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She’s stiff at first, maybe tired from all of the day’s travel. But a few glasses of wine in, and she and I have found our way back to being comfortable with each other. The way we were that night when the power went out, and she tried to teach me how to draw in front of my fireplace.
Before I know it, I’m telling her a story about the time Dad and I flew out to see a Colorado Coyotes game for my twelfth birthday, and I got hit in the head with a fly ball.
“No! Oh, you poor thing!” Violet’s hands fly to her mouth like she’s trying to hold her laughter in.
I grin. “Don’t feel too bad. The team medic had me and my dad come back to his work area so he could check me for concussion signs. I had a mild one. The player who hit the ball felt so bad that after the game, he and his girlfriend popped in to visit me.”
“You got to meet your hero,” she says.
“To be honest, I was a bit preoccupied with his girlfriend. I thought she was the prettiest woman I’d ever seen. I think I might have asked her to marry me?”
She laughs, delighted. “And here I thought I was your first proposal.”
“You’re the first woman I’ve asked post-puberty and un-concussed,” I say dryly.
Violet tilts her head, looking mischievous. “This girlfriend. Was she wearing a Coyotes jersey?”
Her mouth looks so soft in the dim restaurant lighting, that I’m having a hard time focusing on the words coming out of it. “What? Oh. Yeah. I think so.”
“That explains it,” she says, sipping her wine. The movement draws my gaze to her throat, and I lose a few brain cells thinking about the sounds she made when I kissed her there.
“Explains what?” I ask, trying to pretend I’m not fantasizing about fucking Violet right here in this restaurant.
“The way you’ve been looking at me. You’ve got a thing for women in jerseys. You imprinted young, poor thing.” She smiles, teasing.
Suddenly I’m hit with a vision of her standing in front of her easel, wearing nothing but my jersey and those little red panties of hers.
Her smile fades under the weight of my silence.
“I’m not looking at you any more than I normally do,” I say, my voice gruff and hungry.
She looks away. “I know. I’m just teasing. I know you don’t want...”
You have no idea what I want,I think.
As the waiter sets our food in front of us, Violet clears her throat and changes the subject. “That’s a nice story about your dad. Did he always do something special for your birthday?”
“Every year until he passed,” I say, cutting my steak. “I think he felt bad that he wasn’t around more. But running Crawford Industries took up a lot of his time.”
“Still. It’s nice that he made time to take you to games.” She lifts her glass of wine in a toast to me. “Just think, when you buy the team, you can take your kids to watch the game with you.”
For a second, I’m hit with an image of taking a small child in a baseball hat to a Coyotes game. Except the kid in this scenario has dark brown hair and very familiar big hazel eyes.
“I’m not having kids,” I say firmly. I loved my dad, but I don’t want to bring a kid into the world just to spend most of my life too busy to spend time with them. And if something happened to me, Idefinitelydon’t want to leave another fatherless son behind to pick up the pieces.
“Oh.” Violet looks down at her food.
Does she look...disappointed?
I clear my throat. “It’s not that I don’t like kids—”
“No, I get it,” Violet says. “I want kids, but I absolutely agree that if someone doesn’t want kids, they shouldn’t be pressured into having them. It’s hell on everybody.”
I set down my fork. “It sounds like there’s a story.”
She smiles wistfully and shrugs. “It was pretty obvious my dad didn't want kids. My mom did her best to make up for it, but kids can tell when their dad doesn’t actually like spending time with them.”
I feel a spurt of rage. Violet and Tom are two of the best people I know. I hate the idea of either of them growing up feeling unwanted.
