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I always cooked.
I don't remember the last time I ate out.
It was just easier to whip something up at home, usually fresh from my garden.
And, well, it was healthier.
But if this was all he was going to ask of me, just not to cook around him, for him, well, then I guess it was something I could cave on.
"Okay. Well, I haven't ordered food in ages. I don't really even know what the options are around here."
"Got any pressing need to be home?" he asked, waving a hand at Ford.
"Ah, no. I think things are good here until around dinner time."
"Alright. Well, let me take you out then."
Okay.
There was absolutely no denying - as if I would even want to - the flip-flop feeling in my belly at that.
He was taking me out.
On a date.
I hadn't had a proper date in, well, I didn't even know how long.
I was girlishly excited about it.
"Yeah?" he asked when my tongue forgot to articulate the excitement rolling through my system.
"Yes," I said, not even trying to stop the smile I felt pulling at my lips.
And then he took me on a date.
To a little place just outside of town I didn't know existed since I didn't drive that had a kind of Mediterranean menu.
And then he talked.
Not about why I couldn't cook for him. Not about why there was such sadness in his eyes.
But he talked.
About his father who, though he was a terrible husband by most standards, clearly stepped up to play the dad role. He spoke about his mom, doing so somewhat carefully, trying, it seemed, not to speak ill of the dead. She sounded like a hard woman, harder even than my own mother. All in an attempt to keep her kids from turning out like their father.
"She's rolling right now, I bet," he added when he got to the part about joining up with The Henchmen MC, leaving a big chunk of time blank in the middle, and I figured that was where the trauma called home.
He told me stories about Cy, things that made his eyes light up for a while, that made small smiles pull at his lips. Cy, apparently, before he settled down, really, really liked women. Meaning... a lot of them. Which seemed to lead to quite a few hilarious instances of him getting in all sorts of trouble when he was younger.
He told me about Wasp who, it seemed, had her own guards. Though hers didn't stem from some kind of awfulness, just a distrust and disdain for a certain type of man. You couldn't even fault her for that.
He even went on to talk about his brothers, filling all the silences, letting me enjoy the way his voice rolled over me as he gave me in-depth character descriptions of many of the brothers I had met, and some I had not, as well as a group of their old ladies known affectionately as the 'girls club.'
It was easy to forget as he told me these lively stories of these, well, seemingly very good, very loyal, very interesting people, that they were all connected by one thing. The illegal gun trade.
We finished dinner almost two hours later, Reeve leaving an insane tip, feeling bad for monopolizing a table for so long because Wasp had done a short stint as a waitress and hated 'campers,' as she called them since they didn't let a new table sit and eat and tip.
Then he drove me home.
Walked me to my door.
Gave me a very chaste, very sweet two-minute kiss, told me goodnight.
Asked me for my cell number.
And left.
I dropped down into my bed, more sexually frustrated than I had ever been before, wondering what his game was, why he wouldn't come in when I made no move or suggestion that would imply I would not be open to that possibility.
I rolled the thoughts around for a long time until the sleepless night before caught up with me, letting me fall into a blissful oblivion until my alarm woke me up to check the porch.
I got up in the morning, dealt with the daily task of cleaning up and feeding and watering all my animals - and plants - and sitting down to do a little work for my soap business.
It was around eleven in the morning when my phone, something I had because it was necessary in today's world, not because I actually used it, let off a grating whistle noise from the living room.
I couldn't get my hands cleaned off fast enough to get to it, to see if it was him, to see what he had to say.Reeve: Dinner at Famiglia at eight if you're free.Famiglia.
Reeve was pulling out all the stops.
It was the most pricey place in town.
And pricey went hand-in-hand with fancy.
Which meant I had some closet-diving to do.
