of year,” he’d told her when she’d boarded the tiny piece of tin back in Denver. After she’d disembarked off of the very nice, very large, very steady jumbo jet that, once she’d finally made it out to Dulles and found a place to park and made it all the way in to the terminal, then out to the other terminal, had delivered her quite smoothly all the way, nonstop from Washington to Colorado. A pleasant flight. She’d actually gotten some reading in. Now, with less than thirty minutes left in her daylong journey, she was going to die. Figured.

Sure, the pilot had gone on to say that he made the trip west several times a day during peak season. Which translated to ski season, since, other than mining or ranching, that was all they did in the middle of Colorado as far as she could tell. And she assumed the miners and ranchers didn’t need to fly anywhere all that often. But with the plane bouncing around like some massive cosmic cat was using it as its personal play toy, batting it this way and that, she wasn’t all that reassured by his past success rate.

“How mu-much longer?” she asked, her teeth clacking together as the plane dropped into another air pocket. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the engines. Had she mentioned the engines? The incredibly loud engines?

“We’re descending now.”

“Just what I was afraid of,” she muttered, but looked out the window anyway. Might as well see where she was going to spend her eternal rest. But there was cloud cover now. Thick, dark, gray-black clouds. Swirling all around them. That couldn’t be good.

“Ho-how do you know where to la-land?” she called out, fingers digging even more deeply into the already deep indentations on the armrests as they bounce-bounce-bounced along. “How can y-you see?”

“Radar. Don’t worry,” he said, tossing a quick smile over his shoulder. “I’ve landed in worse. Much worse.” He seemed almost happy about the challenge.

Great, she had the crazy pilot with a death wish. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know what “much worse” could consist of, given that, at the moment, her teeth felt like they were cracking from constant impact. A mouth piece would have come in handy, but who knew flying had become a full contact sport?

Just then the plane dropped, then dipped to one side then the other, causing her to rap her head against the window. She added helmet to her new list of must-have carry-on items. “How much longer?”

But the pilot didn’t respond. He was too busy flipping switches and talking on his headset to someone on the ground, trying to land the plane. Which should have instilled all kinds of confidence but fell way short.

She was debating on whether to keep her eyes open or shut, when the pilot called back, “Hang on, we’re coming in.”

“Hang on? To what?”

That question was answered a moment later when the wheels touched down, then bounced up, then touched down, then bounced again, jerking her body around like a rag doll strapped to a roller coaster. She grabbed the seat back in front of her with one hand, braced her feet against the bottom of it, gripped the armrest with her other hand, and held on for dear life. Which, in this instance, was not simply a cliché. The plane bounced and jerked for a few hundred more years, then finally stayed on the ground and eventually rolled to a stop.

She wanted to first kiss the pilot, then the ground, but couldn’t seem to pry her cold, stiff fingers from the seat and armrest to do anything but stare dazedly and give a silent and quite fervent prayer of thanks.

“Sorry for the rough commute. It’s that time of year.” He slid a compact umbrella out of a side pocket and handed it back to her. “Here, you’ll want this. It’s a bit fierce out there.”

Now that the droning engine noise had subsided, and her ears had stopped ringing, she identified the new noise she was hearing. It sounded like thunder, but was just the heavy drumming of rain on the body of the airplane. “What are you going to use?”

“I’m fine. Hope you enjoy your stay in Colorado.” The pilot grinned and sketched a quick salute as she took the umbrella and gathered her things.

“They’ll have your bag in the terminal shortly,” he said, shifting to stand long enough to open the mechanism that opened the door, which lowered into its own staircase.

“Okay,” she said, rising on shaky legs. “Thanks.”

He lifted a hand in a quick wave, then seated himself once again in the cockpit and turned back to his wide panel of instruments. A few seconds later, he was back on the radio checking flight plans, it sounded like. Just another day at the office for him.

Lauren hefted her laptop bag and purse strap over her shoulder, then positioned herself so she could open the umbrella outside the door. The wind almost yanked it from her hands, but she grabbed tightly at the last second, barely keeping herself from making a Mary Poppins exit, smack onto the tarmac. Carefully, she exited down the stairs and headed toward the small building that, she assumed, was the terminal.

