Page 11 of More Than Words

“If I were going to be doing anything with your body, it wouldn’t involve disposing of it,” he chuckled, pulling off along the side of the road onto the gravel shoulder. “I hope you like fresh lobster.”

“I do like lobster, but don’t feel like needing a tetanus shot to buy it.” Two fishing boats were moored at the side of the building with chipped paint and lobster cages stacked up on the deck. “Are they even open?”

He reached behind me, pulling his jacket off the back seat. “Yes.”

“Where did you find this place? Serialkillerlairs.com? This looks like a sketchy location to dump bodies from one of your authors’ novels.”

“Are you always this uptight?” His smile was teasing and a little disarming. Why did he have to be so damn attractive? It wasn’t fair. His face did things to my lady parts. It was the mouth that made me want to kick him. Repeatedly. In the crotch.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“You didn’t answer mine.”

He shook his head as he pulled the handle on his door, stepping out and closing the door behind him.

I stowed my tablet in my bag, pulling out my wallet and the cardigan I’d tucked inside.

Before I could reach for the car door handle, Adrian pulled it open and extended his hand to help me out. At least I’d skipped the heels this morning, my sensible flats crunching on the gravel as he pulled me from the car.

“Thanks.”

“I’m not always a dick,“ he whispered, taking my cardigan from my hand and holding it open for me to put my arms into the sleeves. “Just most of the time.”

I shivered, not from the cold, crisp ocean air but the proximity of his large, warm body behind me.

“Maybe there’s a gentleman hidden in there after all. He’s just deep, deep inside.”

“That’s what she said,“ he chuckled before he stepped away and gestured with his head toward the dock. I hadn’t anticipated him being a fan of The Office, but Adrian was full of surprises this morning.

“Or does she have to ask if it’s even in?” I teased, falling into step behind him. “There’s no shame if she does, but maybe your definition of deep differs from hers.”

He glanced at me with an amused smirk, not rising to take the bait. At least, I didn’t think he had, until he pulled open the wooden door to the building and gestured for me to enter.

“Trust me. She wouldn’t have to question with me. She’d know precisely how deep I was.“ Well, okay then. “Yelp. I found the restaurant on Yelp, not the dark web. People raved about the lobster roll,” he confessed while the door closed behind us. “And rumor is their blueberry crumble is orgasmic. At least according to one reviewer. She didn’t have the same flair for words as some of your authors, but it was a compelling story of their positive attributes, despite the outward exterior of the building not matching the caliber of the menu.”

Adrian’s positive attributes were starting to not match the dickish exterior, so maybe there was something to be said about trusting what was on the inside. I wasn’t even acknowledging his emphasis on the word she as if he meant me.

But I knew Maine was famous for two things: lobster and blueberries. So hopefully, I didn’t end up with food poisoning from the former, and the Yelp reviews didn’t lead Adrian astray on the latter.

As we reached the end of a narrow hallway, enormous glass paneled garage doors lined the wall that overlooked the water. The place was large and open, with high, sloped ceilings and slow-moving fans dotted throughout the dining area. Worn wood floors stretched the room, clearly restored.

It certainly kept the vibe of an old fishery, but it wasn’t as scary as it looked from the outside.

“Will this work?” Adrian asked, leading us to a small table with two chairs that overlooked the water.

“You’re full of surprises today,” I commented, looking out over the nearly frozen bay. Having grown up in a small town as flat as the water appeared outside and surrounded by cornfields, I was still stunned by the natural beauty of New England, despite having been in the region for over a decade.

“Maybe I’m just surprising you because you buy into the perception of others. Sometimes when you get to know someone beneath all the layers they hide behind, their personality isn’t what it seems.”

“Are we going to pretend that you don’t actively antagonize people in the office? Because if I were the only one who noticed it, you wouldn’t have half the staff on our floor referring to you as Dickhead.”

“I never said that. I’ll own up to being a dick,” he chuckled, sitting back in his chair with his arms folded across his chest. I hadn’t noticed it in the dark, but an enticing patch of dark hair peeked above the buttons of his open collar. “But despite my giant dick, there is more to me than meets the eye.”

While I would have expected him to be vain enough to wax or shave his chest, seeing it sent a wave of something I couldn’t quite identify through my system. But my physical attraction to Adrian had never been surprising. It was his behavior that’d formed my intense dislike toward him.

“I’ll take your word for it. You can keep the supposedly giant dork, I mean dick, to yourself.”

The server interrupted what I was sure would be a riveting conversation laced liberally with the word dick, telling us the specials for the day.

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