The Will(52)

“What I don’t understand is why she kept you from me,” she stated, her eyes sliding away and she began talking to the carpet. “However, that encounter was vexing.” She looked back to him. “So can I ask that we dispense with discussing anything that may be distressing and just sally forth enjoying the evening?”

Jesus, she was too much.

And too f*cking cute being it.

Jake again grinned at her. “We can sally forth however you want, Slick.”

Her eyes flashed when he quit talking then he watched something move through her expressive face, settle in it, warming the entirety of her features, and finally she smiled.

He let that smile sear through him too then he saw their waiter out of the corner of his eye. He caught the man’s attention and jerked up his chin.

The guy hustled to their table.

“The lady wants a martini,” Jake told him.

“Vodka, with olives,” Josie put in.

“I’ll see to that right away,” the waiter replied.

“Then we’ll want the specials,” Jake added.

“Of course,” the guy nodded, bowing slightly. “I’ll return shortly.”

“Now,” Josie started when the guy moved away. “I’ll need to know if there’s anything Conner won’t eat so I can plan Monday’s menu.”

He reached for his beer, ignoring the chilled glass they’d provided, answering, “Con’s allergic to vegetables.”

He took a tug from the bottle and smothered another grin when he saw her big blue eyes get wide.

“That’s horrible,” she declared. “Allergic to vegetables? All vegetables?”

He put his beer back to the table and leaned into her. “Baby, it’s a turn of phrase. He’s not allergic to them. He just hates ‘em.”

“Oh,” she mumbled. Then her gaze grew sharp. “He should get past this. It’s not healthy not to have vegetables in your diet.”

“I’ll let you share that with him on Monday.”

She straightened her shoulders and stated, “I’ll do that without delay. It’s my understanding that young men continue to grow into their twenties. He’s far from small but if his diet was more robust, who knows what could happen.”

Fucking hell, she was the shit.

“Yeah, Josie. Who knows,” Jake muttered.

“Now, I’ve got the taste for steak,” she changed the subject. “What do you have the taste for?”

Straight up, he had the taste for cute, klutzy, classy *, eating her and listening to her moan.

He didn’t tell her that.

He said, “Waitin’ for the specials.”

She nodded and smiled.

He took her smile and gave her one back.

Then her martini arrived.

*

Jake sat in the window seat of the light room, legs stretched out up on the seat, ankles crossed, a glass of Lydie’s Scotch in his hand, his eyes to the moonlight on the sea.

Josie was down from him, curled up with her legs under her, body twisted, torso pressed to the seat back, facing the windows.

She’d given him a treat and taken off her shoes, making it the first time she was even slightly casual in front of him. She hadn’t let down her hair and after that night, he was thinking he really needed to see her with her hair down.

But this would come.

She was drinking some purple liquid from a snifter that came from a fancy-ass bottle and smelled like cough syrup when she’d handed him her glass after he asked what it was. He didn’t taste it. A sniff was enough to put him off and his expression must have told her that because she immediately took the glass from him but did it on a cute little giggle.

After asking him in for an after dinner drink, getting his Scotch, getting her drink and taking off her shoes, she’d led him up to his favorite room in the house.

It had been a good night and he knew this because he’d quit counting the times she smiled because she was doing it so often, he couldn’t keep track. She’d even laughed, mostly quiet and sweet, but once her shoulders shook with it.

What made her smile and laugh was his stories about the kids or the guys at the gym or how his dancers and bouncers were always dating, breaking up, acting out and trying and failing to hide that shit seeing as he had a no fraternization policy.

She’d also made him smile, relaxing more and more as the dinner went on and sharing about places she’d gone, things she’d done and the people she knew and worked with. Some of the names of recording artists he definitely knew. He even knew some of designers’ names.

The one thing that made him uneasy about this was the way she talked about it. She clearly enjoyed her work, liked and/or admired the people she worked with and it was obvious she loved what she did and the people she did it around.

In her globetrotting lifestyle with the fashion and music elite, he could see it would be difficult to settle in a small town on coastal Maine no matter how pretty the town was or how phenomenal her house was in that town.

She took him from his thoughts when she said softly, “Before it became too hard for her to negotiate stairs, Gran and I used to sit up here all the time.”

His eyes went to her to see she still had hers to the view and she kept talking.

“When I was young, I used to make up stories and tell them to her. I think she knew they were my daydreams but she never said anything. When I was older, we wouldn’t have to say anything at all. She’d sip her Drambuie, me my Chambord and we’d just sit here, staring at the sea, and we’d just be but in being we did it together.”