Page 20 of Mountains Divide Us

With his elbows still on the table and his hands clasped together, he rubbed his chin slowly against his thumbs while he awaited my answer, eyes narrowed a bit, like he was calculating the chances that I’d give in.

Something about him made me want to please him. “Fine. Deal.” I relented and smiled. “Thank you.”

He straightened and smiled, too, a satisfied easing of a stress in his mouth, and in that small movement was the answer to my question. That was why I’d wanted to please him—to see his smile.

He’d only shown it to me a few times over the last year, once earlier today, when we’d agreed to dinner.

The sexy tilt of his lips was accompanied by more lines around his eyes and on his forehead, beneath the silver of his salt-and-pepper hair. It was cut into a military kind of style, but a lot longer on the top than an enlisted soldier, and it made me want to run my fingers through it. Was it coarse or soft? The hair on the sides and back of his neck had been shaved short, though, and it suited him, like he preferred things to be tidy and easy to control so they’d fit exactly in place.

Those lines around his eyes as his smile softened reminded me of the ever-present question in my mind. I blurted, “How old are you?”

The waiter interrupted before Frank could answer, and when I looked up at him, I remembered his name. “Jason, right? I remember now.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“You came to the library looking for books for your psychology dissertation.”

“Yep.” After setting two empty wine glasses in front of us, he placed a wooden platter in the middle of the table that was topped with a large piece of artisan bread on a bed of fresh rosemary along with two small ramekins filled with butter. He wore black skinny jeans under his plum-colored server’s apron, and his highlighted brown hair was curly and carefree. He was obviously closer to my age than Frank was, and it made me wonder what Frank thought about our age difference.

“Well, how’d it turn out?” I asked. “Your paper?”

“Good. I graduated before Christmas.” He smiled at me and tilted his head a little. “You had just moved here. Am I remembering that right?”

“That’s right,” I said. “A little over a year ago now. Almost a year and a half.”

He turned toward Frank. “And this is your f—?”

“You remember me, don’tcha, little Jason Dobbs?” Frank interrupted in his serious deputy voice. I thought Jason was about to be read his rights. “Do believe I arrested you a few years ago for disorderly conduct at the Fourth of July festival. Didn’t you get drunk and urinate on a tree in the middle of town?”

It looked like poor Jason was choking on his own tongue. “Um, yeah. I mean, yes, sir. I’m sorry about that.” He stepped back, lifting a tablet almost in front of his red face. “Are you ready to order, sir?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

FRANK

Her father?

Definitely not the role I was aiming for.

The flirting idiot took our order—shrimp scampi for Samantha and steak for me. She ordered a glass of merlot, and I kept my water, and when he slithered away, she picked up right where she’d left off.

“So,” she said again, “how old are you?”

My age wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about, but the difference between us was beginning to glare. Our moron of a server looked like he was a better fit for Samantha’s date than I was, by a mile.

No sense hiding it from her. “I’ll be forty-nine in a week.”

She gasped. “Forty-n—” If the red flush spreading across her cheeks was any indication, I was right that the gap between our ages was wide open. Maybe I should’ve looked up her background at the station before our date tonight so I could’ve been prepared, but it would’ve been a violation of her privacy.

“Frank,” she whispered, looking around, making sure no one could hear her. “I’m thirty. Or I will be, also next week.”

Okay, so nineteen years was a bit of a difference. I’d probably be six feet under by the time she reached my age.

Shit. She was only five years older than half my age. “When’s your birthday?”

The warmth in her eyes when she smiled at me, though, was making it easier by the minute to ignore that fact. To try to forget our differences. But then I smiled, too, ’cause I just knew she was about to say—

“February seventeenth.”

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