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She knew she shouldn’t be this nervous, she’d spent years navigating around men without becoming entangled, but it was hard for her to keep her focus when he was around. If her mother lived close enough to get so much as a look at her face when Ethan was in sight, she’d be lectured for a month. Eloise could hear her mother’s shrill voice in her head, the refrain from her childhood never quite fading away.
“Keep your mind where it belongs,” she’d said when Eloise had come home from school with her first harmless crush. “Don’t let some boy turn your head,” she’d said when Eloise had been asked to go to prom. “You don’t want to end up like me, do you?” she’d asked when they’d dropped Eloise off at college.
But would that really have been so bad? Eloise had always wondered what was so terrible about having a solid career and a family. Had a husband and child really interfered with her mother’s life so much? Or had her mother simply not wanted those things and resented having them pushed upon her?
“You can keep it fun,” Sarah reassured her. Eloise had spent the first ten minutes of their Friday café lunch panicking about her casual Sunday dinner plans with Ethan and Sarah was ruthlessly taking the situation in hand. If Eloise hadn’t been so embarrassed about reacting like a lovestruck teenager she might have even been grateful. “Just a bit of light conversation. Nothing too serious. You’re going to dinner with him, not getting married.”
“Which isn’t to say that you can’t sleep with him,” Chloe added, her smile like that of a cat proposing a raid on the milkman’s cart.
“It’s not even a date.” Eloise had already lost count of how many times she’d said it and the response was wooden and automatic, tasting like cardboard on her tongue.
“It sounds like a date,” Kim said. Her shrug was apologetic as she sipped her lemonade but the others both nodded.
“Whose side are you on?” Eloise grumbled. They’d gotten an indoor table this time, but the sun shining in through the glass was still hot on her cheeks. She hoped it would help disguise the blush she knew was rising on her face. Maybe they would mistake her constant embarrassment for heat stroke.
“She’s on the right side of this little disagreement,” Sarah said firmly. “The winning side. Right, Kim?”
“I mean—” Kim began.
“Exactly,” Chloe interrupted. “She wants to go down on the right side of history once you end up sleeping with Ethan.”
“I’m not sleeping with Ethan.”
“I’ll bet you a month’s worth of desserts that you do,” Sarah said. “You can have your pick every Friday if you make it through the full week after this date without sleeping with him.”
“Deal,” Eloise agreed. “I’m going to start with a blueberry scone.” She wasn’t as confident as she tried to sound and something about the way Sarah’s lips turned up at the corners told her they were able to see right through her to the heart of her conflict.
By the night before their not-quite-a-date, Eloise had almost convinced herself that she hadn’t made a mistake with their bet, that she could enjoy his company for this one meal and then put him out of her mind. She gave herself a firm pep talk as she stood in front of the tall mirror in her bedroom, holding a pink floral dress beneath her chin as she considered whether it was an appropriate outfit for something that wasn’t a date. It was cute, but not really sexy. A little jewelry would make it seem put together without looking like she was trying too hard.
She tossed it into a growing pile at the foot of her bed just as the doorbell rang. She hesitated—it was late and she wasn’t expecting company—but it rang twice more by the time she’d grabbed a light silk robe and hurried down the stairs. “I’m coming,” she panted, belting the robe sloppily before reaching for the doorknob. She pulled it open without looking through the peephole and found Ethan standing on the porch, a bag in his hand and a deep scowl on his face.
“You didn’t check to see who I was before you opened the door.” It was clearly meant to be scolding, and he waited for her to answer in a disapproving silence.
“No one ever knocks on my door this late except David or Jackson,” she explained. “This is a safe neighborhood.”
“No neighborhood is that safe.”
She wanted to argue, wanted that idea to be as ridiculous as she’d convinced herself it was during the years she’d lived here, but a sweeping glance over his set face and the tattoos that crawled over his skin changed her mind. If either of them was going to be an accurate judge of how dangerous a place might be, it would be Ethan. If he saw a threat, it would be a legitimate one.
She crossed her arms over chest, guarding against an imagined chill. “Did you want to come in? Our date isn't until tomorrow.” She flushed at her slip of the tongue, but he didn’t seem to notice.
The scowl disappeared, replaced by an embarrassed smile as he held the bag up. “I stopped and grabbed something to eat on the way home and I thought, maybe, it would be enough to get me in the door a day early? I had PB&J in the pantry but eating all by myself …”
She sighed, her heart squeezing with an echoing pang of loneliness, and pushed the door open wider. “That’s manipulative, you know?”
“But it worked.” His grin was smug and just a little wicked, enough for her to roll her eyes but she couldn’t quite control the twitch of her own lips or the swoop of her stomach.
“It worked this time, but it won’t work next time unless you brought something good.” She reached for the bag as he held it just out of reach, wrinkling her nose skeptically at the scent of something unfamiliar and spicy. “What did you bring me?”
“Take out,” he said. “Gumbo, mostly, but I grabbed a few other things since I wasn’t sure what you liked.”
She dropped down off her tiptoes, mouth twisting into a skeptical frown. “I’m not letting you in next time.”
“What?” He looked genuinely offended. “You don’t like gumbo?
“I’ve never tasted it,” she admitted.
“How long have you lived here?” It was almost cute how baffled he looked, like the idea that she’d never tasted gumbo had rocked his entire world view. There was a crease in the center of his forehead that she wanted to smooth with her thumb.