It was raining so hard, with the wind whipping even harder, that she didn’t even attempt to take a look at her surroundings. Not that she could have seen much anyway, but she’d been looking forward to seeing the Rocky Mountains. All she could do, however, was focus on the wide rivers of water cascading across the paved tarmac as she skipped and hopped her way to the double set of glass doors.

Just as she went to reach for them they swung open for her, and a large male hand snaked out and gripped her elbow. The action startled her into loosening her grip on the umbrella, which was immediately snatched away by the wind and went flying back over her head toward the tarmac. She turned instinctively to see where it went only to get hit with a full swath of rain, which immediately plastered her hair to her head and her clothes to her body, along with fogging up her glasses. She was, for all intents and purposes, blind. She’d never considered herself much of a screamer or a squealer, but she might have done a little of both.

The man holding her elbow tugged her in out of the rain.

“Thank you,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry—my umbrella—”

“Marco picked it up,” came a very deep voice with a bit of a rough edge to it, like maybe he’d just woken up.

She was still blinking water out of her eyes and he still had a hold on her elbow. Her other hand was clutching her purse and laptop bag to her side in a death grip. Everything was just a blur. “Marco?”

“Ground crew. Here, let me take those.”

Her elbow was abruptly released, which sent her a bit off balance, then her bags were suddenly lifted from her shoulder and slipped out of her death grip as if her hands were made from putty, sending her staggering a step in the other direction. Both her feet slipped a little as the smooth soles of her shoes were not made for…well, any of this. And then his hands were on her again, both elbows this time, and, and…well, the entire last sixty seconds had been so discombobulating, for a person who was never discombobulated, that she didn’t know quite what to do. She blinked at him through wet ropes of hair and fogged glasses, arms still akimbo as he wrestled her to a balanced position.

“Bad day?”

It was the dry amusement lacing his tone that gave her the focus she so mercifully needed. She tugged her elbows from his grip, as if all this was suddenly very much his fault, but instead of being the liberating, independence-returning move she was so desperately seeking, the action only served to send her wheeling backward. Which resulted in being caught, once again, even more humiliatingly than before, by his very big, very strong, and very steadying hands.

“Thank you,” she managed through gritted teeth. She carefully removed one elbow from his grip, not chancing leaving his steadying powers all at once, and scraped her hair from her forehead and removed her fogged glasses from her face. Finally able to see, she looked up…only to be thrown completely off balance all over again. But, this time, her feet were totally flat and stable, on hard, steady ground. “You can let me go now,” she managed in a choked whisper.

He was just above average height, probably not even six feet, but given she topped the height chart at five-foot-six, and that was in three-inch heels, he was very tall to her. But it wasn’t the height part that commanded the attention. Nor was it really the square jaw, the thick neck, broad shoulders, very nicely muscled arms and chest that were obvious even through the old sweatshirt and T-shirt he wore. The thick, sun-bleached brown hair might have been a teensy part of it, but mostly it was the piercing blue eyes—truly, they pierced—staring at her from his weathered, deeply tanned face.

Crinkles fanned from the corners of those eyes, and there were grooves bracketing either side of his mouth, but she didn’t know if that was from squinting into the sun or smiling a lot. He wasn’t smiling now, so it was hard to tell. But he was still holding on to her, and it was that, plus those look-right-through-you eyes, that were keeping her from reclaiming the rest of her much-needed balance.

“I’m—fine. Really. Thank you. Again.”

He held her gaze for another seemingly endless moment, then gently let her go. “No worries.”

“I, uh, need to rent a car.” She was normally calm and cool under fire. It was why Todd had been so impressed and promoted her up the ranks of his campaign staff so quickly. It was also why she’d been one of the first ones the senator had hired to his permanent staff when he’d won his bid for office. If he could see her now, he wouldn’t even recognize her. She didn’t recognize her. Of course, the fact that she probably looked like a drowned cat didn’t help matters. “If you could just point me in the right direction—” I will slink off and pretend we never met.

