"Where did you get those cookies?" Dean asked while he and Renee were walking towards the parking lot. She was eating some sort of cookies that looked suspiciously homemade to him.
"Catering."
"How come I didn't see them?"
"Probably because Alicia and I ate half of them before everybody else saw them", she explained. "Want some?"
"You bet." He took one from the plastic plate she was holding and bit into it, making a loud noise of appreciation that made Renee chuckle. "They're really good."
The cookies were gone by the time they got to their cars. Renee leaned on the car while Dean was still munching on the last one, laughing at the way he was trying to talk to her while eating. "You'll choke. Stop talking."
He pondered over that idea for a moment. "Only if you listen to the rest of the story on the way to the hotel."
She smirked at him. "Smooth."
She'd never shared a car with him before, not even for a short ride, but spending more time with him was something she didn't want to miss out on, so she seized the opportunity and pulled her phone out of her purse to text Nattie and Tyson that she was going to the hotel with someone else and that they didn't have to worry about her.
Lately the sparks were flying wildly between them and she was getting to see the more flirtatious Dean in addition to the nice and goofy one that she already knew and liked. It wasn't her style to be shy and let him get away with his boldness, so she decided to play his game, which only seemed to boost his confidence even more. The butterflies in her stomach whenever she saw or thought of him only told her that he was doing the job well, but she wouldn't show him that. Not yet, at least.
The random stories he told her during their ride—including him, Paige and Big E playing "The floor is lava" in the gym and hiding Seth's protein bars in the hotel lobby—all amused her, but she found the remains of chocolate chips around his mouth to be the most endearing part of their ride. They kept talking until they got to their hotel and she figured it would be nice to tell him about his chocolate-smeared face before they got out of the car.
"You have chocolate around your mouth."
"Yeah?" he licked his lips, but didn't remove all of it, so she reached over and brushed off a few crumbs with her thumb. "Thanks. You got a bit messy too."
"I did?" She dug through her purse to take a look at her reflection in the screen of her phone. An unexpected soft kiss in the corner of her mouth stopped her in her tracks. Another one, this time right in the middle of her lips, made her forget about her phone and purse and everything else in the world. The smug look on his face after they split told her that his innocent peck hypnotized her more than she thought.
"It's all good now", he informed her, smirking. She quickly forced herself to get back to the real world, blushing furiously at the way he looked at her when he licked his lips and damning herself for giving in to his charm so easily. She definitely underestimated this charmer's magic tricks.
