Berry Picking by Dara Girard Page A

heart race or her skin tingle. To her he was like hot cinnamon chocolate--warm and sweet, but nothing more. She usually liked her men with a bit more spice. Paula sighed. It was going to be a long night.
    She got the attention of a waiter. She had the table changed, their settings rearranged with two new glasses of water. Then they ordered.
    “Perhaps we should start over,” Conrad said with a sheepish grin.
    “No, let's just move ahead. You know my name and I know yours so we might as well get past the banal introductions and niceties to something more interesting.”
    He lifted a brow. “A woman who gets to the point?”
    “I'm allergic to wasting time.”
    He nodded then fell silent.
    She'd been too curt. That was a terrible habit of hers, but she really did hate wasting time. One of her greatest strengths was efficiency. She knew how to be productive. How to make things happen. But it seemed the date was DOA--dead on arrival. However, since she still had a meal to eat she needed to fill the time up with something. She'd never see him again so she decided she might as well make the most of it.
    “So, tell me about yourself,” Paula asked. Men usually liked to talk about themselves so she thought that would be a safe topic to begin with.
    Conrad folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “How much did she pay you?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Tamara. Did she pay you to go out with me?”
    “No,” Paula stammered, feeling her face grow warm. She shifted in her chair annoyed. She never became flustered.
    “Bribe you with something?” he asked, his gaze steady and intense.
    “No.” She tried to hold his gaze, but she had to briefly look away. “Why?”
    “So you wanted to come?”
    She returned her gaze to his. “Yes.”
    His eyes lightened with amusement and a grin spread on his face. “Then relax and stop acting like this is either the Inquisition or a job interview.”
    Paula stared at him for a moment then laughed, suddenly relieved. “It's that obvious?”
    “If you glance at your watch one more time I'll start to feel like a lab rat.”
    “A lab rat?”
    “An experiment.”
    Paula nodded and lowered her watch. “Sorry, this is my first blind date.”
    “Good. Me too. So there's no pressure. There's nothing to compare it to.”
    Except a non-blind date, but that didn't matter. Paula felt her tension ebb. “So what do you do for fun?”
    “I play in a band.”
    “Really?” she said surprised. “What instrument?”
    “The tuba.”
    She inwardly groaned. The tuba. Not a sexy instrument like the saxophone or piano, but a big bulky horn instrument. “Why?” she asked just to be polite. She wasn't really interested.
    “By the fifth grade I was already as tall as my teacher and I wanted an instrument bigger than me, so it was a choice between the tuba or the cello. I chose the tuba because I liked how they looked in the marching band.”
    He chose an instrument only because it would look good in marching band? He was a dweeb--all he needed were thick glasses and a pocket protector--but he didn't seem to care and soon neither did she. Paula listened to Conrad tell her about his marching band days in college and the group he played with now. He also told her about and his grandmother's blackberry patch and how he used to help her harvest the berries and how she'd make pies. By the time their food arrived Paula had to admit that Conrad was rather cute and she liked him. His life sounded so different from hers. He was a second generation American, his grandparents on his mother’s side came from Grenada and from Jamaica on his father’s side, by way of Ghana. His parents had met at the party of a mutual college friend and married soon after. They’d had two children, and provided them with a nice upper middle class upbringing. In contrast, Paula had become a U.S. citizen just four years ago. His family seemed as if it could fit in a Norman Rockwell painting. Her family definitely wouldn't, but she