Chapter 31

Sawyer

As promised, I take Elle out to dinner on Wednesday night.

We leave Madden and Jonah with Brooks. Brooks grumbles a bit when he finds out I’m leaving him in charge of both boys, but I can tell he’s secretly thrilled to participate in their Nerf gun fight. He gazes down at the Nerf machine gun that Jonah has lent him, looking like a boy at Christmas, and by the time I leave, he’s chasing the boys around the house, bellowing nerfy death threats.

Elle had offered to walk Madden over, but I told her I wanted it to be a real date, by which I meant that I would ring her front doorbell and escort her to my truck.

The truth is, I want the chance to start over and do things right. We did everything backwards—crazy monkey sex first, foreplay after, getting to know each other third. But now I have a chance to make up for it. I can take her on a real first date, woo her, seduce her, treat her the way she deserves.

She opens the door wearing a blue dress made out of some soft-looking knitted fabric, with a deep scoop neck. Her skin is pale, pure porcelain where the sun hasn’t touched it, lightly freckled above, and I want to bury my face—actually, pretty much my whole self—in those generous curves.

Apparently, no matter how much I want to give her the first date she deserves, I can’t turn off my body’s caveman response to hers.

“You look amazing,” I tell her. I hold out the big bunch of black-eyed Susans in my hand. Her eyes get big and her lower lip trembles as she reaches out to take them.

“You brought me flowers.”

I think, Trevor Thomas is the world’s biggest asshole.

She runs inside to put the flowers in water, then comes back, beaming at me.

That fucking smile. I’d bring her another ten bunches to see her smile like that again and again.

She gives me a once-over. “You look pretty great yourself.”

I’m wearing a pair of gray slacks and a button-down shirt. Nothing special, but I’ll happily take the way her eyes rake over me.

She locks up the house and follows me to the truck, where I open the door for her, then stand back and not-so-surreptitiously watch her climb up.

She’s wearing high-heeled sandals that tip her ass up and make her calves even more shapely than usual. The flirty skirt of the blue dress skims her thighs, milk pale and so soft I can barely keep myself from reaching out to stroke the skin on the inner surface.

“Are you looking up my skirt?” she inquires.

Honesty is the best policy, especially when you’ve been caught out. “Yes.”

She casts a wink and a smile over her shoulder at me, then flips up the back of her skirt so quickly I catch only a fleeting glance of red lace against pale skin before she hops up into the truck.

Elle has changed since I met her at Maeve’s. She was subdued that night, sad, with a streak of darkness and an air of defeat. Tonight she is all lightness and fun, and I want to take as much of it into me as I can. Or—my dick hardens in anticipation—submerge myself in her. Not that that will happen tonight. I’m determined to keep to our schedule: foreplay tonight, the real thing this weekend when we have time to enjoy each other. Brooks will stay tonight with Madden and Jonah as late as we want, but tomorrow morning, Elle and I need to wake up in our own beds.

That doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time. I want the word foreplay to take on a whole new meaning for her.

Once we’ve reached Il Capriccio, I help Elle out of the truck cab. She jumps down and slides her body the length of mine, setting me on fire. The impish look she gives me—meant to do that—doesn’t hurt, either.

At least she’s affected by the contact, too. As she rights herself, her nipples poke through the clingy material of her dress. I want to reach out and thumb one to even greater attention, but I remind myself of my mission here. Best first date ever.

Il Capriccio is in a turn-of-the-century farmhouse, rustic but elegant, with cream walls, dark trim, and dusky mood lighting. We’re escorted to a table for two lit with real candles, and I pull Elle’s chair out for her.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, sitting.

I sit across from her. The golden glow flickers across her cheekbones and settles in the yellow of her hair, creating high and low lights I wouldn’t have guessed were there.

“Do you know how long it’s been since anyone took me out for a candlelit dinner?” she asks.

“I rest my case. Trevor Thomas is the world’s biggest asshole. Shit. I just said that out loud.”

She giggles.

“And you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

She goes quiet. We both sit there with that sentence, and all that it implies.

It’s like getting stuck in a riptide, the ocean pushing me forward and sucking me down and back. There’s grief and guilt and loss, and then there’s the simple truth of Elle, sitting in front of me, so stunning in the dim light of dancing flame I can’t take my eyes off her.

She ducks her chin, her eyes averted. “You don’t have to say that.”

What’s the thing about a riptide? If you struggle against it, if you try to resist it directly, you tire and drown. The trick is to swim sideways.

The way back to life isn’t a straight line.

I let the grief and the guilt finish washing over me, and then I reach out and take Elle’s small, cool hand in mine.

“You know me pretty well by now,” I say.

She nods. Her eyes are still and bright on my face, her expression wary. I want to wipe the wariness away.

“I don’t talk much.”

She nods again.

“And I sure as fuck don’t say shit I don’t mean.”