Page 20 of Hard to Lose

I don’t get nervous before dates. I never have. I know that’s arrogant of me but doesn’t that simply say more about me than the guy I’m meeting? That dating is simply a source of fun and definitely not something I look at as using to find my match or mate or whatever ridiculous colloquial term people use. Soulmate is the one my sisters prefer, and that term just makes me nauseous.

Soulmate. Meh. No thanks.

But turning the corner to where Grandy’s is located, I swear my breath hitches when I see Gunner standing there. He’s got a pair of faded jeans on, brown boots, and a dark-blue T-shirt hangs loosely against his broad chest. His smile is wide and his free hand is gesticulating wildly as he takes the hand of an elderly woman and helps her down the curb. She’s about half his height and definitely more than triple his age, but he jokes with her as he opens her car door for her.

The sight makes me smile. He’s not at a bar paying attention to customers. He’s not trying to pick me up. He’s being kind when he doesn’t know he has an audience. That’s a good measure of a man, and one that makes me glad I said yes to meeting with him.

Gunner waves goodbye to the woman who can barely see over the steering wheel and then notices me standing there. He looks startled, but his smile widens to epic proportions when he sees me.

“You showed,” he says and pulls me in for a warm and unexpected hug. He smells nice, his chest is firm, and his arms make me feel safe.

Safe?

That’s the oddest thought, and I push away as soon as I realize it, but now it’s at the forefront in my mind.

“You say that like you’re surprised I did,” I murmur when he steps back, and I angle my head up to meet his eyes.

“I am.” He says it just like that. No games. No dancing around the truth. New York City men could take a cue from the man in front of me.

“Really? You could have asked for my phone number last night, and then you would have known for sure that I was.”

“I didn’t figure you for the type who’d hand it out.”

“Is that so?”

“Mm-hmm.” He fights a smile.

“What did you figure me for, then?”

His gaze devours me deliciously, as it runs down the length of my body before coming back up to meet my amused eyes.

“You’re definitely independent—”

“What makes you think that?”

“It takes guts for a woman to walk into a bar on her own that she most likely knows is going to be full of horny servicemen.”

“I trusted they’d be able to control themselves,” I say, noticing that the brown in his eyes have the coolest flecks of gold in them.

“I was ready to jump in and protect you should they not have—but then again, you would have been insulted, as that would have implied that I didn’t think you could take care of yourself.”

“I wouldn’t have been insulted.” He stares at me as if he’s questioning that comment, and I laugh. “Maybe. Perhaps.”

“Definitely.”

“I’ll give you that,” I say. We stand with goofy grins on our faces outside Grandy’s, where people are coming and going constantly in and out of the ice cream parlor.

“Thank you for coming,” he murmurs, breaking the silence.

“Thank you for asking me.”

“Shall we get going?” he asks and holds his hand out to me.

I stare at his hand for the slightest of seconds, not used to this simple gesture, and loving it all the more because of it.

Men back home don’t do this.

Correction, the men that I’ve dated back home don’t do that. Almost as if the old-school gesture isn’t hip enough.