Page 15 of Her Surprise Protector
I needed to use what I had already learned on the drive to the restaurant to write a poem about not judging people based on first impressions. All these opinions I had formed about Elena were just…wrong. Wrong in a good way, but wrong.
First and foremost, I had been on the nose with polite, but Elena was not quiet or shy in the slightest. She probably had only come off that way because I had yelled at her twice. On the way to the restaurant, I stopped to get gas. As soon as I opened my door, Elena hopped out too and continued chatting with me. She couldn’t resist cracking a quick, good-natured joke about a rich man getting his own gas.
I chuckled at that. “What? Did you expect me to have a chauffeur?”
“Maybe so,” she admitted. “Ooh, your dog is so cute!”
Engrossed in inserting my credit card the right way, it took me a moment to realize she wasn’t talking to me and looked up. A man with grizzled gray hair scratched the head of his yellow lab, which was sticking its head out the back window of the man’s truck as he gassed up the vehicle. “He knows it, too. Don’t let him fool you. He’d steal your dinner fast as you can saycute.”
“May I pet him?” The man agreed, of course – what man wouldn’t let a sexy redhead pet his dog?
With a wry grin, I swallowed the words I had been about to say and put the nozzle in the gas tank. We hadn’t even made it twenty minutes into our first date, and I had already lost Elena to a guy with four feet and a tail.
“Sorry, I’m a sucker for puppers.”
“Puppers” hadn’t been the word I had expected at all, and I almost choked on my laugh. “He is pretty cute. I promise I don’t hate dogs. I was just surprised on the beach that day.”
“I didn’t think you did hate dogs. You can be a bit scary, but not dog-hater scary.” Elena grinned saucily and popped back into the car as I closed the door to the gas tank.
This girl, man. I had to be on my toes 24/7 to talk to Elena. Otherwise, I would find myself left in verbal dust.
We reached the restaurant without any further incident – not that anything counted as an incident so far, really. But when we turned into the place and parked, Elena grew quiet. “What’s up?” I asked, worried that I had again misjudged her.
“Uh…is this where we’re eating?”
I glanced at the restaurant a bit anxiously. The Fishhook was a Mediterranean place that boasted some of the best seafood in East Hampton. I figured it was perfect for a first date. “I was planning to, yes. You told me you liked seafood.”
“Yes… but that’s not it,” she protested. “It’s just…this place is very expensive.”
I almost laughed as I pushed open my car door and walked around to open her’s. When Elena began getting out without waiting for me, I went with the flow and stepped back - allowing Elena to show me she valued her independence. “Relatively speaking, I suppose, but since I’m paying, it doesn’t matter.”
Elena just stood in the parking lot for a moment, chewing her lip. “You don’t feel obligated to do this, do you?” she asked suddenly. “I mean, this isn’t your way of trying to apologize, is it?”
In reply, I did something I had never done before; I touched Elena. Her hand was cool in mine despite the warm sun, and I remembered that she had been resting her arm on the center console between us. I should have made a move then because now that I held her hand, I never wanted to let go. “No.” I pushed up the sunglasses I had worn to drive so she could see the honesty in my eyes. “I genuinely wanted to go on a date with you, Elena. I already said my apology. I also didn’t want to spend Friday evening alone,” I admitted, letting a smile break through my serious expression.
Elena didn’t remove her hand, but she did turn toward the restaurant. “Then, this restaurant is perfect.”
I let her give me a tug toward the front doors, both so I could watch her walk and take a moment to collect myself. God, now that I had done it once, I wanted to keep touching Elena, again and again, moving from her hand to places that I needed not imagine in public…
“Two?” a waitress asked when we stepped inside. Her voice helped ground my desire, reminding me that I didn’t want things to move too quickly. That had been one of my problems in previous relationships. I charged ahead when I became interested in someone, reacting to dating milestones as a bull does to a matador’s red cape. Slow, sweet build-up was something I had never tried. But somehow, I knew that I didn’t want it any other way with Elena.
“Yes, please,” Elena answered before I could speak. “Thanks,” she said politely as soon as the waitress showed us to our table covered by a crisp white tablecloth, surrounded by two sky blue chairs.
“Can I get you anything to drink aside from water?” she asked, pen ready.
“Um…” Elena glanced to me for an answer to that question.
“Can we have a bottle of your best red wine?” I asked, trusting the staff to make a selection. I could choose my own wine well enough, but I didn’t want to spend a single second with my face buried in a wine menu when I could be talking to Elena.
“Absolutely.” Her confident answer put any doubts I had to rest. “Let me get that for you.” The waitress made her way expertly between the tables.
“Brave guess, not everyone likes red wine.”
“You do, though.”
“Well, yes, but you didn’t know that.”
I grinned across the table. “Well, actually I did. I saw a bottle of red in your kitchen…and I’m assuming it didn’t belong to Bree.”
