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“To do dishes,” she finished for me.
We shared a quick laugh at her funny retort.
“Gina and I may not have lasted, but she taught me a lot about food, and I realized I enjoyed eating like this.” I waved at the fancy table set with real china and crystal. “The food tastes better. I think it’s a backlash from military life where the food was crap and served like slop. Back then, I covered everything in hot sauce to choke it down.”
“And the books, hers too?” Lee wandered to a bookshelf in the living room. Onyx and I followed behind her. I couldn’t help but check out her ass. The silky material of her dress highlighted the luscious globes perfectly. She was a work of art.
A flush of embarrassment heated my face when she tugged a worn Deepak Chopra book out of the stack and flipped it over to read the back.
Her eyes moved from the dust jacket to my face, realization dawning. “These are yours?”
I shrugged. “People are fascinating. I think if I hadn’t gone into the Navy, I might have been a shrink or a sociologist. I read self-help, psychology, even personal empowerment. Understanding how we think is a powerful tool. Some people go to therapy. I read about it.”
“Mind over matter and all that.” She put the book back on the shelf.
“Yes, and all that.” I ushered her away from the shelves and toward the kitchen, where I had a spread of appetizers waiting, along with a new dog bed and a water bowl for Onyx. The dog wasn’t shy. He sniffed the bed, made two turns, and flopped down with a happy sigh. The balloon attack obviously took it out of him.
“Onyx and I say thank you. That is above and beyond.” Her broad smile made my heart flip over in my chest. I liked it way too much. Whatever was going on with us was a minefield of cataclysmic proportion, and I was blindly racing across it, probably destined to be blown to smithereens.
“He deserves a nice bed. He takes good care of you.”
“Him and all his predecessors.” She sat on a stool at the kitchen island.
“What’s with the dogs? Y’all didn’t have them in Oklahoma.”
“I’ve had guard dogs since…” She paused for a moment, considering her answer. “Real answer or what I tell everyone else?”
“I’d like the truth.”
“Pour me a glass of wine first.”
I made quick work of filling a glass with a nice dry white from Italy for her. It would go well with the fish I planned on grilling later. I took a small splash for myself and sat, putting the tray of cheese and cold cured meats in front of us on the counter.
“My ex-husband wasn’t a good man. When I told him I’d filed for divorce, he registered his displeasure by putting me in the hospital. I never went back to him.”
She stared at her wine glass and absentmindedly touched a small lump on the bridge of her nose with her index finger. An old break.
Rage burned deep in my stomach. I vowed that, given the opportunity, I would beat Lee’s ex to within an inch of death for what he’d done to her. And I was sure Ray would urge me on from the afterlife.
I caught her hand and moved it away from her face. Her fingers were icy. I turned her wrist up and brushed my lips over the exposed pulse point before lacing my fingers with hers and putting our hands on my knee. She gave me a bittersweet smile and squeezed.
“On the way home from the hospital, I stopped at the pound and adopted the meanest dog they’d let me take home. I spent the first weeks hand-feeding Rocky every meal to earn his trust. He didn’t have the training like Onyx, but he did his job. I took him everywhere with me. Rocky and a .22 in my purse.”
“This was all up in New Jersey?”
“Yes. When I ran my first pawn shop. Leaving Tony was the start of me wanting something more. Something better. I reinvented myself, moved to Florida, and the rest is, as they say, history.”
I lifted my glass to toast, and she followed suit. “To forging a path.”
“Cheers.”
I was curious about her path to becoming a fence and how it related to her ex but didn’t dare ask. The questions could ruin the night. We weren’t fighting. It was nice. Beyond nice, it was exactly what I’d hoped for all afternoon since her text.
As I finished prepping the meal, we talked about random topics from the projects I had left to complete this house flip—a guest bath and the landscaping—to how she spent her fortieth birthday—in the Florida Keys drinking wine and having epiphanies she wouldn’t share.
Dinner followed the same pattern. Chitchat and an occasional important conversation. Lots of laughs. Reminiscing about her mom and even Ray. Old friends reacquainted. I was careful to sidestep any conversational landmines that could spoil the night.
But below it all was a growing tension—attraction.
