Chapter Sixteen
Zero changed his shirt three times before landing on a blue one that had been washed enough times to be so soft it clung to every inch of his torso, which meant it showed off his arms particularly well.
He turned sideways in the mirror. Not bad. Wait. Did this shirt make it look like he was trying too hard?
Maybe the green one was better. But that one scratched his neck, which he didn’t think he could stand for more than about five minutes, let alone the couple of hours he planned to spend with Delilah.
What if the date didn’t last more than three minutes, because she suddenly remembered she didn’t like neurotic has-been Army captains turned ranchers?
Blue shirt, then. If nothing else, she’d told him several times how much she liked his form.
Maybe she’d be dazzled enough to forget that Zero didn’t have pretty words on the tip of his tongue and smooth moves designed to romance a woman.
Blasted air conditioning must be on the fritz again.
It was hotter than asphalt in August in his bedroom.
And something was wrong with the buttons on the shirt, because they wouldn’t fit through the holes that had clearly shrunk since the last time he’d worn it.
Which, come to think of it, he couldn’t recall when that was.
Shirt half buttoned, he sank onto the bed, dragging air into his lungs because yeah, he was nervous, and pretending it was business as usual wasn’t helping.
Winging it here, he reminded himself. Which might be the problem.
The whole concept sat under his skin like a cocklebur.
If people were supposed to wing it, they’d have feathers.
But putting a wait-and-see parameter around whatever was happening with Delilah was the only way he could force himself to take these steps.
The only way he could pretend any of this was okay.
Because it wasn’t. He was selfish for taking even a few hours out to have dinner with Delilah.
It couldn’t go anywhere. He had to focus on his family first. But he also couldn’t keep ignoring the spark between them. The wing-it plan gave him an excuse to indulge himself without a commitment he couldn’t keep.
“It’ll be great,” he muttered to himself and concentrated hard enough that he finally ended up with his shirt buttoned.
Showtime. He opened the door to find Delilah standing on the landing about to descend the stairs.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said, her voice low and throaty, like she might be affected as much as he was by the fact that they were about to have an official date.
It did a number on his insides. “Hard to avoid it when we live in the same house.”
Boy. He could lay on the charm when called for, couldn’t he? If he could roll his eyes at himself, he would.
Instead, he settled for drinking in his dining companion, who’d managed to find a dress the color of bluebonnets that did amazing things to her eyes. Her feet were bare, a touch that picked up where her sexy voice had left off, riffling through his gut to stir things up to impossible levels.
How far gone was he that a woman’s bare feet set him on simmer? Maybe he should have suggested a date activity far away from the house, instead of telling everyone else to get lost for the night while he cooked a special dinner for two.
But then she reached out and pulled him closer, ratcheting up the intimacy by a thousand, and he couldn’t find a thing wrong with that.
“Hey,” she murmured as her arms came around him.
He could do nothing else except copy her gesture, and the feel of her in his embrace—so right, so perfect—nearly sent him over the edge. “Hey.”
“Figured we should take the edge off, or this will be a very long night.”
And then she pulled him into a kiss that scorched the skin off his bones. If this was how she’d expected to take the edge off, he couldn’t wait to find out what she planned for an encore when the edge returned with a vengeance.
In the spirit of the proposed goal, he backed her up against the wall and shoved his hands through her hair, desperate to get all of that silk under his fingers.
The kiss deepened, and he had just enough brain cells left to recognize this was the opposite of the date he’d worked out in his head, where they spent hours talking and learning exciting things about each other.
Except she’d opened under his mouth, drawing him in, her hands roving over his shoulders as if she couldn’t get enough of him, and he stopped thinking.
His fingers molded to her neck, grazed up the column of her satin skin, nestled in the hollow of her jaw.
He levered her head higher, experimenting with the angles, and this type of education worked for him, too.
Abruptly, she broke off the kiss. “Okay, that didn’t work.”
Her hair wafted around her flushed face, her kiss-roughened lips begging for a repeat, and she was so beautiful his heart nearly exploded with the effort required to take it all in. “I disagree. That was the very definition of working.”
