Page 45 of Dining for Love

“Busy? How is Lucky, Alabama, busy? I know from visiting there with your mom that it’s as sleepy of a beach town as it can get, minus the tourists, I guess.”

“Yeah…” I start.

“Oh, shit.” It’s a declaration.

Here’s the thing. My old man has always been able to read me like a damn book, whether in person or over the phone. Judging by his immediate response to my one-word reply, he’s figured me out. “Go on,” I sigh. “Say it.”

“You’re hung up on someone, aren’t you?”

I turn on my blinker and head east. “A woman.”

Dad hoots. “Big-city man falling for a small-town girl? I think I’ve seen that movie.”

“Shut up.”

“Not on your life,” he chuckles. “Wait till I tell your mother—hell, wait till I tell Samantha. Between the two of them, they’ll have wedding invitation designs waiting in your inbox by next week.”

“I’m not that bad,” I protest weakly. But I probably am that bad. Last time I brought a girl home was high-school prom, so this is breaking news as far as Mom and my stepmother are concerned. And Dad will absolutely, 100 percent, be hanging up with me and telling them immediately.

“Come on.” His voice is warm. “Tell me all about her.”

Even knowing that he’ll blab everything, I don’t hesitate. I need someone to lay it all out to, and he’s always been my sounding board. “Her name is Willa. She’s incredible, Dad. Like no one else I’ve ever met.”

“Apparently so. Your voice sounds like you’ve got stars in your eyes.”

I chuckle. “She’s a cook at her family’s diner, but her cooking—she might give Samantha a run for her money.”

Dad sucks in a breath. “Son, watch your tone. My wife is the best cook, period.” His teasing is like a warm bath, and it makes my chest ache. I miss shooting the shit with him in the backyard.

“I don’t know why she’s got me so tied in knots. I barely know her.”

Dad’s observant laugh is the balm I didn’t know I needed. “Sounds like you know enough. What’s her favorite drink?”

“Ice-cold Cherry Coke after her shifts at the diner,” I supply, the answer coming immediately. “I also know she has a standing pedicure appointment every two weeks, and that she always gets them done siren red.”

I hear Dad’s signature snap. If we were in person, he’d be pointing at me. “Then I think you know the answer, son.”

But that can’t be right. How in the hell have I been bewitched by a shy, small-town diner cook?

Chapter 15

Willa

LIKE EVERY SUNDAY that I have off, it’s yoga-and-a-pier-stroll with Matty. And if anyone needs to bend and stretch and push themselves to empty their brain of a certain hot policeman next door, it’s me. I’ve tried ignoring him the best as I can. What happened the other night can’t happen again.

I mean, let’s be clear: I want it to happen again. Repeatedly. Daily. I could live in that experience and be perfectly content. But he’s scary. He’s too much: too confident, too dangerous, too gorgeous, too police-y. He’s everything I never wanted. And yes, this is precisely where I’m supposed to list out the kind of person Idowant, but every time I try to recall my list, it poofs away and reveals Hottie McHotFace himself instead of what I actually want.

Every time I see him, it’s clear he wants more. More ofwhat, I couldn’t say. But my control is flailing. I’ve given the wand in my bedside table far more workouts these days than ever before, and it’s all because of Reid and his chest and his tongue and his legs and…well. Everything.

But for the next ninety minutes, I’m going to get some peace.

I’ve got my back to the door when a buzz seems to movethrough the air. I turn, and my limbs stiffen, then liquefy. Because the very man who won’t leave my brain or my fantasies is now strolling into the yoga studio with a kitten strapped to his chest, looking sinfully, irrevocably hot.

Fighting the urge to fan my face, I rip my eyes away from him, say a prayer for my frayed nerves, and snap my yoga mat in the air, glaring at Matty as I bend to arrange it on the shiny wooden floor in front of me. “Really?” I hiss, fully aware of how literally everyone in the studio, woman and man, have turned to look at the deliciousness that is Reid with pussy.

Reid with a kitten, I mean.

A kitten. A fuzzy, four-legged creature.

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