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“Books, Ryker. What kind of books do you like, keep up with the conversation.” Her eyes were twinkling.
“Oh, I’m into biographies. Give me anybody in the past, and I eat it up. Man, woman, king, queen, doesn’t matter. The latest biography I read was Three Ordinary Girls about teenagers in WWII who were in the Dutch underground. They were amazing.”
“I’m going to have to look that up, it sounds like something I would like to read.”
“What are you two talking about?” Lark asked.
“Books,” Ryker answered, upset that he and Amy were now going to have to contend with Kostya and Lark entering the conversation.
When it was finally time for Ryker to meet the waitress, the three of them agreed where to meet when it was over so they could go over the information he’d acquired. Ryker sure hoped he’d be able to coax Amy into an after-after-after-dinner drink with him at that point.
“Hot damn! I’m up four hundred dollars! I don’t even care that I’m making this money for you, this is exciting!”
Ryker laughed at her exuberance. “Are you always this excited when you win at slots?”
“Are you kidding? I only allow myself twenty dollars to play when I come out here, when it’s gone it’s gone. That usually happens in the first five minutes, then I go to a show or go eat. You giving me forty dollars and me winning so much is a blast!”
“I would have thought someone who came dressed up to be Lark’s wingman and dragged her along on so many adventures would have been more of a gambler.”
“Oh no. Not the way I was raised.” Amy pressed the buttons on the machine again. Ryker watched as she upped her bet, and the wheels spun.
“I won! I won! That was a big one! Seventy-five dollars!” She threw her arms around him, and he breathed her in. The way she was dancing around you would have thought it was a thousand dollars.
Amy tipped back her head and looked up at him. “You are going to be so rich when I hand you your winnings,” she declared. Ryker couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t. He bent down and gave her a slow kiss, glorying in the fact that she softened and soon was kissing him back. Then he broke away.
“We better stop before security comes and taps our shoulder,” he whispered.
Amy took a deep breath in, and Ryker watched her push back her gorgeous dark hair from her face with a trembling hand.
“Yeah, you’re right. We wouldn’t want to be pulled apart like the senior citizens.”
Ryker snorted. “You have to admit, that was better than any show we could have gone to watch.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said in a schoolmarm's voice. “I barely saw a thing.”
“Liar. Your eyes were bugged out when they were kissing and his hand pushed up her shirt and cupped her breast.”
“It was kind of getting hot when she moaned. But then I had to look away. For God’s sake, they were in their eighties!”
“I know, wasn’t that great?”
“Ryker, I don’t think it’s appropriate when I see teenagers doing that kind of thing in public, but grandparents?”
“I’m telling you, it’s great. That’s who I want to be when I grow up. I want to still be so hot for my wife that I can’t stop myself from feeling her up in public.”
He watched Amy’s eyes get as big as saucers. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m dead serious. Think about it, Amy. We talk a lot about growing old together, having shared interests, things like that. I want a marriage like those two have.”
“What makes you think they’re married?”
“Didn’t you see their wedding bands? And we’re not talking that she has some blinged-out engagement ring, I’m talking each of them with plain gold bands that you know they got sixty years ago. They probably still gripe about how he leaves the toilet seat up, and she puts the remote someplace that he can’t find it. Yet, here they are for some kind of special night, making out. That’s what I want to have.”
He watched her considering his words, and slowly she smiled, her eyes going wistful. “Do you really think that’s possible?”
“I’ve seen my grandparents, and I know damn well it’s possible, and it’s what I want, and I’m holding out until I find the woman who will give me that.”
Then like some kind of night-blooming flower that is touched by the sun, she closed up. “I hope you do.”
