He couldn’t believe he had just asked this woman out.  He couldn’t shake the feeling of knowing her somewhere, somehow at some point in time before and he didn’t want to leave even if his completed box of assorted chocolates had to.

Was it the strong smell of vanilla mingling with cocoa?  Could it be the low volume of symphonic melodies piping in? Maybe it was the Tiffany light blue almost aqua walls with warm sable brown trim, moldings and accents.  Perhaps, it was the well lit polished glass case, cold to the touch with a high stainless counter top. The clean lines of well-appointed café tables and chairs to the sides of the store balanced and refined the space. It wasn’t any of these things in particular and yet it was all of these things at once, tempting and delighting the senses with its combined allure and comfort.

There were two state of the art matching scales at either end of the high counter above the display case.  The register was directly behind the display on a lower counter.  Aqua bluish cardboard boxes of all sizes and widths lay flat, stacked on a wall behind the spare space between the display and wall.  Broad and narrow satin chocolate brown ribbons hung next to the parcels, ready to be pulled from their spools and cut.  A price list decorated with milk chocolate brown paisley swirls and pastel blue backdrop adorned the top half of the wall.  To the right, from the customers’ view, was a slim walkway leading to the back of the shop where all the melting, molding, decorating and office operations took place, or so one imagined.

Dani tilted her head to the right, squinting her big coffee colored eyes looking at Nicholas with a question mark.  After careful consideration and a silent, awkward pause, she answered. “ I could perhaps, but it would have to be early, before I open the shop.  Before ten a.m. either day.”

“Great! Why don’t we get some breakfast at Saturn’s, then, tomorrow? At eight a.m.?”