Page 21 of Dining for Love

I race to my bedroom, flopping onto the bed and burying my face in my pillow.

What have I done?

Chapter 8

Willa

MATTY AND I have a Sunday ritual: yoga at the downtown studio, then iced coffee from the shop across the street, then we walk along the pier. We’ve done it for years, and it’s pretty sacred at this point. The pelicans and seagulls swoop and dive around us, the pelicans hunting for actual fish and the seagulls looking for the chips and snacks the tourists are bound to drop. Off to one side of the pier, a line of beautiful sailboats and catamarans bounce and bob in the water, gleaming in the sunlight and waiting on their owners to take them out.

Then there’s me, griping about last night as Matty’s eyes get wider and wider. “So, to be clear: you asked him to kiss you, and then you told him...thanks?”

“Yep.”

“Sweetheart, I love you so much.” The patience in his voice is admirable. “But what in the world were you thinking?”

I take another sip of my iced coffee, letting the cool liquid slide down my throat before I speak. “You don’t understand. He was an asshole all through dinner, cooking thisincredible meal, being all competent and thoughtful, and the way he’s so observant, Matty—it’s unnerving.”

“Well, he’s a cop, so —”

“And then he had the gall to look at me. Like, really look at me. As if hesawme.”

Matty snorts. “The nerve.”

“Exactly! The nerve.” But he doesn’t get it. “You don’t understand. You’re the only one who doesn’t give me hell on a daily basis to leave town.”

“Because you’re never leaving Lucky,” Matty says simply.

I swat at his arm. “See? You know! Now, pretend that you’ve gotten the kiss of your life by someone who hasn’t known you for a decade. Who has no experience of you as anyone other than the person they’re kissing. And it blows your mind. And then theylookat you.”

He quirks a smile and looks at me, his brown eyes twinkling, but also soft with understanding. “And he really saw you, didn’t he?”

I gulp my coffee and nod. “And then yesterday? He was nowhere to be found. Usually, I have to do this whole hide-and-seek thing to not be seen by him, but yesterday? Nowhere. Was the kiss so bad that he went back to Miami?”

Matty pulls me into a side hug, his lean frame nothing like the solid wall of muscle I was wrapped in the other night, and gestures to the open bench facing the ocean. “Let’s sit.”

“I’m embarrassed and turned on and confused and I don’t ever want to see him again, and also I really, really want to kiss him again. A lot.” There’s no stopping the way I’m whining.

Matty nods. “I can help you out on yesterday, Willa. He was working his tail off. Pretty sure the residents of Lucky are still attempting to haze him.”

Confused, I narrow my eyes at Matty. “Haze him?”

He chuckles and finishes his coffee with a slurp before turning totoss it into the garbage can nearby. “Yep. More time here at the pier—and don’t freak out, he’s not here right now—and I’m pretty sure he had to power wash a block of sidewalk over on Sequoia, and then of course he was answering the phones at the station overnight.”

I consider all this. “Yeah, not helpful. I’m still feeling all the feelings.” Besides, he was probably grateful for all the work. Then he wouldn’t have to face me and what he probably thinks is a terrible kiss.

Matty straightens and shields his eyes. “Did you hear that?”

I listen. “Is something squeaking?” Following the direction of his attention, I catch sight of something black and fuzzy in the shadow of another bench. “Oh, no. Matty, don’t you dare get involved?—”

But he’s up and moving, the animal lover and vet in him roaring to the surface.

By the time I make it to him, he’s already crouched and softly clucking his tongue at the creature. In seconds, he’s unfurling himself from the ground, a tiny black kitten yowling plaintively in his large palms.

“Oh, Matty,” I breathe, immediately turning to goo at the sight of the poor thing. “Is it going to be okay?”

“Hard to tell, honestly,” he answers. “Come on.”

Our walk forgotten, we head to Matty’s car, and I hold the kitten as he drives us to his office. The little thing is panting and mewling, blinking blue-green eyes up at me as if I’ve wronged it by having the audacity to try to help save it. Which, truly, could not be more of a cat thing if it tried.

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