Okay.
All right.
Okay.
Crap.
I was thinking I was about to bust out in tears.
“Willow?”
“That works for me,” I said throatily.
Hearing my tone, Gabe reached out and grabbed my hand. He brought it to him and pressed it to his chest. Then he kept hold of it and held it on his thigh.
That nearly made me break down too.
I held it together as he wisely didn’t even bother trying to park in Ingo’s lot and went directly to the spill-over lot. He held my hand as we walked the block back to the restaurant.
And I was having another moment about how much I liked he was decisive.
There wasn’t a twenty-minute conversation that was a lot of “What do you want? No, what do you want?” He picked a place that served great food and had a menu where you could rest assured you’d find something you wanted.
I was evidently not done with tuna, because I got the tuna sandwich. Gabe made the excellent selection of their chicken sammy. He augmented this with their devilled eggs. He told me he’d never tried their tuna, so we went halfsies with the sandwiches, and I considered avowals of love at getting to eat both Ingo’s tuna and their chicken all during one dunch.
We ate on their patio.
I filled him in on the briefing. We talked about Raye and Cap. I told him how cool I thought it was that Ava was going to design Alexis and Jacob’s invitations, and the Rock Chicks were going to kick in from afar like that, not to mention NI&S were going to pay for the booze.
He told me he’d done “jack shit” that day, except watch some pregame shows and football.
I did not miss he got a lot of attention from women.
What I also didn’t miss, but had never noticed before, was that I was getting attention from men.
Gabe didn’t miss this either, and even though I ignored the women, he had no compunction to outright stare down the men.
This he did.
And you could just say the speed with which they backed down when Gabriel Stark shot them the evil eye was brisk.
It was all kinds of hot.
He took me to Churn after and got me a hot fudge sundae. I enjoyed the view of him eating a bespoke ice cream cookie sandwich.
Then we walked hand and hand to his Jeep in order to go to his and chill.
And it was only when I was in his Jeep and we were headed to the thrilling next chapter of us where I’d see his place, that I realized, Gabriel Stark didn’t ask me out on a date.
There was no fretting about what I would wear and if I’d spill something on it.
There was no mindfuck about who was going to pay (I’d already learned after he slashed a look at me when I went for my wallet at Beckett’s Table that he was old school about that and there was no discussion) and what was going to be expected after.
But we’d still just had our first date.
It was hassle-free. It was lowkey. It was fun. We were out on the town and out in the world. The food was great. Once we settled in, he didn’t talk much, but he didn’t make me feel like I was jabbering.
It was the best date I ever had.
