CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
flew up the 101 in Dax's sleek convertible laughing and talking about California living and growing up on the south side of Los Angeles. Dax didn't give too many specifics about his childhood, but then neither did I, so I figured we were both just settling into getting to know each other.
He'd made reservations at Beso on Hollywood Boulevard, and when we got there the hostess quickly seated us in a private booth at the back of the dining area. I raised an eyebrow at the royal treatment, but he just waved me off and laughed about them mistaking him for someone famous.
"You must get that a lot, then," I laughed.
"Yeah, sometimes," he said somewhat seriously. "It's just that when you own a club in Los Angeles, everyone wants to know you, and then you have to be friendly and open about it on some level. It's like being a celebrity, but without the benefits."
"I'd never thought of it that way," I said as I scanned the menu. I really was hungry, but I didn't want to stuff myself the way I would have if I'd been down at the Long Island Diner on Main digging into a plate of mashed potatoes and meatloaf. "What are you having?"
"Steak and potatoes," he grinned. "I'm a meat man, I like thick and juicy cuts."
"Are we still talking about dinner?" I asked with a half grin.
"I don't know, are we?" he said as he looked at me in a way that made my pulse start racing. He had to be one of the sexiest men I'd ever met, and I wasn't sure if he knew the effect he was having on me. I looked back down at my menu and decided that I'd have steak and potatoes as well.
"I believe we are," I smiled. "I'm going to have the same thing. Medium rare, please."
The server came over and poured two glasses of cabernet and Dax offered a toast, "Here's to fortuitous meetings and tipsy women who agree to dinner."
"You're quite a toast maker, Malone," I laughed. "Where did you learn that skill?"
"Ahh, the background grilling," he grinned. "You're going to dig into my formative years and figure out where I came from and how I became who I am."
"No, I'm just going to figure out what's true and what's fiction," I replied as I sipped my wine, then grinning over the edge of my glass I said, "I'm a lawyer not a shrink."
"Brooke, you are a piece of work," he chortled as he met my gaze and sipped from his glass. I couldn't help but watch his lips curl around the rim of the glass and wonder what they'd feel like pressed against my own. My heart fluttered in my chest as I pictured his hands slipping into my hair and holding my head as he kissed me hard and deep. "Brooke?"
"I'm sorry, what?" I said flustered at being caught in an unplanned daydream. I was going to have to control my baser impulses if I was going to get anywhere with Dax.
"I was asking where you went to law school," he said.
"Oh, I went to UCLA for both undergrad and my J.D.," I replied.
"And?" he asked.
"And what?"
"And how did you get interested in law? Are your parents lawyers?" he asked patiently. I felt so exposed. Like he knew what effect he was having on me and was playing it to his advantage. I needed to channel my lawyer persona and get back in the game.
"No, my dad is a reporter for the Times and my mom is a high school math teacher at Lincoln," I said. "I'm not sure how I got interested in the law, honestly. It just seemed like the right thing to do. I'd always been a kid who fought for justice."
"Oh, so a real Cesar Chavez, eh?"
"Hardly," I laughed. "I'm not good at the field work, I have no patience for injustice at that level and I always end up fighting until I get myself in trouble."
"You got in trouble? I can't even imagine," he said.
"Oh God, I think one of the reasons I went into law was because my dad asked me to stop calling him to bail me out of jail," I said. "I'd go to a protest and even when the tactic was to protest in silence, I'd end up speaking out and sassing a police officer or a government official, and someone would eventually identify me as the instigator and I'd get hauled away."
"So, you're saying you have a bit of a temper?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
"I wouldn't say I have a temper, per se," I explained. "I'd say that I have a very sensitive trigger button, and that I don't have a good poker face. My mom always said that if I could have kept my expressions blank and my thoughts to myself, I'd have done great things in the protest movement."
"Sensitive trigger button, eh?" he raised and eyebrow. "Are we still talking about injustice?"
