The following day, with big plans for the evening, Kate needed clothes. Instead of taking a chance on their residences being monitored and someone from Los Besos following them back to Reese’s, Jason drove her out to the Galleria, careful to be sure they weren’t being tailed on the way.
“No reason to worry at the moment,” Jase said. “We’ve been keeping a low profile. Even my office doesn’t know where we are.”
“Mine, either.”
He nodded, trusting her to make that decision. Kate realized Jase trusted her more every day.
Once inside the huge shopping mall just off the Dallas Parkway, he checked their surroundings, then left Kate in a small boutique next to two more women’s apparel shops.
“Don’t go anywhere else,” he said. “I’ll be back to get you in thirty minutes.”
Typical male. How did a woman shop for a night at a ritzy club in thirty minutes? He could just wait, she decided, until she was finished.
She bought expensive French lingerie in the first boutique, hit the jackpot at the second store with a sexy black cocktail dress. The dress was super short and fitted; narrow straps on the bodice sparkled with glittering black sequins. The outfit desperately called for a pair of black high heels, which she found at the third shop: strappy, sky-high Jimmy Choos she couldn’t afford and couldn’t resist.
At the third shop, she also found a dress on the sale rack in case they had to go back a second night. This one was pink, with a flirty little skirt trimmed in black that she could wear with the same high heels. She bought a pair of dangly rhinestone earrings, and she was set.
She was just grabbing her shopping bags to go back to the boutique when Jason appeared in the doorway. “You ready?”
“What, you aren’t going to yell at me for leaving the first store?”
His mouth edged into a grin. “You’re a woman. Women love to shop. I figured you were smart enough to stay close, and you were.”
She laughed. She glanced down at the bags he was carrying. “You going to show me what you bought?”
“Tonight,” he said. “If you’re finished, let’s go get something to eat.”
They headed for the Grand Lux Café to enjoy what so far had been, aside from a series of updates from Tabby and business calls from Kate’s office, a surprisingly normal day.
Kate ordered a delicious Asian chicken salad while Jase ordered a prime rib sandwich and fries. She wondered how a man could eat the way he did and never gain weight. But she knew he did serious workouts and kept himself in extremely good physical condition.
Which reminded her of the shower they had shared last night, and the feel of that incredible body pressing her against the wet tile walls. Her face heated up and so did other parts of her anatomy. It took a supreme effort to drag her mind back to sanity and stab a bite of lettuce.
“Have you heard from your father?” Jase asked casually, taking a drink of iced tea.
Thank God he couldn’t read her thoughts. “Just this morning, actually. When he couldn’t reach my cell, he called my office. I phoned him back before we left the apartment.”
“Everything all right?”
“He said he just wanted to say hello.”
“That’s great, Kate. It means he cares.”
“I guess. It’s hard with our lives so different.”
“Maybe you can carve out some time to go see him, meet the rest of your family.”
She’d never really thought of it that way, that she had a half sister and brother, and a stepmom, a family she had never met. Her dad had extended an invitation at the cemetery and also this morning on the phone.
“Maybe I will,” she said, taking another forkful of salad. It would give her something to do after Jason was gone. Something that would help her forget him. The salad stuck in her throat.
Jason paid the bill and they slid out of the booth, wove their way through the crowded restaurant back outside and drove back to Reese’s lavish apartment.
“This is place is really nice,” Jase said as they stepped out of the private elevator. “But it isn’t for me.”
“Too cold, right?”
He smiled. “Yeah.”
