Page 39 of Hale Yes
“Not at all. I was just going to heat up some leftovers at home.” I gesture toward my car, and she takes a tentative step in that direction.
“Uh, Dr. Hale, was your car designed by NASA?” Then her eyes lift to mine, and they look so green and sparkly in the fading light. “Ooh, are we eating on the International Space Station?”
I can’t help but laugh, even though I’m still wonderingwho the fuck is Cruz?
“No, the place definitely isn’t that far away,” I tell her, opening the car door for her. She slides in, and my eyes catch a flash of pale upper thigh as she slides into the sleek customized blue seat.
“Keep it together, Hale,” I mutter to myself as I walk around the vehicle, taking a series of deep breaths. “Just dinner. It’s just dinner with a colleague.”
I lower myself into the driver’s seat and put on my seatbelt, waiting for Nicolette to do the same before pulling back out onto the surface street.
Her curious eyes dart around the interior of the car. “This is a Bugatti, right?”
“Yeah, it’s a Chiron with an 8.0 L quad-turbocharged W16 engine.”
“Sweet. I’ve never ridden in one before. Thank you for picking me up like a stray puppy.”
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” I admit. “I’ve never seen you with your hair down.”
Nicolette makes a little squeaking noise and touches her hair before rummaging through the small red cross-body bag hanging off one shoulder. “I forgot. I can put it up.”
I stop her movement with my hand on her wrist. Her skin is warm and impossibly soft. “Why? I wasn’t complaining.” For some reason—most likely a perverted one—I don’t want her to tame those wild curls into submission.
“My mother doesn’t like when I wear it down.”
Making a show of looking around the interior of my car, including the non-existent back seat, I lean closer to her and whisper, “Is your mother in the car with us right now?”
She laughs and shakes her head. “No, I just…”
“Leave it down,” I command, and her hands instantly still. The corner of my mouth twitches, and I dirtily wonder what other commands she would follow.
I hear her audible swallow before asking, “Am I dressed okay? I didn’t even ask where we’re going.”
“It’s a tapas bar not far from here, and you look great.” I gesture to the clothes I changed into before going to my mother’s, a pair of pressed khaki shorts and an off-white linen short-sleeved shirt.
Nicolette is quiet for the next few moments as I find the restaurant and park in the small lot. “There’s a side entrance we can go in,” I tell her, guiding her toward the unmarked gray door on the side of the brick structure. “I come here all the time and know the manager.”
“Really?” she asks, seeming surprised and extremely nervous. Hell, I wonder if I freaked her out with my bossy hair comment. Or perhaps she didn’t actually want to go to dinner with me but was too polite to say so.
“Listen, I feel like I may have butted in on your evening. If you want to eat by yourself, I can wait in the car for you and then drive you back home.”
“No!” she practically yells, clutching onto my forearm with a shockingly strong grip. “I’m not going in there by myself.”
I’m so fucking confused by her almost manic behavior, but I just nod and open the door for her. “Okay, sure. Whatever you want.” I can’t say I mind the way she’s holding my arm like she might float away if I don’t anchor her to the ground.
The door we enter is adjacent to a long mahogany bar that’s shined to within an inch of its life. The bartender, Alonso, immediately lifts a hand in greeting. “Dr. Hale! Give us just a second, and we’ll get you a table.”
Before Alonso can even summon him, his father, Vicente, walks swiftly from the front of the restaurant, greeting me warmly with a hearty slap on the back. “Dr. Hale, I haven’t seen you in so long. I was beginning to get offended.”
I chuckle at his mild scolding. “I was just here last week, Vicente.”
“Well, that’s too damn long.” Then he turns to Nicolette, and his accent seems to intensify tenfold as he takes her hand and kisses the back of it. “Ah, bienvenido a The Tapas Table. I am Vicente, the manager. And what may I call you?”
“The Tapas…” Nicolette blinks rapidly about a hundred times, and then her face breaks into a wide grin before she laughs. She seems utterly charmed by the Spaniard.
“Gracias, Vicente,” she responds in perfectly accented Spanish. “Soy Nicolette. Su restaurante es hermoso.”
The man wiggles his eyebrows at her. “El doctor Hale nunca ha traído a una cita aquí.”
