Chapter 2 #2
The last sentence was muttered, and Aspen knew he was on the verge of walking away and leaving her standing in the middle of the hallway.
She reached out and clamped a hand on Kane’s forearm.
“I’m sorry,” she said immediately. “I just…Derek was really nice on our first date. Attentive and funny. I didn’t really feel any chemistry with him, but I thought maybe it might grow.
So I agreed to go out a second time, and it was like he was a different man.
He kept touching me in ways that made me uncomfortable.
When he brought me home, he kissed me, then tried to grope me.
He wasn’t happy when I told him no, and honestly, he kind of scared me.
I just…I’m leery. And you’re saying all the things any woman would love to hear, and it all seems too good to be true. ”
“I’m not that asshole,” Kane said, enunciating each word carefully.
“I’ve known too many men exactly like him.
If I say something, I mean it. And I won’t lie, I’m attracted to you, Aspen, but I don’t do one-night stands.
I want to get to know a woman before I sleep with her.
It’s probably not very macho of me to admit it, but I want some sort of emotional connection with the woman I take to my bed.
Physical attraction isn’t enough for me.
For the longest time, I was behind my classmates sexually.
And when I did finally get interested in the opposite sex, I was too young for the girls around me.
I’m not saying I want to be engaged before I’ll sleep with someone, but fucking for the sake of fucking isn’t what I’m after in relationships. ”
Aspen believed him. Honesty and sincerity was written all over his face. He wasn’t just filling her head with pretty words, or using reverse psychology to get her to sleep with him. “Okay. I’m sorry I was rude.”
“You weren’t rude,” Kane told her. “Just honest. But I’m letting you know right now, if I tell you something, you can absolutely believe that it’s the truth.”
Aspen nodded then leaned forward and rested her forehead on his shoulder. It was an intimate thing to do, considering they hadn’t even left on their first date yet, but she needed to touch him. To let him know that she was really sorry.
They stood like that, her holding onto his forearm with both hands and her head on his shoulder, and him leaning into her, for at least a minute…before her stomach growled.
Kane chuckled. “You’re hungry. I need to feed you.”
“Worked through lunch,” Aspen said with a shrug. “The teams are training hard right now just in case we’re sent over to Afghanistan.”
It was nice not having to explain what she meant. Kane knew because he was in the same circles as the Rangers. He probably knew more than they did, in fact.
“Yeah, things are getting ugly over there. There’s a new guy who’s stirring things up. The US is going to have to do something about him. Soon.” Kane took hold of her hand and they started back down the hall as they talked.
Aspen nodded. “I understand the need to be prepared, but damn, running through countless scenarios in the back forty of the post isn’t exactly my idea of a good time. It’s freaking hot.”
“It’ll be hot in Afghanistan too,” Kane said with a smile.
“I know,” Aspen grumbled. “Now you sound like my platoon sergeant.”
Kane held open the door to the apartment complex for her and, after she walked through, was right there by her side once more.
He led her over to his black Dodge Challenger and held open the passenger door for her.
Then he jogged around the front to get to the other side.
He immediately started the engine, and the air conditioning, before he put on his seat belt.
It was one more thing to like about him.
When he was belted in, he turned to her. “Where to?”
“What?”
“Where do you want to eat dinner?”
“You mean you haven’t already decided?” Aspen asked in disbelief.
“Nope. I don’t know what you like. Seafood?
Mexican? Steak? Any decision I make is fraught with pitfalls.
You might be a vegetarian, and if I chose a steak restaurant, this relationship would be over before it began.
Or if I picked a seafood place, and you were allergic, there again, that wouldn’t bode well for us.
So the easiest and safest thing to do is to let you choose. ”
“But what if I make the wrong decision? That’s a lot of pressure to put on a girl, Kane.”
He smiled and, once again, Aspen decided that women were insane to not want this man. How the hell he was single was a complete mystery to her.
“You can’t choose wrong. I eat anything. Literally. There’s not one thing I won’t eat.”
“Nothing?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.
He laughed. “I can see I just threw down a challenge, didn’t I?”
“There has to be something you don’t like. No one likes every kind of food,” Aspen told him.
“Fine. I don’t like kimchi,” Kane said with a shudder.
“Doesn’t count,” Aspen told him with a shake of her head. “No one likes fermented cabbage. Not if they’re not from Korea and didn’t grow up eating it.”
