Chapter 2
Chapter 2
THIS WAS IT.
After all my research, my vetting, my planning—frankly, my obsessing—I was finally going on a date with Parker Hamilton. And not just any old date, this was my One Last First Date.
Forever.
We agreed to meet at a bar overlooking Auckland’s spectacular harbor for a pre-dinner drink. And I needed it. I was more nervous than a turkey at Christmas as I perched uncomfortably on a barstool in the friend-approved blue dress and heels, my long auburn hair in a loose ponytail.
I ordered my favorite alcoholic beverage—a gin and tonic—and surveyed the bar. Being a Friday evening, the place was almost full, most of the patrons still dressed in their corporate day job clothes. A guy about my age, standing with a group of other men close by, caught my eye and smiled at me. I shot him a quick smile I hoped said thank-you-but-no-thank-you and averted my eyes.
My drink delivered, I paid the barmaid and took a sip. I glanced over at the table in the far corner. Marissa and Paige were doing a very poor job of appearing as though they weren’t watching my every move.
Although I was initially as happy about them being here as a cat in a bath, I eventually conceded, on the basis they would stay completely out of the way. Being the first of our little trio to go on their One Last First Date, we all knew tonight was nothing short of crucial.
My friends smiled and waved at me, their faces beaming with encouragement. I gave them a couple of nerve-racked nods before turning my attention to my posture. Back straight, chest out, butt out, tummy in, legs crossed.
There was a lot to remember.
I glanced at my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. I looked about as natural as a mannequin in a shop window—and felt about as comfortable, too.
“Hi, Cassie?”
I looked across the mirror. My heart skipped a beat when I saw Parker standing next to me. Tall and sexy, he was looking oh-so handsome in a crisply ironed sky-blue shirt, a pair of khaki pants, and an uncertain smile.
Both dressed in blue, we looked like we belonged together.
Butterflies batting their wings in my belly, I turned to him and half stood from my barstool, wedged up against the bar. We hugged awkwardly, and I breathed in his freshly showered scent. He took the seat I had saved with my purse next to me.
“You look beautiful,” he commented, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiled.
I returned the smile, warmed inside, those butterflies doing a Highland fling. He’s it. He’s my future husband . “You do, too.”
He raised his eyebrows, smiling.
I let out a nervous laugh. “I mean, you look handsome.”
“Thanks.” His sea-green eyes twinkled. “I see you’ve got a drink.” He gestured to my glass. “Is that a gin and tonic?”
I nodded.
“Great choice.” He got the barmaid’s attention and ordered one for himself.
I beamed. Already so much in common. In a flash, I could see us sitting down together in our gracious living room after a long day at work, with the French doors open to the lawn, the curtains moving gently in the light breeze. We could be enjoying a gin and tonic, talking about our days while our children played, darting in and out to show us their drawings and tell us how much they loved us.
But, perhaps, I was getting a little ahead of myself.
As Parker sat down next to me, I was suddenly at a loss for words. I was finally on this much-anticipated date, and I knew so much about him from my research. I couldn’t think of a single thing to talk about.
Thankfully, he said, “It’s great we’re finally doing this.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” I took a sip of my drink.
Gawd! What do I say now?
My mind shot to my list. Marissa, Paige, and I had put together a bunch of topics for us to discuss if this situation should arise. At the risk of looking like I had some amateur tattoos, I had written down some bullet points on my wrist before I left my house tonight.
I surreptitiously rolled my hand over and glanced down. My eyes landed on the last bullet point. Doctor .
“So, Parker. You’re a doctor. Tell me what that’s like.”
He chuckled. “You want to know about being a doctor?”
“Absolutely. I’m fascinated by it. Tell me everything.” I smiled at him, prepared to be riveted to his every word. My future husband: the brilliant doctor.
He furrowed his brow. “Okay. Being a GP is . . . great. Sure, the hours are long, and the work can be challenging, but I love it. As cheesy as it may sound, I believe it’s my calling, I guess. I had this one patient today who . . .”
As he talked, I watched his face light up. He was sitting upright on his barstool, gesturing as he spoke. My heart swelled. He was a good man. He cared about others. He’d care about me, about our children. Not just emotionally, medically too. Fixing all those boo-boos, knowing what to do in a medical crisis, talking with the doctors in the hospital when our son, Christopher, broke his arm falling out of that large oak on our back lawn . . .
“What are you grinning at?” he asked, punctuating my daydream.
“Oh, just listening to you talk,” I managed, pushing Christopher’s damaged limb from my mind. “You really love what you do, don’t you, Parker?”
