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ChapterTwenty-Eight
Ruby
My long red dress whips around my ankles in the light evening breeze while I wait outside my bungalow for Jackson to pick me up. I told him it was ridiculous for him to drive over and fetch me when I have my own car, but he just scowled and shook his head.
“It’s a date. I’m picking you up.”
“You’re being bossy,” I complain, not really complaining.
“You like it.” He could get a woman pregnant with his smirk.
“I do.”
All I know is that Fiona is sleeping at Auntie PJ’s house, and we’re going out to dinner. He won’t tell me where we’re going, just that I shouldn’t wear shorts. “You look great in shorts, Ginger, but they won’t let you in where we’re going.”
Before work this morning, I raced down to Berkeley, added some more sugar to my viniculture, and grabbed a dress. For once, I didn’t have to make an emergency run to the Duck Feather gift shop.
Jackson’s tires crunch on the gravel when he pulls his SUV around, followed by a catcall that makes me blush. He puts the car in park a few feet from where I’m waiting and hops out.
The way his shoulders fill out his navy sports coat nearly makes me drool. Slicked back hair, crisp white dress shirt, dangerous smile. “Beautiful,” he says, reaching for my hand and grazing my knuckles with a kiss.
I feel more heat rise in my cheeks, but the wind does me a solid by whipping my hair around to obscure it. “Looking good, yourself.” Such an understatement.
He looks like a decadent meal wrapped in a navy suit. Useless clothing obscuring the hot skin and hard lines underneath, and I’ll spend all of dinner fantasizing about what I can’t see.
Leading me to the car, Jackson drapes an arm over my shoulders, bare under the spaghetti straps of my dress. I’m not wearing a bra under the sheet of red silk, and I catch Jackson angling for a view down the front of my dress. “Manners,” I tease.
“Impossible when you’re wearing that, Ginger.” Opening my car door, he leans closer, his breath brushing my neck. “And you should always be wearing that.”
My first clue to our destination is that we don’t leave the Buttercup property, instead taking a back road I know about after my stint at Butter and Rosemary restaurant. It was weeks ago that I mentioned in passing that I’d never eaten there, and he tucked that piece of information away.
The drive is short, less than half a mile. The evening air is warm and fragrant, perfect for a walk, but in my three-inch sandals, I’m glad for once to be in a car instead of hoofing it up the gravel road.
Jackson grabs my hand, interlacing our fingers. It feels so casual, like we’re always this way with each other. More than that, it feels like we’ve been this way from the first day we met, even if neither of us felt brave enough to acknowledge it until now.
I still feel like I’m leading a double life, acting like a professional at work and around Fiona, even though I catch myself standing a little too close to him or wanting to put a hand on him someplace. I notice him doing the same—our eyes meet, and a secret conversation passes between us in a look. My resistance feels stretched to the limit, ready to snap.
It feels light and perfectly casual, a scoop of vanilla with whipped cream in relationship form. New affection, hot sex. I tell myself it’s okay to feel drawn to him the way I am. But the day I find my mind slipping into a fairy tale life, pretending we’re a family, is the day I need to leave.
That’s not what this is.
But it could be.
No. It can’t. I have obligations to my sister and big career goals. There’s no room in that equation for a relationship right now. And I can’t think beyond that just because I’m infatuated.
The restaurant looks different to me now that I’m going to be a guest here. The twinkling lights that dot the ivy-covered walls in front sparkle a little more brightly tonight.
When the valet opens my door, Jackson is there in a heartbeat, asking him to step aside so he can reach for my hand. His eyes snap to my bare calf as I extend my leg and step on the small ledge of the Jeep as I exit. It’s exhilarating to feel his eyes drink me in with wolfish thirst.
Jackson’s arm drapes casually over my shoulders, and I prepare myself for glances from the maître d’ and staff who know Jackson and might be gossiping as soon as we’re out of sight, but Beatrix intercepts us as soon as we walk in the door.
“Your table is ready.” She escorts us up a set of stairs I noticed during the week I worked there, setting up for the tasting event, but I never knew where they led. The dimly lit staircase sits off to the side in the foyer of the restaurant and looks like it leads to a restroom or office.
When we reach the top, and Beatrix sweeps open a small door, I gasp. This is no restroom or office. “Enjoy, you two,” Beatrix says, already heading back down the staircase.
Jackson leads me out the door, which has opened to a rooftop terrace with pathways winding among trellises of flowers. The scene is lit by tiny bulbs that twinkle gently, almost like they’re moved by the breeze. With his arm still over my bare shoulder, Jackson leads us down one winding pathway to another that’s abloom with wide pink blossoms that bounce on their stems.
“These were always my favorite.” He plucks one of the blooms by the stem and hands it to me. I’m still processing the fact that he has a favorite flower when he turns me to face him and brushes his hand down my bare arm.
