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“I like to eat,” he said. “So how about I help you set the table and cut into that lasagna?”
“Sounds like a great idea to me. And while we are doing that, we can go back to what we did at lunch. You tell me something about you and I’ll tell you something about me. Fun things. Hobbies, likes and dislikes.”
“Again, works for me.” They got up to go to the kitchen. “It’s your turn. I said I liked to eat.”
“I like to cook,” she said.
“A perfect match then.”
She laughed. “I think you might be right.”
And he never thought that with another woman before and hoped to hell he wasn’t getting ahead of himself.
11
CHILDHOOD MEMORY
“Will you laugh at me if I said I’ve been excited about this all week?”
“No,” Cal said when he picked Mia up at her place the following Saturday. “It just tells me how much you can’t wait to spend time with me.”
She laughed at the adorable way he’d said that. The rough beard on his cheeks showed he hadn’t shaved in a few days. She noticed he did that a lot. Sometimes it was more trim, other times not there at all. Almost as if it was a last minute decision each morning when he woke up.
“There is that too,” she said, “but it has more to do with a childhood memory than anything else.”
Last weekend they’d played their game of taking turns telling each other things and somehow haunted houses came out.
She’d been once in high school with friends and Morgan. Her sister was terrified. She thought it was great.
Mia hadn’t realized how much she’d enjoyed it until Cal told her about a place he’d been a few times as a teen.
When he texted her a few days ago to say he found out that the haunted house was still there and open this weekend, and that he’d love to go if she was willing, she jumped on the opportunity to spend more time with him.
They’d gone to dinner last night and then back to her place for an hour or so, spent a lot of time making out and then he got a call about something going on at the liquor store in Albany and had to leave.
“Nothing wrong with childhood memories,” he said.
She noticed for a guy that detested Christmas so much he had no problem talking about any other memory in his life. Oftentimes with fondness too.
He was such a contradiction to her.
“No,” she said. “There isn’t. Everything okay last night?”
“Yeah,” he said. “One of the guys that was scheduled to close had a family emergency and had to leave. I have a firm rule of no one ever closing alone at any of my businesses. They know that.”
“Good for you,” she said.
“It’s a safety thing. No one can ever walk out alone. They go together. End of story. It’s one of those fireable offenses with me and I don’t have a lot.”
She squinted one eye at him. She bet he gave a lot of leeway to his staff. But he cared and not many employers did.
“I’m sure you don’t. It’s a good thing. My last job, we had a lot of issues. One of the attorneys had to call the police on a domestic violence situation. They were in the office later at night and the doors were locked, thankfully, but the guy was outside and high. He had a gun. He was threatening to break in. It helped the case more but was scary as hell.”
“Were you in the building?” he asked, frowning at her. She grabbed her jacket and turned to look at him.
“Yeah. I was on another level and locked myself in. We all had self-defense training after that though.”
“How long ago was this?” he asked.
