With that knowledge, her assumption more than likely had that as our destination. I knew I was right when as we approached the entrance way, and I veered off to the left away from it.
“Aren’t we…?” She pointed toward the station.
Instead of answering her, I pulled to a stop beside a car and driver parked on the side of the street. I waved at the transportation I’d hired for the evening. “Here we are.”
The driver jumped out of the front seat and opened the door for us to get into the back.
“Really?” Bri asked. “I thought we were getting on the train.”
“I know,” I answered. “Which is one of the reason I had the driver meet us here as opposed to in front of your building. Another reason being I thought you might not want your work colleagues to know you were going out with me.”
“I don’t care what the Bachelor International employees think of me,” she replied. “Nor do I give a flying fuck about their opinion on who I have dinner with.” She looked around the interior of the car. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you set up this part of the date as a mindfuck.”
She was partially correct. I had thought about the mindfuckery of having the driver meet us near the station, since from that point there were many places we could go.
The driver pulled into the street, and I couldn’t help but notice Bri’s excitement as we drove out of the downtown area. It was almost as if she’d never seen it before.
“How long have you been in Boston?” I asked.
“Just a few weeks,” she replied, not peeling her eyes from the window. “I haven’t been out and about much. Silly, isn’t it? I’ve been so busy with work and all.”
I wasn’t sure silly was the word I’d use. Perhaps odd or strange. Who moved to a new town and didn’t seek out some sights? Though I had to admit it meant tonight would be an entirely new experience for her. One I’d be able to share with her. And that made me happy.
The sun had almost set completely by the time we made it to the marina that was our destination. After the driver opened the door and let us out, I couldn’t keep my eyes off Bri or the way she looked around the Bay. It was intense, almost as if she’d seen nothing like it and needed to memorize every little detail so she could recite it later to someone who had likewise never seen it.
“Are we going to have dinner along the Bay?” she asked, unable to mask the excitement in her voice.
“Not really along the Bay,” I said, and her face fell. “More like in the Bay.”
Her brow furrowed right as the yacht I’d reserved for the night pulled up to the empty dock where we stood.
“Mr. Worthington?” a uniformed gentleman asked, stepping out to greet us.
“Yes,” I said, and though I carried on a brief conversation with the captain, the entire time we spoke, I divided my attention between him and Bri. He confirmed all my requests had been taken care of and that everything was in place. And even while I nodded, I wondered how I became so lucky to have met up again with Bri.
The captain gave me the go-ahead, and I turned my focus totally on Bri. “Are you ready to step on board?”
“Do we have to wait for more people?” She looked around the dock. The marina wasn’t close to being deserted, but there was no one near us.
“There are no other people.” I held out my hand. “Just us. Me and you, on the yacht for as long as you like.”
Mischief danced behind her eyes. “What if I were to tell you I get violently seasick just thinking about it?”
Shit. The thought had never crossed my mind once. Why didn’t I think about that before setting the entire evening up?
“I’m kidding,” she finally said, and my body relaxed. “Wow, I really had you going there for a minute, didn’t I?”
“You don’t get violently seasick?” I had to make sure I’d understood correctly.
“Never had a drop of it, and I’ve been on too many boats, ships, you name it, to count.”
When we were kids and she would tease me in a similar way, I threatened to thrash her. It hadn’t been an effective deterrent then, and I doubted it would work any better now. Though I had to admit, the image of her bending over, offering her ass for a spanking, worked perfectly fine for me.
Not now, I chastised myself and motioned her forward. “After you.”
Even though I’d lived in Boston for years, I’d done nothing close to vacationing in my city or attempting to see it from an outsider’s viewpoint. To allow myself the freedom to do so, even for just one night, was more fun than I expected. Not to mention, I gained an entirely new perspective on the city I considered my home while looking at it from the water.
Bri was utterly captivated the entire night. We drank champagne on the deck, ate dinner, and for one evening I granted myself permission to be only the man by Bri’s side. And for the first time I could remember, I felt free.
We finally made our way back to the marina. It was sobering because as soon as I stepped back on land, I felt the weight of my responsibilities and burdens fall back down around my shoulders. I compared it to being forced to wear a weighted scarf in the middle of a heat wave.
“I wish we could stay on the yacht forever,” Bri said with a frown in her voice. A quick look told me she’d been hit with her own responsibilities and burdens.
“Me too,” I whispered.
We’d spent more time on the water than I’d expected. Not that doing so was a big deal. We’d both obviously needed the down time. But it was getting late, and I knew the right thing to do would be to call and have the driver pick us up. Then I could see that Bri made it safely inside her apartment. Alone. But, hell, when had I ever done the right thing?
So instead of giving the driver her address, I slipped him a piece of paper with my downtown penthouse address printed on one side.
“Hungry?” I asked Bri as the car pull into traffic. The night had grown a bit chilly while we’d been on the yacht, and I’d draped my jacket over her shoulders earlier in the evening.
“After all that delicious food? Are you crazy?”
“It’s quite possible I might be,” I said. “One or two people have insinuated as much. Though I have to say I always expected the signs of impeding craziness would amount to more than a lack of good dietary sense.”
“In that case, no, I’m not hungry. I’m so stuffed I may not find it necessary to eat until next week sometime.”
My plan had been to keep her distracted so she wouldn’t notice we were headed in the opposite direction of her apartment. On someone else, it might have been a simple thing to do, but I’d somehow forgotten it appeared she was memorizing the landscape outside her window.
“I think your driver took a wrong turn just now,” she said.
“Only if we’re going to your apartment.”
She looked at me with the strangest expression on her face. “Aren’t we? I thought that was the point of this date.”
“You might have thought that you and I were on the same page, but I never said the point to our date tonight was for you to end up at your apartment.”
“So where are we going?”
“I’d like to take you to my place in the city.”