Aiden leaned in, our knees touching, and he angled his body so that we gained even more privacy. “And me saying this to you makes you want to run, just a little.”
Undaunted by the flutterings of panic that his spot-on assessment caused, I met his gaze head-on. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“No?” he asked in a rough, uneven voice. When I shook my head, he tipped his head down and slid his mouth over mine for a sweet, slow kiss. My tongue slipped to the seam of his lips, but he pulled back. “No more, woman. You’re killing me.”
My smile was full of satisfaction because he sounded like he was walking a razor edge of restraint.
“Second date then,” I said.
“Deal.” He sat back, allowing for a safer distance between us, given we were both feeling the need to mount each other in public.
“Where’s Anya tonight?” I asked.
“My parents’.” He pulled out his phone and showed me a picture that had me laughing out loud.
“Is that your dad?”
“It is.”
I took the phone from his hand and zoomed in on the image. Anya was standing on their kitchen counter behind a man who looked like Aiden might in about twenty years. They shared the same jaw, the same nose, the same build. And his dad, judging by the pleased smile on his face, was perfectly content to let his granddaughter put foam rollers into his slightly graying hair.
“May I?” I gestured to the picture. He nodded. I swiped through a few pictures, studied one of his mom. “Your parents look young, considering…” I stopped, not sure how to say, considering how old you are.
Aiden laughed softly. “You calling me old?”
I bit my lip to smother my grin. “No.”
He took the phone out of my hand and found a shot of his whole family, then let me study it. Just like my family, they held such a strong resemblance to each other but still managed to be a perfect balance of his parents.
“My parents were fifteen when they met,” he said. “Sixteen when my mom got pregnant with me.”
My eyes lifted in surprise. “Seriously?”
He nodded. “They got married before I turned two but knew they were still too young to add more kids into the mix.” Aiden pointed at the faces on the picture. “Beckham came when I was ten, then Clark, Deacon was next.” And when he gestured to a woman who looked younger than me, I found that I liked her broad smile and the way she looked like she was laughing. “And because she could be nothing other than the youngest and spoiled rotten, Eloise was the Hennessy family grand finale.”
“Wow,” I breathed. Before I could say anything else, a gentle tap on my shoulder pulled my attention from Aiden. It was the wedding coordinator.
“Sorry to interrupt, Isabel. We’re going to announce the wedding party, and then you can come back. Since Molly and Noah just have a table for the two of them, I only need to steal you away for a few minutes.”
Aiden smiled, joining me as I stood. The perfect gentleman on an unconventional first date.
And that continued, once I was able to join him at the table we were sharing with my sisters and their men. He kept a hand curled around my thigh under the table, engaging in pleasant conversation with everyone as we ate. Occasionally, he’d lean in and ask me something random, switching his hand from resting on my thigh, to stretching out behind my back along my chair.
“Favorite movie?”
I hummed. “I rarely watch them, so it’s hard to pick.”
“Really?” he said, clearly surprised.
“But,” I amended, “I love a good sports documentary.”
“Me too.” He leaned in for a sweet kiss.
It was so easy to forget other people were at the table when he looked at me that way. I didn’t really care if my sisters were watching with unabashed interest because Lord knows I’d had to watch my fair share of mooning over the last couple of years.
I slid my hand over his, relishing the easy affection. “The questions Anya asked me,” I started. He smiled sadly but didn’t interrupt. “What were those about?”
His chest expanded on a deep breath. Then he told me the story, and I didn’t even attempt to stop the tear that slid down my cheek. He brushed it away. “It was something she looked to for a long time as … truth, I guess. That if anyone would know, it would be Beth.”
“And you?” I asked carefully.
Aiden shook his head. “It was, I don’t know how to say it right. I wasn’t planning on using it as a checklist, if that’s what you’re asking, mainly because I had no intention of finding someone.” He curled his fingers around my thigh, smoothing it up and down. He gave me a wry smile. “But it probably didn’t help that you were the exact opposite of what she told Anya.”
I smiled. “Probably not.”
He studied me so intently.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
The thing I loved was that I could wait to ask him more because we had the time, not because I feared the reaction.
People shifted around us, moving to the dance floor as he and I talked.
He preferred winter over summer and broke his leg when he was twelve.
He didn’t drink often, and only one beer when he did.
When he went to college, his sister made him take a stuffed animal so he didn’t get lonely, and he kept it on his bed his entire freshman year, no matter how much his roommates teased him.
He asked me why I decided not to go to college and how it was being raised by my brother.
When the cake was cut and passed around, he took a piece of coconut, and I chose the strawberry, which we shared. When he held his fork out to me for a bite of his cake, I absently wondered if I’d ever get sick of talking to him. Of hearing what he had to say.
His eyes darkened when I licked at a speck of frosting at the edge of my lip.
When our plates were cleaned of cake, I sat back in my seat and surveyed him carefully. “Not a bad date, Hennessy.”
At the use of his last name, he quirked an eyebrow. “We’re back there.”
“Well,” I drawled, uncrossing my leg so that I could turn fully to face him, “I think you still owe me a little bit.”
“Do you?”
His dry tone had me smiling. “You didn’t have to buy me dinner,” I told him. “Or dessert.”
He hummed, caging me in by setting an arm on the table, the other stretched along the back of my chair. “How would you normally end a date like this?”
There was no way for me to answer that without giving myself away completely. I had no idea where the night would lead, but I knew where I wanted it to. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a date like this,” I told him with complete honesty.
Based on the look in his eyes, he saw the truth of my answer.
“Me neither.”
It knocked the breath from my lungs when he said it, and I didn’t realize how badly I craved some sort of sign that this intensity wasn’t one-sided, wasn’t confined just to my inexperience.
Because I couldn’t not, I leaned forward, cupping the side of his face in my hand, and I slid my lips over his in a soft kiss.
We left the kiss there, pulling back at the same time, content not to deepen it further.