“Yup. Why would you spend your time doing a job you hate? Life’s too short for that.”
“You’re so right. My job is great, too. Not that selling communications solutions is anywhere near as important as being a doctor.”
He shrugged. “Everything is important in different ways.”
“That’s true.” I gazed at him. He was a philosopher, too?
I raised my glass, and Parker followed suit. “To doing what you love in life.” We clinked. I took a sip, although I was down to the dregs. Parker noticed and offered me another drink.
“Shouldn’t we get to the restaurant?”
He glanced at his watch. “I didn’t realize what time it was. You’re right. We should get going.” He stood up from his barstool, paused, and turned to me. “You’re so easy to talk to, Cassie.”
Bees buzzed around my tummy, making it tingle. “You, too,” I added breathlessly.
Suppressing a grin— this was going so well!— I leaned down to collect my purse from the hook under the bar. As I stood and turned to leave, the skirt of my dress must have caught on the barstool because, the next thing I knew, I was dragging the stool across the floor as I tried to walk.
Argh!
I stopped, glanced at Parker beside me, hoping he hadn’t noticed. But of course he had. Who would fail to notice a piece of furniture stuck to someone’s clothes?
“Are you all right, Cassie?”
I channeled my inner Control Queen. “Yes. Thank you.” I shot him the breeziest smile I could muster and turned my attention to my dress’s recent attachment.
I tugged at it; it stayed put. I tugged again, nothing. It was firmly wedged in the stool’s wooden join. Tension crept across my forehead. How did this even happen ? A barstool attached to my dress simply wasn’t part of the look for my One Last First Date.
I had images of myself dragging this stool around with me for the rest of the date, even bundling it into my car at the end to head home.
I leaned down and peered at my dress. In the low-lit bar, it was hard to see exactly how the dress was attached. I grabbed hold of the fabric and twisted it, hoping to loosen it off.
“Do you need a hand?” Parker asked.
I looked up and shot him a terse smile. “No, I’ve got this. Thank you, though.”
He shrugged, watching me tug. “It looks pretty stuck.”
I tugged and tugged. It still wasn’t budging. I took a deep breath, trying to quell the now frantically buzzing bees in my belly. I needed to give this all I’d got before the evening was ruined. I grabbed a firm hold on the fabric and pulled with all my might. In an instant, it snapped free, my hand—still holding my dress—hurtling upwards.
I blinked, unable to prevent contact, as my fist smacked straight into my face, causing my head to snap back. “Ow!” I screamed, clutching my nose, still holding the skirt of my dress. My eyes began to water with the throbbing pain.
“Cassie! Are you okay?” Parker asked, his voice filled with concern.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I lied.
Why oh why oh why did this have to happen on my One Last First Date?
My dress still in my hand, I glanced down. No underwear flash from the front. Good. Slowly, expecting the humiliating inevitable, I turned my head to look behind me. Oh, no. I scrunched my eyes shut and dropped my skirt immediately.
In my wisdom, I had made the decision to wear something I was wearing the day I met Parker. After all, who was I to mess with Lady Luck? I needed all the help I could get to make this the best One Last First Date known to humanity. No pressure there.
I was not a frilly, complicated underwear kind of girl. I liked practical, plain white cotton. Occasionally, I’d go crazy and buy a different color—I had pink, salmon, and even lavender in my not-so extensive collection—but really, I was a plain ’n practical panties kinda gal.
But this pair? They were a joke present from Paige for my last birthday. Plain white, yes. So far so good. However, emblazoned across the back were the words Bite Me! in bold red letters with a blue outline. Seriously? I mean, come on!
I consoled myself with the fact Parker was standing in front of me. There was no way he could have seen what was written across my butt. And then I remembered the mirror behind the bar. Oh, no.
“Cassie! Lean back, hold your nose here. We need to stem the blood flow.”
Blood flow?
Underwear logos were forgotten immediately. In a daze, I did as Parker instructed, sitting back down heavily on the offending barstool.
I heard Parker ask the waitress for some ice in an efficient, doctorly tone. As I sat, head back, I wished I had a remote control so I could rewind the events of the last few seconds—was that all it’d been?—and get a do-over. Jeez, how I would love a do-over.
We hadn’t even got to dinner yet! This was so not the impression I wanted to make on my future husband.
Parker, proving to be every inch the caring doctor of my fantasies, gently placed a bag of ice wrapped in a towel on my nose. I winced, and he handed me a wad of tissues, which I immediately placed above my lips.
