Page 27 of Acadia Falls

I scowled some more, but I wasn’t actually mad.

He parked the truck and surprised me by opening my door. He also opened the restaurant’s door and waited for me to go through. The redheaded bartender, Daisy, who’d slept with Derek, widened her eyes when she saw us. Jack waved at her.

The hostess seated us at a table in the corner by the windows. Jack pulled my chair out for me. When they brought us menus, he handed me mine first.

“You’re quite the gentleman.”

“I’m not sure why you sound so surprised.” He laughed, a deep, rumbling sound.

“Seriously?” But I laughed, too.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked.

“An iced tea, I think.”

When the server came, he ordered my drink. “The lady will have an iced tea. I’ll have the same.”

I laughed again once we were alone. “You’re so charming when you’re not…” I fumbled the rest of the sentence.

“…Following you into the pantry or luring you into the boathouse?” He leaned closer, a glint in his eyes. “Or bending you over a picnic table?”

“Ha.” But my cheeks heated, and my stomach twisted with longing. I’d enjoyed the hell out of each of those things, and there had been zero chivalry involved.

We each ordered the Dockburger. I was surprised that Jack asked for his with blue cheese, then ordered a beet-and-walnut salad as an appetizer, but I wasn’t sure why.

I wrinkled my nose when his salad arrived.

“What?” he asked as he speared a roasted beet. “You don’t like beets?”

“I do. I mean, they’re not my favorite, but…”

“They’re good for your circulation.”

I blinked at him. “They are?”

“You should have one, Maran. They have a lot of potassium.”

“Okay…”

“Do you take vitamins?” he asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

“No.”

“I have a good herbologist up here—they make everything from scratch, from their farm. I’ll hook you up. It’s never too late to get healthy.”

“I’m healthy. I’m only twenty-five, I’m a runner, I eat Paleo⁠—”

“You live in New York.” He raised an eyebrow. “It’s the most disgusting place in the world.”

“What? How can you say that? I love New York!”

He put down his fork. “It’s a cesspool. I went there once. A family who used to own a house here—I was buddies with one of the kids. He invited Ryan and me down. I’ve never been so grossed out. There was trash everywhere! Like, loose in the streets! It smelled like piss. There were rats. I saw a dead cat on the sidewalk—people just stepped over it. I don’t know how you can live like that.”

I bristled. “It was a great place to go to school. And I got hired at one of the top law firms in the country. I could never make that much money someplace else.”

“So?” Jack eyed me over his tea. “It costs so much to live in a dump that you’d be better off someplace else.”

I scowled at him. He was right in that New York did smell like pee. There was also trash everywhere. Then there were the toxic green puddles that never seemed to evaporate. In winter, the snow immediately turned a slushy, disgusting brown. But it was New York… If I could make it there, I could make it anywhere!