Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
ANDY
“Give me five minutes!” Levi stammered out before shutting the door in my face.
The way his eyes bulged out when he saw me, then his frantic movements, had me unable to contain my chuckling. I’d obviously caught him by surprise.
I heard him return home earlier, humming some chipper tune and looking like he was in his own little world. I gave him an hour before checking in on him since I’d made reservations at a restaurant in town.
I wasn’t expecting him to still be in only his towel, nor had I expected my reaction to seeing those sexy tight muscles he’d had hiding under his clothes.
Levi was all man—there was no doubt about that—but there was something sensual about the hot slide of condensation down his bronze skin. And the slight tint of red I caught peeping on his neck right as the door closed?
It was like he knew exactly how to activate a man’s sex drive.
Which was exactly the thing I shouldn’t be thinking about. Levi was one of my bosses, and tonight was all about helping him, not ogling him while he was naked and deliciously wet and warm from the shower…
I shook my head and glared at the now slight bulge in my pants. Maybe I should change to a pair that wasn’t so tight , but then I remembered the way Levi’s gaze lingered on my thighs, obviously checking me out, and the thought of changing completely left my mind.
The attention felt good. I didn’t consider myself an attention whore, but it had been a while since I had eyes like that on me.
I hadn’t tried going back to the town’s only pub to pick someone up because, well, living with my boss made the whole hook-up thing a bit more difficult. Perhaps I needed a drive into the city on a day I wasn’t scheduled to work…
As I was thinking about plans for my next day off, the door opened again, and Levi reappeared. This time, he wasn’t naked under his towel, but his new outfit might as well be just as deadly.
If I thought my pants were tight, they had nothing on him. His black biker pants looked almost painted on andaccentuated that he was all man .
I didn’t know if men were size queens as some of the women I’d dated, but if they were, he definitely didn’t have any issues on that end.
And his top too! The man obviously knew how to dress, which was a surprise considering I’d mostly seen him in casual blue jeans and T-shirts this past month, but there was none of that tonight.
He had on a button-up with the top buttons undone to show his prominent collarbone. The little sexy sneak peek was wrapped up with a brown cardigan, which he’d also left the top buttons free. He looked both cozy and tempting at the same time.
I didn’t even know cardigans on men were a thing, and now I was wondering why more men weren’t wearing them.
“Do I look all right?” Levi suddenly asked. He played with a loose thread hanging from the edge of his cardigan.
I had to force myself to look at his face instead of continuing to check out his body. “Yeah.” Did my voice just crack? I cleared my throat. “Yeah, you look, um. You look good.”
Levi smiled, a big one that had both his dimples making an appearance. I dropped my gaze to the floor, only looking up when he walked closer.
“So, where are we going for dinner?” he asked.
“I made reservations for a place in town,” I replied as we headed to my car.
“A reservation? I thought this would be something casual,” Levi replied with obvious shock in his voice. He buckled his seat belt from the passenger’s side and turned to face me.
“I said we’d do a proper date, and that’s exactly what I intended to do,” I replied as I turned on the car engine.
Levi opened his mouth, but whatever words he’d been planning to say died on his tongue. We were silent the entire drive into town, which, to be fair, was only ten minutes.
The reservations were for The Nest. It was the only restaurant around these parts that even took reservations. The inside was decorated tastefully, with the town’s doves as the primary decoration inspo. And when I said that, I wasn’t even exaggerating.
The first thing we were greeted upon entering the restaurant was a floor-to-ceiling mural of doves in Victorian dresses out on a picnic. Beside the giant piece of art was where the hostess stand stood, except for a wooden stand that was usually the norm, it was a sculpture of…yep, you guessed it, a dove .
And somehow still, they managed to make it look elegant and fitting for a fancier restaurant.
“You guys take your doves seriously around here,” I said to Levi once we were seated.
He laughed. “That we do. We’re pretty proud of our history, so the Doves are pretty important to us.”
Before I could reply, the waitress came to introduce herself and fill our water glasses. She left after reciting tonight’s specials and handing us menus that had doves embossed on the edges.
I fingered the little birds and peeked at Levi. “So, what is up with this town’s obsession with doves?”
Levi had half his face covered by the menu, but when he heard my question, he pulled back like I’d hit him with a shocking truth.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been here an entire month and not a single person has told you about the Doves of Destiny?”
I shook my head, which only made him balk even more. “Well, that does it. You can’t leave until you know our town’s history,” he said, then told me about the pair of lovers that had started this town.
The founder had been trekking in the forest in the dead of winter—which sounded like a freaking terrible idea.
