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Just hearing him list all the meetings and interviews filling his calendar made her tired. “So basically you have something scheduled for every day next week,” she said after the waitress set down their main dishes. “How are you going to manage all that and work?”
“Creative scheduling as well as a lot of late nights and early mornings.” He placed his napkin on his lap and picked up his fork. “This looks amazing. If it tastes as good as it looks, I’ll have to thank Sean for telling me about this restaurant.”
Jen followed his lead and picked up her fork as well. She agreed, the osso buco she’d ordered looked and smelled divine. “And when do you plan on sleeping?”
“After I win the election.” He sounded a little too serious for her peace of mind.
“I’m not joking.” She sliced a corner off her braised veal shank and waited for his reply.
Brett’s hand paused with his fork almost to his mouth. “I wasn’t either. You’d be surprised how little sleep a body can get by on.”
Jen understood and respected his ambition, but no one could keep up the pace he was facing and stay healthy. “Brett, everyone needs some downtime. And I don’t mean just sleep. Some time to relax and unwind is important too.” She put her fork down because dinner could wait. This was a serious discussion. “You’re no different. I think you need to take a step back for a minute. Perhaps consider taking a leave of absence from Homeland. I think they’d understand considering the circumstances.”
His expression became grim, and he stopped eating. “Carl made a similar suggestion over lunch yesterday. I’ll keep it in mind.”
He sounded sincere, but for some reason she got the impression he was simply telling her what she wanted to hear. “Promise?”
Brett nodded, but she wasn’t quite ready to let him off the hook. In many ways, Brett was like her dad and brother. They were all stubborn men who did things their way no matter anyone’s opinion.
“Do you pinkie promise?”
Bella had asked her the same thing Sunday. Before Jen left with Bo, Bella had made her pinkie promise to let the dog stay with her again soon.
“A pinkie promise sounds serious.” His hand slipped over hers. “And not something I’d enter into with just anyone.” A grin broke free and overtook his features. “But I’ll do it for you.”
Jen raised the pinkie finger on her free hand and held it toward him. When he merely reached for his fork again, she said, “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“I don’t think so.”
She wiggled her finger in the air, assuming he’d catch on.
“Something wrong with your finger?” he asked instead.
She thought she caught a twinkle of laughter in his eyes, but at the same time it might only be the candle flame playing tricks on her. “A proper pinkie promise entails joining our fingers. Now let’s see your finger, unless you didn’t mean what you said.”
Brett met her demand and linked his finger with hers. “In case you hadn’t already figured this out, I always mean what I say.”
His words sent a shiver of excitement down her spine. His voice told her he wasn’t referring to just his promise to consider taking a leave from his job until after the election.
***
Jen took a third bite of her dessert and pushed the plate away. “This is amazing, but I can’t eat another bite.” She shouldn’t have ordered dessert in the first place. Her dinner had more than filled her up. When the waitress brought the tray over, her sweet tooth had taken over and prompted her to order the limoncello panna cotta with wild blueberry glaze despite her better judgment.
Across the table, Brett’s dessert was already more than half gone. Exactly where he managed to put all the food was a mystery. Unlike her, he’d finished his main meal before indulging in the large chocolate torte he ordered.
“Any ideas of how you’d like to spend the rest of the night?” Brett asked, his fork already heading for his plate and the last piece of his dessert.
“If it was a little earlier and I had on more comfortable shoes, I’d say walk around the city. This is my first time to Salem.” She’d come straight from work. Although she wasn’t wearing heels—she rarely did—the sling-back flats she had one were not designed for long, leisurely strolls.
“First? You’ve never come up at Halloween time?”
“Nope. Until I moved to Rhode Island ten years ago, I didn’t spend much time in New England. When I did come, it was usually at Christmas to see my grandparents.”
Brett signed the bill their waitress handed him. “This October we’ll have to rectify that. Salem embraces Halloween like no other place I know. All set?”
Come October he’d be neck-deep in his campaign. Finding time for them to meet and visit the city might be out of the question. While she recognized this, she kept it to herself. “Similar to the way New Orleans celebrates Mardi Gras?” she asked, pushing her chair back.
“I don’t think any city or town in the country embraces a holiday the way New Orleans does when it comes to Mardi Gras.” He put his arm around her waist and started toward the exit. “Experienced it once, and that was enough for me. Halloween in Salem, though, I could do again.”
