Our food is set in front of us, which for me is a dinner portion of mac n’ cheese, which is gigantic and bubbly with cheese. “It looks delicious.”
“It is,” the waitress assures me.
Kace smiles and he digs into his chicken fried steak while I do the same with my mac. We’re a couple of bites in when he catches my hand and stares down at the sunflower ring. “Girasoli, or sunflowers. The fields are filled with them in Tuscany. You’re Italian, aren’t you?”
“My father was Italian. My mother was American. He gave her the ring. They honeymooned in Tuscany.”
He settles my hand on the table, studying me a moment before he says. “They’re gone.”
“Yes.”
“As are mine,” he says, and rather than push me for answers, he offers his own. “My parents were killed in a plane crash twelve years ago. I was twenty-two. I wasn’t close to them, but there is something—” he hesitates, “safe about knowing your parents are alive.”
I stare down at the ring a moment, memories telling stories in my mind, knots in my belly as I look at him, as I offer my own answers. “There is. You’re right. But I was close to my parents. Very close. My father has been gone since I was eleven,” I say, hoping he won’t push for more and moving on to offer more about my mother for that very reason. And because this is Kace. I want to tell him. “My mother was mugged and killed in the city when I was eighteen. She was a merchandiser for Macy’s. She was only a few blocks from work when it happened.”
“And now it’s just you and Gio, and he’s missing.”
“I don’t know if he’s missing. The asshole just won’t communicate.”
His cellphone rings and he curses. “Sorry, baby.” He grabs it from the table to eye the number. “It’s Nix.” He declines the call and punches in a text message before he sets his cell back down. “I told him I’m here. That will be enough to calm him down.” He glances at my food, of which I haven’t touched much. “Eat. It’s a long flight out of here, though we’ll have snacks on the plane. Have you ever flown private?”
“Only commercial,” I say, picking up my fork. “Prior to my travels with you, I’ve been here and as you already know, to Italy. That’s it. Actually, Vegas, too, once when I was in college. Have I mentioned I fly in planes about as well as in choppers?”
He laughs and for the rest of our meal, I tell him about my freak-out over the air conditioning smoke in the plane on the flight to Vegas. “The flight attendant hated me by the time we landed. And I drank a Bloody Mary on the flight home and fell asleep. I think you might want to get me drunk on the way to Austin.”
“I’m sure I can find a way to keep your mind off the flight,” he says, mischief in his eyes.
“You’re bad.”
“I keep telling you that and here you are. You don’t listen.”
“I hear you. Every word. Every time you say it. In fact, you don’t get to keep saying it anymore. You are bad. You will make me run away. Spoken. Heard. No more warnings.”
He leans forward, close, his hand on my hand, and the room fades, the clink of glasses the sound of voices, gone, leaving only me and him. “Or else what?” he asks.
“Or else I’m going to think you want me to leave.”
“I don’t,” he says. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“And I don’t want to leave. Whatever it is you think—”
“I know. What I know is a problem.”
“Just tell me then. Put it behind us.”
“No,” he says. “No.” The words are steel, the air spiking with his shift of mood.
The waitress sets our check down, breaking the spell between us. I reach for my purse. Kace catches it in his hand. “Don’t even think about it.”
“You have spent so much money on me. Let me buy lunch.”
“No. I invited you. This weekend is on me.”
“Kace—”
“I have more money than I can ever spend. I choose, and want, to spend it on you.”
“Thank you, Kace.”
“I told you. It’s not your thanks I want.” The words are still hard, but he kisses the sunflower on my hand, and I have this sense of me being a sunflower, floating in a perfect blue sea of his making. I will eventually drown, but every moment before will be a perfect drink.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Kace and I bundle up and then exit the restaurant. Nelson meets us at the front of the Escalade and Kace hands him a card. “That’s where we’re going.”
Nelson gives a nod of agreement before Kace and I head toward the rear passenger side door. “Wait,” I say, halting as Kace opens the door for me. “What is the plan for me when you’re with Nix?”
“You’re with me baby. His house is a few miles down the road. We’ll be in and out, in half an hour, if I have my way.”
I blink, not sure why this hasn’t hit me before now. “I’m going with you to Nix’s house?”
“Yeah. That’s the plan. It won’t take long.”
“Kace no. That is going to be weird. I can’t intrude on your agent in his home.”
“Baby, it’s not a big deal.”
“You said yourself that he’s not overly pleasant. I’ll stay here and wait.”
A gust of wind lifts my hair and shoots cold air right down my collar. I shiver and hug myself. “Climb in,” Kace orders quickly. “We’ll talk inside where it’s warm.”
“I’m going back inside. I’m respecting you and your business. It’s not a big deal. Hot coffee and some of that cake I saw them passing around works just fine for me.”
He studies me for several beats and then snakes his phone from his pocket. I grab his hand. “What are you doing?”
“Cake sounds good. I came to the Hamptons. Nix can meet us here.”
“No. God, no. I’ll go to his place. After all you’ve done for me, I do not mean to be difficult. I’ll be fine.”
Kace’s hand slides under my hair to my neck. “Me buying you things is not meant to make you feel required to endure something uncomfortable. That’s not who I am. That’s not who I want us to be.” There is an urgency to him that isn’t just about me and now. I’ve hit a nerve I do not understand, but it’s raw and real. “That was never my intention,” he adds. “My money does not buy your agreement.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t buy me. Being considerate is just me. And not for one second did I feel that you were using money to control me, Kace. You want me to go, though. I will. Let’s go to him.”
“Yes, I want you to go, but I don’t need you to do this for me to be good with us.”
“Like I do not need you to buy things for me to be good with us. But you wanted to do those things for me. And I want to do this for you.”