Because what if?—
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her chin lifts, but the mischief doesn’t disappear. A good fucking thing too because it snaps me out of the bullshit in my head.
“You don’t?” I let my hand continue trailing down, brushing our fingers together, loving the way she shivers.
And I’m not enough of a gentleman to miss that the hard peaks of her nipples are pressing against the fabric of her dress.
“Are you cold?” I ask pointedly.
Her eyes narrow, and she jerks her hand back, mouth opening, but before whatever razor-sharp response she’s come up with can shoot off the tip of her tongue, I hear,
“Jace!”
I glance to the side and hop to my feet. “Dean,” I grin, shaking his hand when he extends it toward me and then dropping my voice to murmur for his ears only, “Thanks for this.”
He leans back, winks. “You owe me one.” Then he’s rotating toward Marie, turning on the Italian charm. “And who is this beautiful creature?”
Creature?
Shit.
I brace for explosion—or at least for Marie’s trademark sass. I already owe Dean one for literally creating a table for us tonight in his already full restaurant. I don’t really want to have to come up with another form of repayment—or a dozen because when Marie gets going, shereallygets going.
But my bracing and the potential interjections that fill my brain in the split second after Dean’s question aren’t needed.
Marie blushes.
Actuallyblushes, pink spreading prettily on her cheeks.
“I’m Marie,” she murmurs, lifting her hand and then—what the actual fuck?—notsocking Dean in the face when he lifts it to his lips and presses a kiss to the back of it.
“Lovely to meet you,” he says, “and may I just say that your perfume is intoxicating?”
The fucker, especially the way he lingers close to her, inhaling.
I jerk forward, just barely stopping myself from ripping his arm away from her.
I don’t care that Dean is sixty if he’s a day. If he doesn’t stop touching her, I swear to fuck I’ll?—
He drops his arm and, thankfully, my blood pressure follows suit, head and temper clearing enough so I don’t have to be the one at fault for repaying Dean those dozen favors. “This man”—a jerk of his head toward me—“never brings women here?—”
Yeah, because I’ve never been this obsessed with one.
“—so you must be really special.”
Fuck.She is. But also, I basically goaded her into the date because she’s so gun shy. I don’t need Dean running her off.
“Oh,” Marie says, her gaze flicking to mine, but only for a heartbeat. Then it goes back to Dean’s, and I’m left wondering if the flicker of softness I saw in those emerald depths was real…or if I’m so pathetic that I imagined it.
I don’t get the chance to sit in that.
Because Dean’s still talking.
“What do you like to eat,amore?”
She nibbles at the corner of her mouth, expression turning shy. “Anything.”
“Tsk, tsk,” he says. “There has to be a favorite.”
