The Billionaire's Temporary Bride (Scandal, Inc #3)(18)

"Don't worry about the prices." Jack smiled.

"It's just a little more upscale than I'm used to."

"What are you used to?"

"A few times a year, Callie and I go out to a little bistro out on MacArthur Boulevard. Really, we go there whenever we have something to celebrate. It's a little nicer than the normal places we go, and we get to dress up a bit, but it's not nearly this…"

"Stuffy?" Jack asked.

"I was going to say grand. It's a little place. I don't know why I'm blanking on the name. We've always just called it 'the bistro.' Anyway, this is wonderful."

The conversation broke as they ordered dinner. Jack chose a mango and lychee snapper dish and, at Charlotte's insistence on being unable to decide, ordered the even less familiar sounding oysters with mignonette on her behalf. As soon as the waiter was gone, Charlotte seemed eager to restart the conversation and end the silence.

"So, tell me about your job," she said. "What's one thing I should know?"

"To start, it's not as glamorous as people think. Unless we're voting on something, I'm almost never in the Capitol building. Most of the time I work from the House office buildings across the street. My office is small, and there's a ceiling light above my desk that is almost always broken no matter what I do."

"Come on, there must be something good, secret passages to the White House, stuff like that," Charlotte said as the waiter took the menus.

"There's a monorail between the offices and the Capitol building. It's not very interesting. The whole thing is kind of like high school. There are the popular kids and there's even a cafeteria serviced by the same company that serves food at most of the country's prisons."

"Couldn't you just order out?"

"I usually just eat something fast in-between meetings, whatever my secretary gets."

"I figured you'd have a place like this on speed dial."

"Nah," Jack said. "I mean this is great, but it's too much to do on a daily basis. Wait until you see dessert. It's elaborate and inventive, just like all the rest of the food here, but sometimes you just want a slab of pie instead."

"I know that's how I like my pie," Charlotte said, "in slabs. What's your favorite kind?"

"Rhubarb," Jack said quickly. "I like rhubarb."

"My mother used to make rhubarb pie. It's my dad's favorite, too. We'd eat it on his birthday with vanilla ice cream and a tall glass of milk instead of cake. My sister and I always hated that we didn't get to have cake."

"My father wasn't usually home for his birthdays," Jack said. He hadn't told Charlotte anything about his family yet, and he wondered how much he should let slip. A first date seemed like the wrong time to explain how his siblings resented him and his mother coddled him beyond belief. He wondered if he would ever be able to explain why he could barely stand to stay in the same room as them or why his blood boiled whenever someone brought up his father.

Probably better to bring up family as little as possible, Jack decided. His mind drifted to Maria and little Jack. He felt suddenly very conscious of the weight of the secret phone in his breast pocket. He wanted to change the topic of conversation as quickly as possible.


"But you probably got cake when he was home," Charlotte said.

"Cake is overrated," Jack said, "but you should come to my office sometime. It'll be nice. We can get a mediocre lunch. I'll have my secretary add you to the list so you can come whenever."

He lost his train of thought as he watched Charlotte fiddling with her hair, sweeping it back from her face and twirling it around her finger. She was smiling and laughing a lot, but Jack could tell that she was nervous. The way she had looked over the menu when they first sat down, like she didn't know where to begin. He loved her genuine excitement and enthusiasm to learn more about him instead of just interest in using him somehow. He loved all of it. He wanted to know more about her and for their date to be something more than a photo-op. He didn't even want to talk about the fact that photographers were getting ready outside to take as many pictures of the couple as possible. It was one more item on the list of things he didn't want to tell her. He felt like it would break the spell of the nice night they'd been having.

When the staff put Charlotte's entrée in front of her, Jack had a hard time containing his enjoyment at her bewildered reaction.

"What is this?" she asked.

"Oysters with mignonette sauce, molecular gastronomy style," he said.

Charlotte poked at a cloud of something airy. "But this sauce is just foam. And why are the oysters little balls?"

"I think the lingo they use is 'pearls'. I guess they're trying to be cheeky. Just try it. I promise it's good." He lifted up a forkful of snapper covered in flavorful bubbles of mango and lychee, inviting her to join him.

Charlotte looked reluctant as she lifted a pearl of oyster to her lips, but on Jack's lead, they both ate at the same time.

"Wow, you weren't kidding," she said, her jaw dropping open.

"They may not be how we ate oysters on the Cape, but they're certainly something, aren't they?"

When Charlotte's face dropped, Jack got concerned.