Levi confirmed it by telling me how the idiot wandering around in a snow-covered forest had gotten separated from his companions. He was cold, hungry, and all alone.
“Well, what did he expect?” I said, “Honestly, he was too rich for his own good if he thought that would be a fun idea.”
Levi scowled at me, and I held my hands out in surrender. “As I was saying, the founder had no clue what he was going to do when suddenly, a dove showed up.”
“A dove in the middle of a snowy winter?” I asked with a healthy dose of skepticism lacing my question, which only earned me Levi’s glare. “Okay, sorry! Continue.”
Levi watched me, waiting to see if I’d interrupt him again. I mimed zipping my lips shut, which seemed to appease him as he continued telling me about how the dove guided the founder to a cabin in the middle of the woods. There was something about another dove welcoming them with the person who lived in the cabin, thus saving the founder from what would have been a very unfortunate and cold death.
“They founded this town together and lived happily ever after,” Levi finished with a hand to his heart.
The chandelier above our heads, which had two doves dangling from the middle, of course, swayed as if responding to the finale of his tale. It was a ridiculous thought, and the tiny glass movement was probably from the AC blowing over it, but something about the way it sparkled was unnerving, so I looked away and focused back on Levi.
“Can I speak now?”
He eyed me. “If you must,” he replied. The corners of his lips lifted ever so slightly.
“Do people here actually believe in a story like that? It seems all so manufactured , like they’re trying to sell you a dream,” I said.
Levi shrugged. “I can’t speak for everyone, but most of us here do. We think the Doves will bless us and lead us to our destinies.” He took a sip of water, then added, “Besides, even if it’s not real, that doesn’t mean it can’t give us hope.”
“Hope that these little birds will someone point you to who you’re supposed to be with?” I asked again.
“Hope that there is someone out there who’s meant for me,” he said softly and so full of emotion that it made my heart break for him. I covered his hand with mine, and he looked up at me .
“Hey, there is,” I said. “You’ve just had the bad luck of the draw so far.”
He smiled, but along with those hidden dimples, I knew the smile was just to hide the hopelessness he was feeling about the entire situation. Levi might think all his failed relationships were his fault, but there had to be another reason.
“Or maybe it’s the type of men you’re dating that’s the issue,” I hedged, the question that had been tickling my brain now out there.
I remembered the first time we met, when he was drunk off his ass and trying to pick up a man who had to be over twenty years older than him, and the night out with friends, they were talking about his dating history and how the men he dated were all at least ten years his senior.
“Have you tried dating someone who’s, you know, your age? Someone who might be able to understand you better?”
Levi seemed startled by the question. “I’ve never thought about it,” he said, taking another sip of his water. His finger slid against the glass, chasing a bead of condensation. He watched it for a moment before fixing his gaze back on me. “I guess I’ve always just been attracted to older men.”
I leaned against the table, cheek resting on my hand. “So you’re saying your obsession with silver foxes started as a kid?”
“I guess you could put it like that,” he said with a laugh. “There was that one time when I was like ten where my dads took me to get a picture of Santa, and whoever was in charge that day had decided that instead of the stereotypical Santa with the big belly and grandfather vibes, they decided a Daddy was the way to go. I begged my dads to go back every day so I could sit on Daddy’s lap.”
I laughed as I watched him animatedly recount all the ways he’d tried to bribe his dads to take him back to see sexy Santa.
He’d even tried to use his saved allowance to pay Henry to drive him, knowing that Henry was the easier target out of his two dads, but Peter had caught them in the act and threatened to cut off his allowance for the next six months.
“And then there was Gomez, the man of all men. He was my crush that defined my entire teens,” Levi said with a sigh and a dreamy look in his eyes.
“Gomez…?” I prompted, not really sure who he was talking about. I hadn’t met anyone with that surname since coming here.
“Gomez Florencia Addams! From The Addams Family ?”
He spoke like I was the one in the wrong for not following his train of thought.
I smirked at how defensive he was getting about this movie. It made me want to rile him up even more. “Are you talking about that movie about that creepy family?”
His eyes practically bugged out of his head at my words. “Creepy—you did not just call them creepy! They are only the iconic goth family—one that is truly misunderstood, I might add. Sure, their means might be unconventional, but they display the true meaning of love and family. And Morticia and Gomez? They are the ultimate couple goals. Always keeping an open mind and supporting each other. Their love is what love is, in its purest form.”
He got that dreamy look again, one where his eyes were all glazed and a goofy smile plastered on his face.
It was hard not to smile along when faced with this version of Levi.
I didn’t know how tonight was going to go, since the entire reason for this date was to help Levi out, but we hadn’t even ordered yet, and I found I was really enjoying being in Levi’s company.