“The ice will help stem the flow as well as lessen any swelling.”
Swelling ? Great.
“Thanks,” I muttered from my awkward position, only able to catch a glimpse of Parker out of the corner of my eye. “I’m so sorry about this.”
“Don’t be. It could have happened to anybody.” He smiled at me. “Well, maybe not anybody.”
I let out a weak laugh. It hurt.
“Try and stay still if you can, Cassie. I’ll need to check to see if it’s broken.”
Oh, this was getting better and better.
Parker pulled the ice pack away from my nose. “Hold still, this may hurt.” He gently tweaked it, moving it from side to side. I must have looked beyond ridiculous. In all my fantasies of how tonight would go, not a single one involved my future husband gently tweaking my bloodied and painful nose as I leaned against a bar, surrounded by onlookers.
“Miss Dunhill? I think you’re going to live. Your nose is not broken,” Parker declared at the end of his examination.
To my eternal humiliation, tears stung my eyes. I blinked them away quickly. Whacking myself in the face and flashing the world’s tackiest underwear at the man I wanted to marry was more than enough humiliation for one night. I wasn’t adding crying like a little girl to the list.
I forced a bright and breezy tone. “Well, that’s a relief!” I sat upright on the stool and noticed Parker watching me, concern etched across his handsome face. I shot him a sheepish smile.
“Looks like the bleeding has stopped, which is good.”
“Yeah, it feels okay now.” I tucked the bloodstained tissues into my purse. Keen to get this date back on track, I added, “We’d better get to the restaurant.”
“As long as you’re sure? I can cancel the booking if you’d prefer to go home.”
Was he kidding? Never before in the history of romance has a date been so anticipated as this. There was no way I was going home right now.
“Don’t be silly. It’s nothing. I’m fine.” I stood up, smoothing my skirt down to ensure there wouldn’t be a stool-attached-to-dress repeat performance. Once in a lifetime was more than enough.
His face broke into a smile. “Great.”
I glanced over at my friends. They looked anxious. “I might go to the ladies’ first, though, to check on the damage.”
He nodded. “Of course. I’ll wait here.”
I reached the bathroom and peered in the mirror. My nose was red and swollen, my makeup smudged beneath my eyes. I looked like a panda who’d lost a fight. As I grabbed some toilet paper to make some repairs, the bathroom door banged open. Marissa and Paige came flying in.
“Oh, my gosh. Are you okay?” Paige asked, bringing me in for a hug.
“That had to have hurt,” Marissa added, shaking her head.
Pulling away, I replied, “I’m fine, really. Just embarrassed. Parker was a total gentleman.”
“Oh, yes. We saw that. He was amazing. That’s one good thing to come out of this . . . mess,” Marissa replied tactfully.
Embarrassed, I brought my hand up over my eyes, accidentally banged my nose, and winced. “Ow!” I let out a heavy sigh. “This is so not what I had in mind for tonight.”
Paige rubbed my arm. “I know.”
“You know what? Men love to be in control, right? They love to feel like they’re being all manly and crap. You gave him the opportunity to do just that,” Marissa stated.
Hope rose. “You think?”
“Absolutely!” Paige confirmed. “Marissa’s right. You’ve made him feel special, needed. He’s got to love that.”
Huh. They may have a point.
“Now, fix your face up and get yourself out there. You’ve got a date to go on.” Marissa’s tone was brisk.
Resolved, I swept away my smudged makeup, powdered my nose as gently as humanly possible, ran a comb through my hair, and freshened up my lipstick.
Marissa held the door open for me. “Go get ’em, tiger.”
A moment later, I was by Parker’s side once more.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes.” I nodded, smiling. He took my hand in his and led me through the throngs toward the door. It felt nice. I glanced quickly back at my friends. They both gave me the thumbs-up, grinning.
Parker and I walked the short distance to the restaurant. He held my hand the whole way. Weirdly, conversation flowed much better since I’d banged my own fist into my face. Who knew? Perhaps the blood loss improved my conversation skills.
Once seated, we ordered our meals, and Parker asked me about my family. I told him about how my parents had been married for thirty-one years, how I don’t see them as much as I would like, and how I saw my annoying little sister, Bella, more than I would like. He smiled and told me about his family. I began to feel so comfortable with him, like I’d known him all my life—not just researched him and cyber-stalked him for the past five weeks.
