Page 36 of The Billionaire's Fortunate Accident
“Well, I do have some work to do, but it shouldn’t take me more than two hours. Then I’ll have the rest of the night free. Of course, I still have to get up early to get to the hospital tomorrow. Maybe we can talk a little on the phone tonight.”
“Maybe you can come over, and I’ll make you dinner.” I wasn’t about to waste our mutual free time talking on the phone. “I’ll send a car to pick you up, and you can bring your laptop to continue working while you’re heading my way. And I’ll get one to take you home later too. How does that sound?”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, then said, “Okay.”
I actually felt my heart pounding in my chest. “Great. Our first real date. I’m gonna make it special, too.”
“Stone, don’t go out of your way for me. I’m just glad to hang out with you for a while. Promise me that you’ll keep it simple.”
“Sure, I’ll keep it simple.” I wasn’t about to keep it simple. I wanted to show her how great it could be if she gave me more of her precious time. “I’ll text you when the car’s there. And just so you know, I cannot wait.”
“Me too. See you soon.”
Closing the computer, I grabbed it and went to put it away before I began rushing around, trying to turn the small dining area into the most romantic setting possible.
There were filet mignons in the fridge that I’d begun thawing out the day before for a special type of egg roll I was planning to make the following afternoon. But now I would use a couple of them for us.
I popped into the kitchen, pulling the filets out of the fridge and sitting them on the cutting board to let them reach room temperature. Grabbing a couple of potatoes, I turned on the oven to preheat it before wrapping them in foil. I could put a salad together just before we sat down to eat.
I enjoyed throwing little intimate dinners. I’d done it for all my brothers and the women they eventually married. And I’d done it for many of my friends too. But this was the first time I was doing it for myself.
And since I was doing this for Jessa and me on our first real date, nerves began forming inside me like thunderheads, and I completely lost track of things.
Standing there in the middle of my kitchen, I shouted, “I forgot to get a car on its way to her!”
Reaching into my back pocket, I didn’t find my phone there and felt panic rising. Jerking my head towards the last place I’d been with my phone, I found it sitting on the bar.
Taking deep breaths to ease the stress, I froze, as I hadn’t even asked for Jessa’s address. My finger hovered over my contacts list so that I could call her to get the address when a text came in. She’d texted it to me, and I sighed with relief. “Damn, I’m losing it.”
After getting a car headed to Jessa’s and setting it up to pick up the bags of food I had to take to Ember afterwards, I went back to work on the dining room. Stringing some twinkling white lights along one side of the room, I created a starry night effect. A white linen tablecloth and my go-to centerpiece in a pinch — a clear glass, wide mouth vase filled with polished river rocks and a fat white candle buried three inches into them — made the table look as elegant as one in any five-star restaurant.
Stepping back, I admired my work before using my phone to connect to the hidden Bluetooth speakers and put on some soft, instrumental music. I remembered Jessa saying that she liked listening to that kind of music while eating.
With the mishap of waiting to get a car to Jessa, I’d gained about twenty minutes until she would arrive, so I got out all the fresh veggies I had and began preparing our salads. A fair amount of nerves were still bothering me, so I pulled a couple of bottles of red wine out of the wine cooler and opened them so they could breathe a bit.
To fix my nerve problem, I also got out a bottle of Jack Daniels and poured myself a shot. “Down the hatch.” I tossed it back, swallowing the hot liquor. “Damn, that’s good.”
As I peeled and chopped the ingredients for the salad, I wondered if Jessa was feeling the same way I was. We’d never been alone together. We’d always had others around us, and we were always in public as well. This was new, unusual for both of us. I just hoped our nerves wouldn’t make for an awkward evening.
I gave myself one more shot before putting the whisky bottle back into the cabinet. The edge would soon be gone, and I could be the man I really was, not this bundle of nerves I’d never been in my life.
As I poured myself into cooking, I began figuring out why all the nerves had come up in the first place. The thing was that I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to act.
I couldn’t be the man I was with every other woman. I couldn’t be flirty and have the usual one goal — to get into her pants. I had to be better than that — somehow.
We might not have spent much time together, but it felt like I’d spent more time with her than I’d spent with any other woman. Maybe it was because we’d spent our time talking and not grinding on one another.
Those little kisses we’d left on each other’s cheeks were the only intimacy we’d shared. But the thing about those little kisses was that I remembered each and every one of them. I remembered how warm her skin had been when I kissed her the very first time. And she’d smelled like lemon floor cleaner for some reason. But I liked it.
When her lips had touched my cheek that first time, I had actually blushed. And my legs had felt like noodles — only for a split second, but they’d gone weak for her.
Jessa wasn’t just some girl. For all I knew, she might bethegirl. There was no way I would try to rush to debating whether she was the one for me or not. We both had loads of things we wanted to accomplish before getting into something that concrete.
Just knowing that those little kisses meant more to me than any kiss I’d ever gotten or given was enough to tell me that Jessa Moxon was someone special to me. And I needed to treat her that way too.
Assembling the salad, I put in extra effort, because wanted it to be gorgeous for her. I wanted everything to be perfect for our first date. She might not have known it about herself, but I thought she was a perfect woman.
Jessa knew what she wanted and wouldn’t let anything get in her way of becoming a doctor. I had no idea what kind of money her family had, but they obviously didn’t have the kind of money to help their daughter pay for all the classes she had to take. She did that on her own.