Kane smiled at her. It was a gentle smile, filled with tenderness.
Aspen knew she was crazy for reading so much into his expression, but she couldn’t help it.
When she was around him, he made her feel like the most important person in the world.
It was heady, and she could definitely get used to it.
“What are you in the mood for, cha-gee?”
Aspen blinked at the foreign-sounding word. “What did you call me?”
She was surprised when Kane’s cheeks flushed. “Sorry, it just popped out.”
“And? What does it mean?”
“Cha-gee is ‘darling’ in Korean. Sometimes I find myself using a foreign word instead of the English one,” Kane said.
“Cha-gee,” Aspen repeated, trying out the odd-sounding word.
“Food?” Kane asked.
She had the feeling he was trying to move on from what he perceived as an embarrassing slip of the tongue. “Tell you what, you can call me whatever foreign term of endearment you want, if you never make me choose where to eat after tonight. Don’t you know women hate picking?”
He chuckled. “Deal.”
Aspen took a deep breath and wracked her brain for where they should go. She was starving, and really, there was only one place she wanted to eat when she got this hungry. “Taqueria Mexico,” she said.
“Taqueria Mexico Restaurant or Taqueria Mexico Lindo?” Kane asked immediately.
“You’ve heard of it?” Aspen asked.
“Uh, it’s only the best Mexican food in Killeen,” Kane said. “Now, do you prefer the restaurant on Rancier Avenue, or the smaller Lindo on Fort Hood Street?”
“Restaurant,” Aspen told him.
Kane smiled and nodded. “Good choice.”
It was insane how such a small compliment could make her feel so good. “And I have to warn you, I’m not one of those women who orders a salad and picks at it. I can put down a basket of chips and salsa all by myself, and then eat my entire dinner to boot.”
Kane’s smile didn’t dim. “Good. Because I’m not going to let you order a salad then pick at my plate all night.”
“Ha. No way. I ran five miles in the heat, then did burpees and crawled in the sand for what seemed like hours. I’ve earned every single calorie I’m going to consume tonight.”
“I don’t doubt it. But it doesn’t matter to me if you’ve sat on your ass all day either. You are who you are, and so far, I’m liking exactly who that is, Aspen Mesmer.”
His words stuck with her all the way to the restaurant.
Aspen knew she wasn’t super skinny. She had muscles from working out all the time, and she refused to starve herself to fit into a size four.
She loved food. And carbs were her weakness.
She had no problem wearing tank tops because her arms were damn impressive, if she did say so herself.
She hadn’t expected Kane to disparage her on their first night out, but hearing him say he liked her exactly as she was felt good.
They arrived at the hole-in-the-wall Mexican place, and he met her at the front of his car and reached for her hand. They walked inside and were quickly seated in a very colorful booth in the back corner of the busy dining room.
Surprising her, Kane sat at her side, instead of across from her. At her look, he asked, “Is this all right? I just figured we could hear each other better if I was sitting next to you. If it makes you uncomfortable, I can move. In fact, I’ll just—”
Aspen grabbed his arm and shook her head. “Stay. It just surprised me for a second.”
Kane slowly sat back down and shrugged. “I’m really not very good at the whole dating thing,” he said a little self-consciously.
“You’re doing more than all right so far,” Aspen told him.
They were interrupted by the waiter coming by with a heaping basket of warm tortilla chips and a bowl of salsa. He took their drink orders and scurried away.
Kane scooted the salsa closer to her and nodded toward it. “Ladies first.”
“Are you gonna get weird if I double dip?” Aspen asked.
He grinned. “Nope. Not at all. And the amount of saliva that can be transferred by double dipping is actually very small. Hell, kissing exchanges more germs than sharing a bowl of salsa.”
“Good to know,” Aspen said with a grin of her own.
He wrinkled his nose. “There I go again. If I start spouting too much stupid shit, just smack me.”
“Never. It’s handy to have someone around who has all the answers.”
“I thought you didn’t like it when a guy always has to be right? You, Gillian, and Kinley had a discussion at length about that,” Kane said.
“No,” Aspen countered. “We don’t like it when we’re contradicted all the time and told we’re wrong when we know we’re right.”
“Noted,” Kane told her with another smile.
“I mean, it’s obvious you’re smarter than me, and I’m okay with that. But if I’m talking about the traffic, which route to take, or something medical, you’d better be damn sure you’re right before you contradict me.”