John looked around at her in surprise, squelching his predictable reaction to the sudden contact. The way the conversation had been going, he had fully expected her to grab the first plausible excuse and leave. The mean-spirited part of him that he'd been talking about just a few minutes earlier remarked caustically that cutting and running was very much Kit's modus operandi.

He ignored it. "Yeah. We could do that," he said after a moment, summoning up a subdued smile. He wanted to be hopeful, but he didn't think he was quite ready to take that leap of faith yet. Still, wait-and-see beat silent enstrangement and the uncomfortable formality of the past few days, he thought. "What d'you reckon we do next, then?" It wasn't meant as a loaded question. He was in unfamiliar territory, and not not quite sure how these things were supposed to work.