We discussed music taste. His was very refined: classical music, jazz, a smattering of classic rock. Mine was more at the Katy Perry and Taylor Swift end of the scale. I decided there and then it wasn’t a problem: we could introduce each other to our music, share it with each other. We could go to concerts and concertos—or whatever those things are called. And I could develop an appreciation for classical music and jazz, no problem. In fact, I secretly suspected I would love classical music and jazz, only I hadn’t heard much of it.
I grinned to myself. Oh, yes. My One Last First Date was going really, really well.
“Parker? What do your friends call you?” I asked once our meals had been delivered.
“Umm . . . Parker.” He looked at me uncertainly, like I was demented for asking him such a stupid, obvious question. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” I couldn’t help but smile. Cassie: one, Know-It-All Will Jordan: zero.
“Your crab looks good. He’s watching me with his little beady eyes,” I said, picking up my silverware to tuck into my own meal.
Parker chuckled, picked his crab up in his hand, and wobbled it from side to side. “Hi, Cassie. I’m Colin Crab. How do you do?” His voice was high-pitched and silly.
I giggled. Parker looked so cute being a goofball. “I can’t really pick my pasta up to respond, Colin Crab.”
“Oh, that’s okay, Cassie. You’re so pretty.”
I blushed. I looked down at my plate and piled some pasta onto my fork to hide it.
“Bite me!”
I snapped my head up, startled. Did Parker really just say “bite me”? I looked at him, wide-eyed as mortification seeped up my body from my curling toes. “What did you just say?” I asked, breathless.
Parker wobbled the crab from side to side once more. “Bite me! Bite me!” he repeated in his silly voice.
Did he see my underwear reflected in the mirror? He didn’t seem to have at the time, but then he did go straight into competent doctor mode. And if he did see it, why would he want to mock me?
Parker returned the crab to his plate. “By the look on your face, I took that a little too far. Sorry.”
“No, no. It’s fine.” I returned my attention to my pasta. “This is good,” I lied, not having taken a single bite. “How’s yours?”
“I’ll tell you in a second.” He broke into the crab and took a large mouthful of meat. He grinned at me. “It’s delicious.”
I nodded at him. Whether he did see my “bite me” panties or not, I needed to move past it and get this date back on track.
I reverted to my bullet pointed wrist, chose a topic, and asked him a question. To my eternal relief, before too long we were laughing and sharing and having a great time once more.
At the end of the evening, after a delicious dinner, Parker walked me to my car, hand in hand, down along the water front.
We reached my little hatchback, parked in a side street. “This is me.”
We stopped and stood by my car. “I’ve had a really great time tonight,” Parker said.
“Me, too.” My heart pounded as the bees in my tummy took flight. “You know, other than injuring myself, that is.” I let out a nervous laugh as my nose gave a throb, reminding me of my humiliation.
He smiled at me, taking a step closer. Was he going to kiss me? Please, kiss me! In my head, this was how the date ended. A perfect first kiss. A perfect last first kiss at the end of the not-quite-so-perfect One Last First Date.
“Can I see you again?” he asked, looking in my eyes.
“Oh, yes.” My voice was breathless. “I mean, that would be nice.”
“Great.” He bit his lip.
Was he nervous?
“I’ll . . . ah . . . be going then.” He didn’t take his eyes from mine.
“Okay.”
“Unless—?”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Unless what?”
Without further warning, he took me around the waist and pulled me in for a kiss. His nose banged against mine. I let out a wince as my eyes began to water.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I forgot. Are you all right?”
I nodded. “Yes.” I was quite clearly not.
He smiled at me. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”
I nodded again. “Kinda. But I don’t want it to.” I knew I sounded like a sulky child.
“You’ll need to ice that again when you get home.” He paused. “Well, I suppose I’d better get going. Early start tomorrow.”
I looked at him in shock. Was that it? Was he leaving? There was no way I was letting my One Last First Date end without a one last first kiss.
I took hold of his hand and gazed up at him. Being considerably shorter than his six feet, it was a long way. But he seemed to know what I wanted. He leaned down, and I closed my eyes, my lips prepared for a long, sweet, careful kiss.
And it was just that. A wonderful first kiss. A first kiss to end all first kisses.
“I’ve wanted to do that since I saw you sitting at that bar,” Parker said.
“Me too.”
He kissed me again. “Well, good night, Cassie.”
“Good night, Parker. And thanks for . . . everything.”
I watched as he walked down the street. Once he was out of sight and I was safely sitting in my car, I grabbed hold of the steering wheel and let out an excited squeal. He likes me! He likes me! He wants to see me again!
I knew this was it. I knew he was the one for me. We were on our way.
Everything was coming together as planned.