Chapter 20
Gracie
The first thing Bart tells me on our drive over to R&D is that he was there last night and he’s still recovering from the hangover.
“Normally, I know the drill. A full glass of water and two aspirins by the bedside at all times, right? Only last night, I think I passed out before I could do the right thing.” He laughs and guns the engine of his Mustang.
I look out the window and wonder what the appropriate torture for Ashley is going to be for sticking me with Bart.
I should give her the benefit of the doubt, I suppose. How could she know that a hard-partying guy like Bart wouldn’t be my soulmate? And hey, maybe he can be. I need to get past what he’s saying about the past three nights of drinking at different bars and find out.
“What do you do for fun?” I ask.
“This,” he says, eyebrows bouncing. “Spending time with a beautiful lady. Touch is my love language.” I feel an actual lurch of bile that I need to suppress at his cheesy response.
I may not be the most social being out there, but I’ve been on plenty of dates and had a couple of boyfriends.
I know sometimes we all get nervous and say silly things we wish we could take back.
Bart doesn’t seem to have that self-reflective gene.
“I was thinking more like pickleball,” I mutter, wishing I’d asked Ashley more questions before letting her set me up.
He rests a hand on my knee. It feels far too personal to have his thumb rubbing my bare skin, so I shift so his hand falls to the seat and try to make it seem like I’m fascinated by something outside. “I didn’t know there was a Sweet Cream place so close to West Hollywood.”
“Yeah, right there.” He drapes his arm over the back of my seat instead, and I decide I can live with that.
As we drive, my mind drifts back to Hunter standing in the kitchen, his muscled, tattooed forearms on full display, the sinewy bulk of his shoulders straining against the thin fabric of his shirt.
His face was a complicated maze of emotions, and I can’t help thinking maybe some of them had to do with not liking the idea of me going on a date. I push those thoughts from my head because I need to deal with the present, where Bart is honking at the car in front of us for slowing down.
“Dude, figure it out!” he yells out his window.
The guy in front of us gives him the finger out the window and stops the car at the valet stand at R&D Grill.
Great, now we get to dine at the same place.
But Bart’s car shoots into traffic to go around the other car, earning him some honks as he cuts people off.
“I’m not paying seventeen dollars for valet,” he says, zooming down the block and taking a hard right at the next street.
Slowly, we creep up the road as he checks each available break between cars to see if it’s a driveway. Finally, when we’re about four blocks up, someone pulls out of a spot. Bart parallel parks and hops out of the car.
I open my own door, and we walk the four blocks to the bar. “I get it. Seventeen dollars to park is insane,” I say.
“Right? I’d rather spend that on another drink.” Bart walks at a quick clip, as though he can’t get that drink soon enough. Funny, I feel the same way.
The bar is packed. It’s only a small, eight-seat bar with a couple of high-top tables against a window that looks out onto the sidewalk, where more than a dozen people are waiting to squeeze inside.
Bart waves at the host, who ushers us past the crowd and over to a tight corner of the bar near the kitchen.
From our vantage point, I see that half of the place is a restaurant, hence the “grill” in the name.
It seems less loud and crowded at those tables, but I try not to look too longingly in that direction.
I want to be a good date, even if I can already tell this will be a one-and-done. It’s the people-pleasing part of me.
Bart flags down the bartender and asks me what I’d like. “Glass of white wine. Thanks.” He orders himself an old-fashioned, leans his back against the bar, and smiles at me. His eyes dart around, surveying the crowd as though he’s checking to see if he recognizes anyone.
“Are you a regular here?” I ask.
He nods. “Yeah, I get here about once a week. Sometimes twice. It’s kind of a scene, but you know how it is when you’re single. You go from here to Bud’s to L&O.” He laughs, and I don’t bother telling him that I’ve never been to any of those places.
The bartender pours my wine into an oversized glass, which Bart hands to me.
Our hands brush as he transfers it, and I’m hyperaware of the contact.
Hyperaware that there’s zero feeling when his hand touches mine, except the slightly clammy feel of his skin.
