Page 30 of Somebody to Save
Addison twirled a healthy amount of pasta on her fork and took her first bite. I looked down at my steak and grabbed my knife but was quickly distracted by the groan from next to me.
Glancing over, Addison’s eyes were closed as she pulled the fork free from her mouth. My cock couldn’t tell the difference between a food-induced moan and a pleasure-filled one and immediately hardened behind the zipper of my jeans.
“Oh my gosh, this is amazing,” she said, glancing over at me.
I smiled, trying to ignore my erection, and nodded. “I’m so glad, baby girl.”
She waited for me to take my first bite of steak before she asked, “Okay, so you were engaged, but why did it end?”
I chewed and took the moment to gather my thoughts. It always felt so hard to explain when it wasn’t just one thing that had gone wrong, and it wasn’t something that either of us had done.
“We just grew apart, and it ended. She also had the opportunity to go overseas for a job, and I always knew I wanted to take over our family firm. There wasn’t any bad blood in the end.”
“Hmm,” she hummed.
“Hmm?” I asked, unsure what the sound meant, and for once, I was unable to read her expression as she took a sip of her drink.
She set her glass back down on the table as a quiet round ofapplause filtered through the dining room and the pianist began another song. Tucking her hair behind her ear, she picked her fork back up.
“It’s a green flag that you ended things amicably. Any other relationships that didn’t end so well?”
I’d been dating for a while, but my history was boring.
“No,” I said. “My engagement was my longest relationship, and all the other ones since have ended fairly well. I mean, ending a relationship is never easy, but they all went as well as they could have.”
Our conversation continued as we finished our entrées, and with every moment that passed, Addison grew more comfortable. Each smile was contagious, and her laughter made my chest tighten every time I was rewarded with the sound.
We’d spent almost two hours talking on Halloween night before we made it up to the room, so I knew the chemistry was there. Or at least I’d hoped that it was still there, and the high from being in a sex club wasn’t the only thing going for us.
“But the residents are always getting up to something. The other day, Mr. Rogers started a poker game in the game room. It got so rowdy, we had other residents complain. When I walked in, a few of them were about to throw hands.”
“You have a resident named Mr. Rogers?” I asked with a disbelieving chuckle.
Nodding, she couldn’t stop laughing, but I immediately sobered when her hand landed on my thigh. It was the first time she’d voluntarily touched me, and fuck, it felt good to have her hands on me again.
“Yeah, we do,” she finally managed to say. “But he’s nothing like the children’s TV show host.”
Looking down at her hand and her light-painted nails against my dark jeans, I realized I’d missed something in that split second. Her smile had dropped, and she was suddenly nervous, straightening in her seat and glancing down at the table. She went to remove her hand from my leg, but I couldn’t let ithappen. My hand covered hers, and she looked back up at me, turmoil gathered behind her eyes.
“What’s wrong? What did I miss?” She shook her head and bit her bottom lip again. When she didn’t answer, I tried again. “Tell me so I can fix it.”
She sighed and her eyes flashed quickly to the table across from us. Several feet away was another booth similar to ours and another couple. I caught the eyes of the woman who was staring in our direction. She had the good sense to look away sheepishly when she caught my gaze.
Addison sighed. “She just keeps staring,” she said quietly.
A fierce wave of protectiveness swept through me. I had a feeling the woman was being judgmental just based on the way she quickly averted her attention when she realized I’d noticed, but I couldn’t be sure it was malicious. All I knew was that it was making Addison uncomfortable, and that was enough for me.
But I wasn’t going to let her know that.
“Probably because you are without a doubt the most beautiful woman in this room.”
Addison barked out a disbelieving laugh and rolled her eyes. “I appreciate that, but it’s not likely. I have three guesses why she’s staring, and none of them have to do withbeauty.”
“Okay, what do you think then?”
She raised her hand and started ticking off the reasons on her fingers. “Because of my hair. Because of my birthmark. Or because of our age difference. She looked like she might be trying to do the math in her head.”
I glanced at the other table one more time out of the corner of my eye and confirmed that both of them had gone back to eating their food and hiding behind their drinks.
