“You’re damn right it’s good,” Miguel huffed and then stomped back to the kitchen.
“Back to talking,” Nick prodded.
“Hang on. Between your dad’s calamari and your sangria, I’m having a mouth orgasm.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with my dad being involved with your orgasm.”
She wrinkled her nose in that adorable way of hers and snickered. “Okay. Fine. Back to talking.”
“Do you have any questions about whatever you saw when you were drunk spelunking in my head?” He asked his plate the question, not really wanting to make eye contact when he felt so exposed.
“You feel responsible for what happened to Beth,” she said.
He shrugged and pulled one of the fried rings apart.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Is that a prediction or a pep talk?”
“Maybe a little bit of both,” she mused. “But the bottom line is, you weren’t the one to take her. That’s who should get the blame.”
“I may not have abducted her. But I sure as hell didn’t protect her.”
“You tried. She didn’t make it easy. And I haven’t made it easy either.”
He rubbed a hand over his forehead. “No, you haven’t.”
“I think if we would have talked like this before, maybe I would have been more sensitive to your feelings.”
“I’m not the kind of guy who needs someone to be sensitive to my feelings,” he insisted.
“Maybe only in certain limited circumstances,” she revised.
He could accept that. “So now you know what you mean to me and how important your safety is to me,” Nick said. “And you know if you put yourself in a situation like that again, I’m going to murder you myself.”
“That’s fair.”
“Now it’s your turn,” he instructed.
“My turn?”
“I told you what I want from you. Now you tell me what you want from me.”
She looked at him over the rim of her glass. Her brown eyes warm and sparkling. “More,” she said.
“More what? Calamari? Sangria?”
“More of everything with you.”
Maybe it was the sangria. Or maybe it was the two-hundred dollars in tips in his pocket. Or maybe it was the woman who wanted more than he’d ever wanted to give before. Whatever it was, he felt something warm and not at all terrible in his chest.
“Deal.”
29
10:40 p.m., Monday, August 17
“That was fun,” Riley said as they tiptoed up the back stairs of the darkened house.
