Chapter 11
Mallory
“Why’d you ask me out?”
I’m not expecting the question, which has the effect of making me choke as I’m taking my first sip of wine. I manage to recover and swallow, rather than spitting it all over Dash’s snug black Henley.
I suppose I knew the topic might come up, but I didn’t think Dash would be so direct. I certainly didn’t think it would be the first subject he’d want to discuss after the server filled each of our glasses with cabernet sauvignon.
“Um. Just…no reason. It was just an idea. A passing idea.” Let him think I was going down my list of men in Napa Valley and happened to pause at his. For all of a millisecond. And now I barely remember what possessed me at all.
I don’t intend to tell him the real reason now.
“Bullshit.” The deep rumble of his voice cuts through the ambient chatter in the restaurant, and I look around to see if he’s caught anyone’s attention. No one seems to notice him. But my body notices, and I curse it for the thrill that races through my gut at the velvety sound.
“Excuse me?” I’ll just play dumb.
“You had a reason. Tell me what it was. You already dated my brother, so I refuse to think you’d go double dipping in that pool. Although the charm of the Corbett men would get anyone all hot and bothered.”
He leans back with a knowing smirk. This is the Dashiell Corbett I expected when I texted and asked him out. He’s a player. He likes women. It doesn’t take an engraved invitation to get him to sign on for a night of fun, and he had no reason to think I’d want anything else.
“You got me. I’m still not over Jax, and I thought maybe you’d give me the dose of Corbett man I was craving.”
I meet his gaze, challenging him to dispute my explanation. Knowing he won’t.
“Again, I say bullshit. Excuse my French.”
“It ain’t French, just so you know,” I say.
“Non? Tu parles francais?”
“I do, actually. Studied it a little bit in school, then spent a year there.”
He nods and his eyes travel over my face, fixing on my eyes for a moment and ending at my lips. He picks up his wineglass and swirls the liquid inside. I find myself staring at the swoosh of deep burgundy as though I’ve never seen a glass of wine before.
Or maybe it’s his long fingers wrapped around the stem of the glass. Something has me mesmerized, and it takes a moment to shake myself free.
He takes a small sip and puts the glass back on the table. My eyes follow his graceful hand to where it rests on the white tablecloth. He taps his index finger on the heavy linen, and I can’t stop thinking about what else he could do with that finger. A jolt of awareness shoots straight to my core, and I shift on my chair.
“You studied abroad during college?” he asks, bringing my thoughts back to the present. When I meet his gaze, I find him assessing me, and I feel stripped bare, like he knows exactly what I was thinking when I looked at his hands.
I shake my head. “No.”
“You went after college?”
“Yes.” I can’t have a conversation with this man. I feel tongue-tied, and that’s never happened before. I can’t understand it because I didn’t have this problem in the grocery store or in the bar. But we weren’t alone at a fancy restaurant with a tiny glowing candle on the table and easy jazz playing in the background.
This “date” is throwing off my mojo, and I need to get it back.
His mouth twists into a smirk. “Are you really going to make me keep guessing? Spill, Marshmallow.”
I’m about to come up with some words, but he leaves me speechless again with the odd nickname. I blink a few times and manage to close my gaping mouth. “What did you just call me?”
He shrugs and his eyebrows bounce. A dimple flashes in one cheek. Over the years, I’ve seen Dash from a distance, but I haven’t spent this much time in proximity. Now that I’m here, I can admit that he is a very attractive, extremely hot man, and I can feel the heat rise in my cheeks just from looking at him. Yet there’s a more important matter at hand, so I try to focus.
“Marshmallow.”
“Is that your favorite dessert or something?”
“No, I prefer a chocolate tart, if I’m honest, but it just might be my favorite nickname for you.” I roll my eyes, but there’s no getting rid of that grin. “You don’t like nicknames?”
Now it’s my turn to shrug. “I’ve never had one before.”
“Well, that doesn’t surprise me.”
I can’t decide whether I’m offended or not. “Why do you say that?”
He leans in and speaks more quietly and deliberately, his deep baritone setting my nerve endings on fire. “After spending two minutes with that ass-wipe you were married to, I knew for damn sure he didn’t have the creative impulse to give you a decent nickname. You deserve better, Mallomar.”
I can’t stop the frown from settling in. He nods. “You don’t like it.”
“It’s not that. Just…” I debate cutting off the conversation and going back to why I spent time in France. It would be easier. He doesn’t need to get to know me any better than he already does. We’re here for one date. One and done.
“Tell me.”
His grin is persuasive. It’s probably lured countless unsuspecting women into his man cave for a night of debauchery. I have to push down the rogue impulse shouting that I want a night like that. I don’t.
But there’s an innocence about Dash. Unlike Felix who tips his head and looks like a dumb dog, Dash looks like an adorable golden retriever who only wants to please. What the hell? I might as well be honest with him. I’ll probably never see him again, so what’s the difference?
“Those sweet desserts are a little…cute. And I’m not like that. I’m…harder to like than that.”
His expression loses the playfulness, and his mouth settles into a hard line. “Not from where I sit. And if you don’t mind me saying, I dislike that anyone has ever made you feel that way in the past.”
I’m so surprised by his pronouncement that I have nothing to say—none of my normal rebuttal and evidence to prove that I am, in fact, unlikable. In the face of his extreme distaste for that idea, I find myself feeling overruled.
That has never happened before.
He holds his wineglass up to the light. I expect him to take a sip, but instead, he holds it toward me for a toast. “To our first date.”
I huff a laugh. “Ha. First and only, don’t you mean?” I lift my glass to clink with his, but he withdraws his hand, studying me quizzically.
“That wasn’t what I meant. If I’d meant it was our only date, I’d have said.”
A succession of noises erupts from my throat, but none of them turn into actual words. My face heats so much that I start fanning the air around me with one hand and slurp down a big swig of wine with the other before putting the glass down.
“Surely there won’t be a second date. This is just us, you know, making good on the date I asked you on and the whole thing in the bar and all that.”
“Well, I might ask you out again, and then there will be a second date.”
“But…we’re even now. Why would you want to do that?”
He smiles, and I’m momentarily blinded by his straight teeth and that damn dimple. “Because I like you, Marshmallow. You’re different than I expected in the very best of ways. That’s why.”
“But-but…”
Dash reaches his finger out—that long, gorgeous index finger—and places it over my lips so I stop protesting. He brings his glass to the space between us and hands mine to me. Our fingers brush, and I feel the hum of electricity at his touch. It’s enough to calm me down and send my blood racing through my veins at the same time. An addictive combination.
“One more time… to our first date.”
Obediently, I clink my glass against his. “To our first date.”
He gives me a closed-lipped smile that’s full of knowledge or promise about what might follow this first date. And I want all of it. Heaven help me.