Page 97 of Fear of Love
I narrowed my eyes at him. “If you try to murder me just know I took a tae kwon do class once.”
“Why do women always jump to murder? You guys are obsessed with killing.”
“You don’t sit and watch Dateline?” I asked.
“No?” He looked over at me, genuinely confused as to why he would.
“We’re going to watch one after dinner. I have a few on my DVR.”
“You record a show about murderers?” Landon opened and shut his mouth a few times before shaking his head.
Laughing, I answered. “Yeah.”
“Women are so…”
“Amazing, I know.” I smirked in his direction. “How was work?” I asked after a few moments.
“Good. Starting to finalize the vendors for Hockey for Kids and got the okay from Coach Barnum for the guys to come and be a part of it with the playoffs starting.”
“That sounds great. The article about it will be printed in two weeks, so that should bring quite a bit of people.”
“Speaking of the magazine.” Landon looked over at me. “You seemed pretty happy earlier.” I turned in my seat a little so I could look at him.
“I had just gotten off the phone with one of Toronto’s major store chains. They want to put the magazine in all sixty of their stores!”
“Holy shit, seriously?” Landon took his eyes off the road for a second to look at me in surprise.
“Yeah. It’s the third major store chain that’s agreed to stock the magazine. They’ll put them at the front near the registers so everyone can see them. Deciding to do two issues a month is actually smart because it means people will buy double the amount.” I babbled on. “It’s going to be insanely busy for thenext few months, but with the money from these sales, I should be able to hire more people and give everyone raises.”
Landon came to a stop at a red light, glancing at me with a tenderness in his eyes, his features relaxed and touched with a quiet warmth, as if he was seeing straight through to the heart of me.
“What?”
“You’re pretty amazing, you know that?”
My cheeks instantly flamed at his words. But rather than shying away from the compliment, I sat up straighter.
“Of course.”
Landon let out a laugh. He reached out and squeezed my thigh.
“That’s my Blondie.”
“So tell me.”I leaned forward, elbows resting on the table as I looked at Landon. He was sitting directly across from me, relaxed back in his chair, with a beer lifted to his lips.
“Hmm.”
We were at a cute Italian restaurant on the other side of the city for our date. Technically, ourfirstdate. While we went out to eat together and saw each other nonstop the last two months, this was the first time Landon, or I, asked the other to go on anactualdate.
We did things out of order, but I didn’t mind. We were going at our own pace.
I took a bite of the restaurant’s mouthwatering garlic knot before finally voicing the question. It was one I had pushed asidefor too long, afraid of what the answer might be. But things changed, my feelings for Landon had only grown, and I wanted to know every part of who he was.
“Why haven't there been any girlfriends?” I asked. I didn’t really want to know about past relationships—who did?—but like myself, Landon had walls up. Walls that I knew came from someone because a guy like Landon shouldn’t have been single.
“There’s been a few,” he replied vaguely as he took a pull of his beer.
“And?” I pushed.
