Page 23 of Bad & Bossy

Won’t be home until late.

Immediately, he responded.

Hot date?

I chuckled.

Something like that. I’ll fill you in later.

————

Fifteen minutes before Dana was meant to arrive, I found myself stepping foot into a restaurant I was far too intimately familiar with.

The hostess was the same woman I assumed it would be. She was always friendly with me, always professional, and of course, she remembered me.

“Mr. Pearson! So lovely to see you,” she grinned. “I was beginning to think you’d moved away.”

I smiled, shoving my hands in my pockets. “No, just busy.”

“Your table is available. I’ll move your reservation,” she said, giving me a sly little wink as she jotted something down.

I followed her to a table in the back, one I always requested. I’d wanted to be as far from the front windows as possible in case I got a little too drunk, a little too rowdy. I didn’t need it for those reasons anymore, but either way, I was flattered.

“Whiskey sour to start?” she asked as I slid into the chair.

I almost said yes. Almost. “Actually, can I get a glass of water?”

“As well as the whiskey sour?”

“Instead of it.”

She blinked, and for a moment, I think she was genuinely concerned she remembered the wrong person. “Of course. I’ll get a pitcher for the table.”

Before she could return, the door opened and a breeze blew in, taking my breath at the same moment she did.

With her hair swept up into a neat updo and a silky, strappy black dress covering her from the tips of her breasts to a couple of inches below her ass, I knew I was absolutely ruined for the evening. I held no ground as hazel eyes met mine across the room and her upper chest and cheeks darkened into a shade of pink. I had half a mind to run to her; I couldn’t wait for her to get closer.

My gaze never left her as she slowly walked toward our table. Every inch of her was explosively intoxicating. I didn’t notice the hostess dropping off the pitcher of water, the glasses, or the menus. The other people in the room faded into the background, becoming a simple, meaningless blur that I couldn’t give less of a shit about.

As she sat down in the seat next to me, her scent surrounding me in a fog of honeysuckle, I wondered if I could get drunk off of her alone.

“Hi,” she said, one brow raising. She looked me up and down, waiting for a reply, and the realization that I hadn’t spoken a single word to her yet hit me.

I cleared my throat. “Hey.”

“Stop staring at me like that,” she hissed, reaching forward over the table and picking up the pitcher. “I’m not a piece of meat.”

“I’m not staring,” I lied. I could feel the corner of my lip twitching, a smile begging to sprout. “Am I not allowed to appreciate how nice you look?”

“No, because it’s not a date.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have said that when I asked you,” I chuckled. I lifted the pitcher from her hands and poured us each a glass of water. “Fatal mistake on my part.”

“I wouldn’t have come if you didn’t say it,” she retorted.

I couldn’t help but watch her as she flipped open the menu, her delicate little fingers wrapping themselves around it gently. Seeing those same fingers brought back too many images, nails painted a slightly different shade of red, wrapped around the shaft of my cock instead.

I knew she was mad. I knew that in the pit of my stomach and in the way she glared at me from the corner of her eye. That moment of joking earlier was a blip. I’d royally fucked up with her, worse than I had with any woman in my life, and although I knew I’d said some awful things to her after the glass shattered that fucking awful morning, they had vanished for me the moment they left my lips. I couldn’t even apologize for them, not without context, not without knowing how deeply I’d cut her.

---