An Equal Measure

  Chapter Seven

  I couldn’t believe I heard him right. “After what I did to you, you want to have dinner with me? You’re out of your mind.” He had to be. Either that or he wanted payback. Given his state of mind, I’d take bets on the latter.

  “Didn’t you offer to make up for the embarrassment you caused me?”

  “Yes,” I said, my voice barely a squeak. “Dinner with you and you’ll call the score even?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay.” I shrugged. “If that’s what you want. But so’s you know, I’m suspicious.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Of course, you are.”

  I didn’t like that Jackson read me so well, but I couldn’t back down. “Where and when?”

  “Let’s make this a proper date. I’ll pick you up.”

  I grabbed a card from the holder on the counter and wrote Amy’s address on the reverse side.

  “How shall I dress?” I asked.

  Our fingers touched when he took the card from my hand. I looked at him. He looked at me. The moment stood still, the air surrounding us fizzing with electric energy. Jackson Carlisle was a gorgeous man. A leading man, if ever there was one.

  “Casual,” he said.

  “What time?” Just then my inner voice whispered Jackson was too calm and composed for a man who almost lost his manhood. In response, I argued he was a good and decent man, not a rapist. I shouldn’t be afraid. No, I shouldn’t.

  “Eight.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  “I know you’re a woman of her word.”

  “Ah.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I left the store with my earlier apprehension of Jackson’s motives resurfacing in my mind.

  On the drive to Devil’s Creek, I thought of the different ways he could take his revenge – every one of them too childish for an educated and sophisticated man like him.

  “I’ll just have to wait and see and pray for the best, I guess.”

  What was the worst he could do?