“If I was looking for a different type of girl,” I said quietly, “we wouldn’t be here.”
“I know.” She met my gaze. “I like you, Declan, but I’m a fish out of water in your world. I don’t drink or do drugs and—”
“I don’t do drugs either,” I interrupted. “I’m no angel, and I dabbled a bit in my early twenties, but drinking is all I do now, and certainly not enough for it to be a problem.”
“Look at me and look at the women you’re surrounded by.”
“I like looking at you,” I said softly. “I don’t know how many ways I can say it. I think you’re beautiful and sexy. I love touching your skin and kissing your lips. I really love being inside of you. I don’t know what this thing is between us, but it feels like we should at least go out on a few actual dates to figure it out. It’s a hell of a coincidence that we keep running into each other like this.”
“I was thinking that too. That’s why I came. I’ve never felt an attraction quite like this.”
“Me either.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table. “So what do you want to do? Do you want to go out on a real date with me?”
“I do.” It seemed hard for her to admit it and I longed to pull her onto my lap, kiss her, and tell her I was a nice guy and that she could trust me. But there was nothing I could do short-term to make her believe that. The only thing that would accomplish that was time, and she had to want to try.
“So let’s talk until we’re ready for apple pie and then maybe I can take you out to dinner.”
She shook her head. “Sadly, I have to work tonight and tomorrow night, but we can do breakfast or lunch again tomorrow, instead of dinner.”
“Marla’s your boss, right?”
She nodded.
“Is she a good boss?”
“So far. I haven’t been working for her for long. Kiki got me the job and I’m making a lot more than I did before, so I’ll take it.”
“What were you doing before?”
“Waiting tables at one of the restaurants near the mall. I’m still taking two shifts a week over there, but this pays a lot more if she stays as busy as she says she will.”
“Do you enjoy it?” he asked.
“Well, I don’t think anyone dreams of growing up to wait tables, but it’s a means to an end. I want to be a chef someday, but culinary school is expensive, so I’ve been saving up. Hopefully, in the next year or two, I’ll be able to afford tuition.”
“A chef! I might have to marry you. You already know I’m a bit of a foodie.”
She chuckled. “You don’t know if I’m any good at it, though.”
“Well, I can think of a couple of things you are good at.”
She blushed again, which was adorable, but then we started to talk about other things and she relaxed. We talked for hours, sharing a piece of apple pie, at least a gallon of soda and coffee, and a lot of eye-gazing. She was nothing like anyone I’d ever met and we talked about everything from music to food to politics. She was smart, well-read, and thoughtful. She also had the greenest eyes I’d ever seen on a woman up close. I desperately wanted to touch her, but I wasn’t sure how to express my interest without making it seem like I only wanted sex since our previous encounters had always led to that.
“Come over tonight after work?” I asked as our time together wound down.
She met my gaze with a soft smile. “Okay.”
“What time will you be done?”
“Around ten.”
“What if I order food for a late dinner and we can just chill?”
“I’ll probably be tired.”
“That’s okay.”
“Then I’ll see you tonight.” She picked up the check and stopped me when I tried to take it from her. “I invited you, remember? Lunch was my apology for running away both times we were together.”
I held up my hands. “Fine. But just this once. I have more money than I’ll ever spend, so I’m buying from now on.”
“We’ll see,” she said, laughing.
“Hang on.” I held out my phone. “Put your number in?”
She typed her info into the contacts page I’d left open and handed me back the phone. “I’ll call you when I get done tonight.”
I hit the button to dial her number.
The sound of the theme song from Hawaii Five-0 started ringing and she fumbled in her purse, frowning. “Hello?”
“Just checking to see if you gave me a fake number,” I said, laughing.
She made a face as she stuffed her phone back in her purse. “Oh ye of little faith.”
“Trust is earned,” I called after her, though we were both laughing.
I couldn’t wait to see her tonight.
* * *
Not only had it been nice spending the afternoon with Brianna, it had been really nice to not think about my situation with Nobody’s Fool for a few hours. In the days since we’d decided to take a month off, I’d alternated between being angry at myself and being angry at all of them. The one thing I’d started to understand was that I was angriest at Casey and Jayson. It hadn’t hit me until he’d walked in the studio last week, but my chest had gotten tight and I’d suddenly lost all my mojo. Part of me was happy to see him after so many years of friendship, but another part resented the hell out of him.
The fact of the matter was that Casey and Jayson had simply decided what they were going to do and did it. No one spoke to Tyler and I about what we wanted or needed for the band. They just went ahead with what they wanted to do. I understood Casey’s perspective to a degree. She’d loved Erik and then lost him, while pregnant with his child. She hadn’t known he was still alive, that he was in hiding because enemies of the royal family wanted to kill him and any potential heirs he had, so he’d had himself “killed” and a friend of Casey’s said he was the father of her baby. So when Erik returned a decade later, she’d been willing to do almost anything to be with him.
Once they were married and she became a queen, she couldn’t continue as the lead guitarist of one of the biggest rock bands in the world, so she’d had no choice but to quit. There had been a lot of ways to handle it, though, and Jayson leaving too so he could move to Monte Carlo with his new girlfriend at the time, had been rough. If he’d stayed on as the lead singer and one of the faces of the band, we could have made Pretty Harts work. But no one asked me or Tyler. No one suggested anything. They just made sure we were financially protected and essentially disappeared.
Casey had been part of the inception of Nobody’s Fool, which I figured assuaged her guilt, because she knew she’d let me and Tyler down. We hadn’t said it in so many words, but her actions spoke volumes. The fact that she created a record label specifically to sign Nobody’s Fool was just part of it, because then she’d financed our club tour and the subsequent tour with Onyx Knight. She was taking a big financial risk, even though she could afford it, and it wasn’t just because we were friends. She felt bad about what she’d done, and maybe worse about the fact that it had caused Jayson to leave too, but whatever it was, it still didn’t sit right with me.