“Please don’t,” Ranger begged. “She’s likely to make me uterus cookies and force me to eat them while she educates me on menopause.”
She laughed. “Pleasetell me she made vagina and penis cookies to explain the birds and the bees to you.”
“Worse,” he admitted, cringing at the memory. “She had these ceramic frogs she painted in art class once, and she used them as models while my dad sat on the couch trying not to laugh.”
Toni could barely contain her own laughter at this announcement. “Oh, I wish I’d been a fly on the wall for that conversation.”
Ranger shook his head, grateful she hadn’t been anywhere near him as a teenager. He’d been a bit…angry as a teen, still not completely over the trauma he and his mom had suffered at the hands of his sperm donor. “How about this? I promise I will read up on menopause so I can better understand what it is youbelieve your mom was going through whileyouplan our date for tomorrow night.”
“We’re going on a date tomorrow night?” Toni grinned up at him. “We’ll have to move your meeting to earlier in the day.”
“That’s fine.”
“How come I get to choose this time? It’s your turn to spin the wheel?”
He shrugged. “I feel bad about how I’ve been the past couple of days, and I want to make it up to you. So no arguments or telling me that it’s not necessary. It absolutelyisnecessary. Plan our date, and I promise not to bitch, moan, or complain.”
Toni’s maniacal grin was spreading before he even finished his vow. “Coffee, bookstore, and dinner at the diner.”
“Fine,” Ranger agreed, swallowing hard, “but I’m capping your bookstore limit at two hundred dollars.”
Toni’s eyes widened as her nostrils flared and her lips trembled. If it wasn’t for the lack of tears, he honestly would think her heartbroken.
“Don’t look at me like that. Last time you bought so many books that they barely fit in my saddlebags.”
Her eyes somehow widened even more, and Ranger felt his own heart start to break at the sight.
“Fine! Three hundred, and we’ll bring a prospect along so he can take them back for you.”
Toni’s face immediately brightened and she laughed, “Ha-ha! Sucker!” Then she kissed him and rolled over on her pillow.
CHAPTER 13
164 Days Sober
Welcome to Demon on the Rocks
Grand Re-Opening
* * *
The mood inside the newly built bar was a mixture of joy and bittersweetness, with the portraits of Frankie, Monica, Deputy Scott Pan, and Dru Deininger on the far wall. Not much of the original structure had been salvageable, but they had been able to take a piece of the old outside wall and refurbish it into the new bar top. Lucky even burned the VDMC’s logo into the wood before the final polish.
Edison bulbs hung from the exposed beams, giving the place an industrial feel while also remaining warm and inviting. The idea of a stage for live music had been passed around, but just as before they’d nixed the idea. A stage would take up room where additional chairs and tables could be, and a surround-soundsystem was preferred by employees over live music. The pool tables and dart boards were just as before, as were the standing tables and large booths along the back wall. In the center of the room they added one larger sitting table for a group with several smaller tables surrounding it.
The bar itself stretched along the left wall upon entry, all fourteen stools filled with laughing patrons. Ghost himself was working behind the bar tonight, sliding beers across the refurbished wood with practiced ease. All four prospects ran ragged, ensuring not a single person in the room went without. Louisa, Bear’s mom Dee Dee, and Loretta had cooked their butts off that day, preparing endless appetizers and sweets for the celebration. Normally, the bar’s kitchen would be open for fried appetizers like stuffed mushrooms, fries, mac ’n cheese bites, jalapeño poppers, mozzarella sticks, hush puppies, and the like, along with meal options of burgers, steak, chicken strips, and salad, but the women wouldn’t hear of it for this celebration. So for one night only, the bar’s kitchen was closed and they were serving free spinach and artichoke stuffed bread cubes, bacon-wrapped little smokies with brown sugar glaze, deviled eggs, mini quiches, pinwheel sandwiches of ham and cheese or turkey and cranberry, lemon bars, cookies decorated like a beer stein, and chocolate or strawberry mousse.
Ranger felt Toni’s hand tighten in his as she took it all in. He knew she was nervous about tonight, being her first public interaction with the club. Given the lack of fallout from her mother’s disappearance and the way the club was able to frame her dad’s death as a suicide, there was no reason for her not to walk in at Ranger’s side. She’d even dressed in the little black dress he’d bought for her to replace the one he’d ruined because she knew how it affected him.
But it was still a big night for the club, and Toni worried she was the club outsider. While Ranger thought that statementridiculous, he could understand where she was coming from, and it was something that they’d discussed at length with Dr. Rutenberg. The truth was, despite his growing feelings for Toni and how much he trusted her, he just wasn’t ready to put a cut on her. Toni, for her part, was not pressuring him in any way. She saw a property cut as akin to an engagement ring, and she was nowhere near ready for that. Ranger did try to explain that they were two very different things that could happen at two separate stages in their relationship, but that only seemed to bring home the fact that neither was ready for either step.
Hell, Toni hadn’t even been back to her house since the night her father and Cody Pike had broken into it. There was still a lot for them to decide, and while neither was in a rush, there definitely felt like outside pressure at club gatherings like this. The fact that they were practically living with the poster couple for fastest claiming in the history of the club did not help matters.
Ranger leaned down, putting his mouth next to Toni’s ear. “We stay for as long as you’re comfortable with.”
She nodded once. “Remember, our safe word is ‘bunny’.”
“I feel like we’re preparing to have kinky sex when you say it like that.”