It’s nothing like the crazy zing I feel at the barest hairline graze from Hunter.
A barstool opens up, and Bart slides onto it, moving me with both hands on my waist so I’m standing between his knees.
I’m still close enough to the standing room only crowd that I get jostled when people move past me to and from the bar, but I don’t want to stand even closer to the bulge in his pants.
It doesn’t feel good that he keeps touching me.
I’m not flattered, and I don’t feel the least bit of chemistry.
Does he? Could he possibly feel anything when I’m about as turned on as a mildewed towel?
Maybe this is dating in LA. Perhaps it’s different from what I’m used to after so many dinners with techies who were happy to get out of their cubicles and take off their headphones.
And I’m including myself in that lot. If this is what I’m in for by saying yes to blind dates, I think I’d rather stay at home and sneak glances at my hot roommate. At least that makes me feel something.
The bartender finishes making Bart’s drink and winks as he hands him a shot to go with it. Bart downs the shot and takes a healthy gulp of his drink before holding his glass out to mine. “Cheers. To Ashley, the matchmaker.”
We clink glasses, and I take a sip of wine. Bart locks me between his knees, and through the thin silk of my dress, I feel his hand on the back of my thigh. If I step forward, it forces me closer to him. If I move back, I’m pressing my flesh into his hand.
“Take your goddamn hands off her.” The rumble of that deep voice sets chills along my skin.
Bart’s brows furrow in confusion, and he looks from me to the hulking figure of Hunter standing next to us. “You heard me,” Hunter says with clear menace in his voice.
“She’s my date. You can go pound sand,” Bart says. He slugs down the last of his drink and raises the glass toward the bartender to ask for another.
“Doesn’t give you the right to manhandle her.”
Bart’s hand leaves my thigh, and he raises them where Hunter can see them. “Happy now? Not that it’s any of your fucking business.”
“That depends,” Hunter says, his breath ghosting my cheek and making me feel things that Bart’s sloppy hands never could. “Are you happy, Gracie?”
Bart’s lips spread into a smile. “Oh, so you two know each other? Is this part of a game or something?” His legs tighten around my hips, and he scoots forward on his stool as though he’s been invited to a threesome.
“It’s. Not. A. Game.” Every word that falls from Hunter’s mouth hits my ears like champagne bubbles, lulling me into a fizzy sort of dream that starts and ends with him. “Back the fuck away from her. Give her some goddamn personal space.”
Bart’s knees drop open, and I take a step back.
“Better,” Hunter says. Before I can gather my wits, he nods at me and pushes through the crowd, leaving me on my date.
I can see him heading toward the back of the restaurant, and before I think too long about it, I tell Bart to give me a minute and chase him.
“Sure, I’ll be here,” Bart says, looking over my head as though there might be someone better he can talk to. I hope there is.
When I get to the back of the restaurant, I see Hunter in the alcove past the open kitchen. There’s a hallway with vintage photos of Los Angeles and candles burning on a narrow table against the wall. Hunter is sitting on a toile-covered bench situated opposite the restroom doors.
“How are you here?” I ask.
He laughs and pantomimes driving, then makes a walking gesture with two fingers. I cross my arms and shake my head, unimpressed by the explanation.
“Okay, fine. Why are you here?”
“I came to check on you.”
“You what?” I can’t process the information, unsure if I’m flattered that he cares enough to check on me or annoyed that he came to spy on my date.
Like I’m such a social basket case that I need him to check on me.
If I wasn’t constantly reminded that he’s Kyler’s best friend, it hits me squarely now.
He sees me as his responsibility, like a kid sister you watch out for on the playground when she tries the monkey bars for the first time.
I want to remind him that I’m thirty-three and this isn’t my first date, but there’s a small part of me that likes that he came here to look out for me. I have no idea what to make of that. Or him.
He hikes a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Bart. “Back at the house, he seemed a little overly invested in touching you. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Overly invested?”
“Handsy. Are you into that? Should I leave you alone?”
My temper flares. I need to set him straight. “I’m not some newbie dater who can’t handle herself, if that’s what you’re thinking. I carry pepper spray, FYI.”
