They ate in silence for a few moments. More accurately, he ate, and she pushed her omelet around on her plate and tried to pretend she wasn’t watching him. Finally, she put her fork down and stared openly. “Do you have some kind of deal with Satan?”
“’Scuse me?”
“Where do you put all the food? If I ate like that, I’d have an ass as big as Alaska. But you? You have a six-pack, and—” She put her hands in a V-shape at her hips, where his obliques cut in.
Nice of her to notice. The flame of hope burned a little brighter. “I doubt one big meal would impact your ass in the slightest, but then again, I doubt you could eat this much. I’m 6’5”, I weigh 230 pounds, and I live in a place where, some days—today, for instance—the only way to get from point A to point B is to snowshoe or cross-country ski. At work I load and unload a shit-ton of cargo and luggage. Key has to be exercised.” He pointed to fire flickering away in the gas fireplace. “If I want to burn a fire at my house, I have to fell the trees, chop the wood, stack it. It takes a lot of calories to fuel this life.”
She regarded him over the brim of her coffee cup. “Do you ever just want to fly somewhere warm and sit on a beach for a month?”
I don’t know, would be the honest answer, but he said, “Sometimes.” In an effort to steer the subject in another direction, he asked, “How’s your omelet?” before taking another a bite of his.
“Fine.” She sounded a bit forlorn but forked a bite between her lips.
“Help yourself to any of this.”
She shook her head. “Carbs. Fat. Dairy. Sugar. I can’t.”
“On account of your ass? Which is perfect, by the way.”
“Not precisely.” Her eyes drifted from his.
“So?”
Her gaze bounced back, then away again. “It’s sort of personal.”
He put his fork down and looked at her. “We’re supposed to be getting to know each other.”
“Well, I don’t think my diet would ever be a topic of conversation around town…”
“Don’t be too sure. Have you heard yourself order a meal?”
She rolled her eyes. “All right. Fine. I got a stomach ulcer for my twenty-sixth birthday.” Her hand slipped protectively over her middle. “It was not fun. I don’t want another one. Ever.”
He reached over and covered the hand she’d left on the table. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She slid her hand out from under his. “I’m much better now. I allow myself one of these”—she lifted her coffee cup—“every morning, and an occasional cocktail, but otherwise, I try to be good.”
Okay, important to know. One facet of her self-restraint stemmed from necessity. “I can understand that.” Now he felt bad, parading a bunch of forbidden food in front of her. But aside from some low-level guilt, the information also raised another question. The sort of question a man didn’t generally ask a woman, but one a serious boyfriend would know. He chewed on how to pose it while he finished his omelet and decided to simply ask. “I probably should know, when is your birthday?”
“Ah.” She leaned back in her chair and smiled up at the ceiling. “I’ll be twenty-nine on November thirtieth. The clock on my twenties is winding down. I’m a Sagittarius, though I don’t buy into the whole astrology thing.” She gestured to him. “You?”
He intended to answer, but his quick mental math on her age didn’t add up. He held up a hand. “Hold on. Wait. So, first off, you don’t look a day over twenty-five, but I know you’re a fifth-year associate at Hecker, Hiltz & Reynolds. You spent four years in undergrad and…what? Three or four years in law school? I can’t make the numbers work.”
She tipped her head to the side and smiled. “I graduated from high school early, with two years’ worth of advance placement college credits in my backpack.”
“Smart girl.”
“I had a goal.”
“To be a lawyer?”
“Yep.”
He picked up his coffee, frowned trying to imagine limiting himself to one cup a day. “Why law?”
“That’s a long story. I guess the simplest answer is, I wanted to go as far as I could. I grew up in a rural town in southern Nevada, not so far, geographically, from the bright lights and urban sprawl of Vegas, but worlds away in terms of demographics, economics, and opportunities. Do you know how many girls in my town graduate high school and go on to college?”
He shook his head. “No clue.”
“Less than fifty percent. An even smaller percentage graduate from college. And the percentage with graduate or professional degrees is in the single digits. I wanted to up the numbers, and my parents wanted that for me. I’m an only child, so I got their undivided encouragement, but we weren’t rich, so money to fund an advanced education presented an issue. Luckily, those lousy statistics worked in my favor. I was able to get a scholarship to UCLA for undergrad, and a full ride to USC for law school.”
“Impressive.” He meant it. Though he thought about her current sexual desert, and her stomach ulcer at twenty-six, and wondered about the things she’d sacrificed while going Mach 10 down the fast track. “You’re a Nevada native?”
After swallowing another bite of omelet, she said, “Yes, and both my parents. They were high school sweethearts. Married before either turned twenty. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“Do they still live there?”
“They do.” She lifted her napkin from her lap, folded it, and placed it on her plate. “They’ve been through some tough times over the years, but…” She shrugged. “It’s home. They’d never want to leave.”
“And you? Do you miss it?”
“Sometimes.” She laughed. “My first fall at UCLA, I thought I was going to die. The city felt so overwhelming. So different. I missed my family and my home a lot.”
“But you stayed.”
Her eyes found his. “I couldn’t get where I needed to go without leaving home.”
Something in his chest tightened. “I understand. Completely.” Except he didn’t know where the hell he was going. He just needed to go. Because understanding left a bitter taste in his mouth, he poured maple syrup over his pancakes and forked up a triple-layer mouthful.
“Okay, my turn.” She leaned forward. “Birthday.”
“My birthday is August twenty-first. I’m told that makes me a Leo on the cusp, but I have absolutely no idea what that means. Since I’ve managed to survive thirty years without finding out, I guess I’m in the don’t-buy-into-it camp, too.”