The smile she flashed him had a hint of wickedness. “I meant it didn’t work to get our date off on the right foot.”
“Well, I suppose that depends on what foot you expected to be on,” he said and stepped back because he didn’t fully trust himself not to dive in for round two and she needed to be in the driver’s seat for that. “But I’ll confess that you knocked me off mine, so right now, I’m not on any feet.”
She laughed, and he regretted releasing her—he’d like her to do that while he had her in his arms, so he could fully experience it. He’d be game to immerse himself in Delilah fully, drowning in her until he couldn’t surface.
“Same,” she said and drew his hand into hers. “Which is why we need to go downstairs this instant and put a kitchen island between us so we can have some hope of eating dinner before the sun rises.”
“You must have a poor opinion of my imagination, if you assume putting yourself on the other side of a large, flat piece of granite is a good way to get me thinking about cooking,” he told her with raised brows. “But okay. We’ll try it your way.”
Pink bled into her cheeks as she caught his meaning, but she let him lead her down the stairs.
Maybe she even hoped to test out his imagination, but for the moment, he needed to focus on food instead of how empty the house was and how so very nice it was to be alone.
At least until he got a better idea of why she’d stopped that kiss.
“What can I do?” she asked and held up her hand with a laugh as she caught the expression on his face—which must have conveyed his thoughts quite vividly. “Besides that. Sheesh, give a man an inch.”
“You started it,” he reminded her with a grin and turned to pull the ingredients for chicken marsala and roasted vegetables from the refrigerator.
That’s when he realized his nerves had vanished.
He and Delilah were easy with each other in the kitchen as they worked together to make dinner, so much so he had to take a hard look at why.
It was because he’d relaxed. She relaxed him.
Especially since he had no expectations and no worries about any on her side.
This was working.
Chicken plated and vegetables laid out artistically on the side, Zero set dinner on the table in the breakfast nook that had always felt cozier to him than the formal dining room.
It helped he could angle Delilah’s chair close to his, which meant their knees nested against each other as they settled into their seats.
She didn’t move hers. He had a feeling he’d be more focused on the warm currents her touch generated across his skin instead of a blessed thing on his plate.
“This is really good,” Delilah told him as she sampled her first forkful and gave him a sunny smile. “Thanks for cooking.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, more pleased with the compliment than should really be warranted for such a simple sentiment.
But he’d tried hard to think of something she’d like that would be easy to make together. He had driven to town earlier to pick up the ingredients, despite a mile long to-do list. Then had spent an hour getting ready. This mattered. And it was gratifying to hear her recognize his efforts.
“Tell me about school,” he asked her impulsively, curious to hear more about this large, important piece of her life that had been hidden from him thus far.
He shoved that thought away. Not hidden, like she’d done it deliberately. It had just never come up.
With a shrug, she pursed her lips as if trying to sort out how to answer. “I’m a PhD candidate. There’s not a lot more to it than that. I spend a lot of time reading other people’s opinions about things, and eventually, I’ll get to tell people mine.”
That was a surprisingly vague answer if he’d ever heard one. “What are you studying?”
She eyed him and swallowed. “Art history.”
“Really? Not dog training?”
Could you even get a PhD in dog training? Maybe you couldn’t. But for some odd reason, it knocked him off-kilter to hear her say she was earning her doctorate in something so far removed from anything remotely resembling dogs or even animal behavior.
The look on her face unsettled him all at once. She turned an odd color, like she’d eaten bad shrimp, except there was no seafood on her plate.
“Not dog training,” she repeated faintly and shoved another forkful of chicken in her mouth, chewing intensely.
“That just seems so…weird,” he said before sounding it out in his head.
Which he should have, so he could at least rephrase it to not come across so negatively.
“I mean, it’s totally fine with me if you like art and want to study it.
I guess I thought you’d be doing something with training, since that’s your job. ”
“It’s, um…not my job,” she said and put her fork down, then took a deep breath. “I guess we’re going to do this now. I’m not a dog trainer. I mean, yeah, I trained yours. I just mean it’s not how I earn my living or anything, like you must be thinking. Art is what I’ve done for the last ten years.”