He smirks, nodding. “I don’t doubt it for a minute. Look, I’m not trying to offend you. If you tell me you’re into him or whatever, I’ll head home. No harm, no foul.”
I should tell him to go. But I don’t want that.
Reaching slowly toward me, he pulls at my forearm, gently uncrossing it from the other one.
Then he takes both of my hands and tugs them down to my sides, urging me to relax.
My shoulders fall, and I take a deeper breath.
Standing in front of him, I puzzle through the complexities that are this man.
One minute, he seems more than happy to shove me out the door on a date. The next, he steps in because his radar correctly tells him I’m not into Bart.
Letting go of one hand, he releases his grip on the other one and lets his slide away almost entirely. But then he wraps one finger around mine and hangs on, keeping the vaguest connection but not letting go. He looks at me, but his dark gray eyes are unreadable in the dim light of the hallway.
I don’t need to see him. I go by feel, my body quivering at the merest touch of his hand.
“Take me with you,” I whisper. I don’t know what I want from him yet, but I know that I want something. I also know that I’ll follow him out the door in a heartbeat if that’s what he’s asking.
Even in the dim light, I see his eyes darken to a molten charcoal. The hungry way he’s looking at me makes me want to slide onto his lap and feel him between my legs.
“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, Tink.
” I shudder as the images rush through my mind of all the places I want him to take me and the way it will feel.
Slowly in the back seat of his car. Hard against the kitchen counter from behind.
Languidly on the sofa bed in his room with his clean scent wrapped in the sheets and our sweat-slicked bodies moving in perfect sync.
My eyes drift shut as my imagination runs to a place I’ve never allowed it to go.
I’m a woman who fantasizes about solving complex algorithmic problems. I don’t fantasize about men like this.
Until now. Until this man blows everything I knew about myself to bits.
A small moan escapes my lips, and my eyes pop open to see if he heard, but the noisy restaurant saves me from embarrassment.
A slim warning about the danger to my job wriggles into my brain, but I banish it.
“I want to go to a hotel.” The words are as surprising as if someone else said them.
“Done.”
Hunter stands and takes a firmer hold of my hand. It’s the only place he’s touching me, but my skin flames like he’s holding a match. It’s a world away from the clammy, uncomfortable response I had to Bart’s unwelcome touch.
I want to follow my instinct, to be whisked away without considering any consequences except deep sexual satisfaction, but the good girl in me doesn’t want to leave my date in the lurch. I stop.
“Do I need to say goodbye to Bart, tell him I’m leaving?” I look in the direction of the bar.
In two strides, Hunter is back in the restaurant, never letting go of my hand, and peering over the crowd. He turns back toward me and shakes his head. “He seems to have occupied himself.” He frowns and rolls his eyes. “Send him a text.”
He takes out his phone and fires off his own text. When he gets a reply, he nods. “Bogie’s dog sitter. All set.”
For the first time since we bumped into each other at the airport, I feel free to look at him without being sneaky about it. Turning my face up to his, I take in all the features I’ve pictured as I drifted off to sleep each night, idly wishing I could touch them.
I reach for the side of his face and run a finger from his sculpted cheekbone down to his chin, letting the tip rest on his skin before pulling away. His eyelids droop as he lets in a long, slow breath. I know exactly how he feels.
He reaches for my hand and places my thumb against his lower lip, and I slowly rub it back and forth, feeling the contours until his lips part and he gently sucks my thumb into his mouth. His tongue rolls over it enough to fire up every nerve ending in my body. I feel hot, breathless, dizzy.
Letting my thumb go, he brings my hand between us, holding it in a firm grip. I’m vaguely aware of the restaurant sounds behind me, and I know it’s my last chance to turn around and resume my date like the good girl I’ve always been.
But I don’t want to be that girl right now. I don’t want to think about mixing work and romance. I just want this man.
Hunter guides me toward the back door of the restaurant, and he kicks it open. The damp night air hits my face as we walk outside, and for the moment, I’m not looking back.