"Very funny, Mr. Malone," I said as I watched the server place an enormous plate of meat and perfectly sculpted mashed potatoes down in front of me. The smell of the perfectly charred meat made my mouth water.
"What about you, how did you become a hugely popular club owner?" I asked as I dug into the meal in front of me.
"I grew up with a grandmother who owned a grocery store, so I knew what it was like to be on call seven days a week," he said as he cut off a piece of juicy meat and brought it to his mouth. I watched as he put the fork between his lips and pulled the steak off of it. Again, my pulse raced and I looked back down at my plate and nodded. "I always said that I'd own my own business, but when I did, it would be something more glamorous and less tedious overhead."
"So, you decided that a night club would be easier. Is it?"
"In many ways it's way easier than stocking a neighborhood bodega," he admitted as he scooped up a forkful of creamy potatoes and made quick work of them. "It's a little more glamorous, but it's also time consuming and not quite as sexy as you might believe."
"Oh really, why not?" I asked as I cut into my steak and watched the juices spill onto my plate.
"Um, well, it's a lot of late nights and a lot of security issues to manage," he said. "When I started Apex, I was young and inexperienced, and I really thought it was going to be like in the movies."
"Oh wow, no one ever talks about that side of it," I laughed out loud as he admitted this.
"Yeah, I was young and stupid," he grinned sheepishly. "I thought me and my friends would be partying all night with gorgeous women and lots of high-end booze."
"And what happened?"
"Well, I'm here having dinner with a gorgeous woman," he smiled. "So, there's that."
"Thank you," I smiled as I tried to remind myself not to get caught up in his seduction. The lights in the restaurant had been dimmed to the point that the single candle in the middle of the table was really the only source of light, and made it more tempting to lean closer than if we'd been in a more well-lit environment.
"But it ended up being more like constant work," he shrugged. "My friends were disappointed that it wasn't more exciting and mad that they weren't actually getting laid."
"And you? How did you feel about it?"
"I did what I had to do," he shrugged again. "I worked. I had my brother to support, so I didn't have the option of just backing out and doing something else. I had to make the club successful or I would have lost my initial investment."
"Oh, you put a lot down on the club?" I asked.
"Well, enough to allow me to get a thirty-year mortgage," he said. "It wasn't a lot, but enough."
"I guess I thought that a high-end club would require a huge investment," I probed. I knew what I was doing but I wasn't quite sure where I was headed with this line of questioning.
"It was a huge loan for a twenty-year-old kid, that's for sure," he said. "But I'd learned a lot about business working with my Gran, so I knew what I could get away with and what had to be done." Dax sensed that I was after something and shifted into the role of someone being cross-examined. I knew I was going to have to take it back down to flirting or I'd lose him.
"So what you're saying is that you're the kind of guy who should be running the country?" I asked.
"Hardly," he laughed. "I'm not very presidential, more like a benevolent dictator."
"I'm sure you're a lot better than that," I laughed with him. "So, what does your brother do?"
"Um, he's figuring things out," Dax said in a vague way as he reached for the wine bottle and offered me more.
"Yes, please," I nodded. "But don't let me do any shots tonight."
"Heaven forbid," he smiled. I got the feeling that he didn't want to talk about his brother, so I changed the topic.
"And what do you do for fun?"
"Fun? What is this fun that you speak of?" he grinned.
"Oh c'mon, you have to do something for fun," I pushed. "Like painting pottery or tending a Zen garden or rappelling down the sides of mountains."
"Those all sound like wonderful hobbies, and ones I'm sure that you excel at, being the accomplished person that you are," he said as he finished the last bite of his steak. "But I don't do much except work. There doesn't seem to be enough time in the day to cultivate hobbies."
"Maybe you should think about it," I smiled.
"Are we still talking about hobbies?" he asked as he leaned across the table and came dangerously close to crossing my carefully constructed boundary.