“You don’t need a car.”

She looked up at him again, and though she’d never particularly thought of herself as vain, she’d have given large sums for the use of a comb, a tissue, and a handheld mirror. Okay, so a full salon makeover probably wouldn’t have hurt at that moment, but her pride wouldn’t have minded at least a brief attempt at restoration. “Where I’m headed is about two and a half hours from here, and though it’s probably not all that farfetched to think they probably rent horses here, I’m thinking the locals, not to mention the horse, will be a lot safer if I get a nice SUV instead.”

His lips quirked a little then, and her pulse actually did this zippy jumpy thing. And it felt kind of good—in a somewhat startling, disconcerting kind of way. However—reality check—she hadn’t forgotten that her appearance was highly unlikely to provoke the same reaction in him. Besides, she was not here on vacation. She was here on a very serious mission that had absolutely nothing to do with having a vacation fling of any kind. Not that she was the fling type. Or that men ever flung themselves at her, vacation or otherwise, for her to know. But, still.

“Given the weather, it would probably be as uncomfortable for the horse, but that’s not why I said you don’t need a ride. You don’t need one, because I’m your ride.”

God help her, she looked him up and down before she could stop herself. He was her ride? If only. She jerked her gaze back to his, thankful to find it just as unreadable as before. “I—I don’t know what you mean. Who would send—” She broke off abruptly. Her mother, that’s who. Her mother, who, as of six months ago, had turned into a complete and total stranger, running off with a man she’d barely met, moving her entire life across country to the middle of absolute nowhere, all because of some supposed fairy-tale romance Lauren suspected was anything but.

The mother she’d had six months ago would have never dreamed of interfering in her daughter’s personal life. Talk about it? Yes. Encourage her to get out and date more? Or at all? All the time. But actually fix her up? No. But her mother today? Lauren had no idea what she might do. Or what her motives might be. Whatever the case, Lauren wasn’t having any part of it. “Please tell my mother that I appreciate her concern, but that I’d be more comfortable with my own transportation. I’m sorry if you’ve wasted your time, truly, I am. And if it’s a matter of getting paid, I’ll take care of the tab. But, your services won’t be needed.” More’s the pity. She tried really hard not to look him over. One last time.

His lips quirked again, as if they shared a private joke. And her pulse did that dippy, slow-down-speed-up thing. Which made no sense since she was pretty sure the joke was her.

“There’s no tab. I’m here as a favor.”

“Oh. Well…I really am sorry you went out of your way. Let me at least pay for your gas.”

His smile quirked again. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Okay, then. If you’re sure. Thank you again for your trouble.” She picked up her bags from the short row of airport chairs he’d dropped them into and slung them again over her arm. He was still standing there, staring. “Did you…need anything else?”

“Well, to be honest, I’d appreciate a ride back to Cedar Springs.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If you wouldn’t mind. I’ll even drive, if you’d like to get some rest.”

She was confused. “I thought you were supposed to drive me back. Why do you need a lift in my car?”

“I flew.”

“You…” She turned and looked back out through the doors to the small, single runway, then back to him. “You’re a pilot?”

He nodded.

She thought about his quirky smile…and her offer to pay for his gas. Good thing he hadn’t taken her up on that!

“But unless we want to wait out this storm, which isn’t supposed to move out until sometime tomorrow, then the best alternative is to drive.” His eyes danced a little, crinkling the skin at the corners. “I seem to have left my horse at home.” Then he did smile. “He hates to fly.”

She laughed before catching herself. “After today, I have to admit, I’m not much of a fan, either.”

“You don’t like flying?”

“Oh, flying is fine. But being tossed around like your plane is being used as the central piece in a cosmic game of foosball? That I’m not so fond of.”

“Ah.” He shifted his weight and the penetrating stare was back. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what, exactly, is foosball?”

“You’ve never played—seriously?”

“Seriously.” And he said it so…seriously, it made her laugh again.

“You know, I’m not sure I could explain it. You’ll have to look it u