Chapter 7 #2
But not with Viv. With her, he laughed and smiled and felt…yeah…happy. He’d always thought relationships were hard work, something that required compromise and obligation, responsibilities he didn’t want.
Being with Vivian didn’t feel like work. Instead, it felt as easy as breathing.
Dean pulled into a small parking lot overlooking Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
He’d invited her to lunch knowing it would be easier for them to go on a date that didn’t require her asking Victor and Belle to babysit.
So, he’d chosen a time when Pip was at school…
and no one would be the wiser about the fact they were together.
Vivian looked out the windshield toward the little seafood café tucked between an independent bookstore and an ice cream shop.
“I’ve driven past this place a hundred times, but I’ve never stopped,” she admitted.
“You’re in for a treat, then,” he said, turning off the car.
“As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the best kept secrets in Baltimore.
Stay there,” he said, with a hint of that dominant tone he noticed Vivian responded to in the bedroom.
It worked the same magic here, because her eyes darkened with instant lust.
Dean grinned as he climbed out of the car, hurrying around to open her door.
“A girl could get use to this,” she drawled as she stepped out.
The café wasn’t crowded, which suited Dean just fine. They were shown to a small table beside the front window, with a view of boats drifting lazily across the harbor. They both took a few minutes, studying the menus.
The waitress appeared with two water glasses. “Can I get you something else to drink first, or would you like to go ahead and order?”
“I’ll stick with water,” Vivian said. “Still on the clock.”
“Me too,” Dean said to the waitress. “As for our meal, are you ready to order?” he asked Vivian.
She closed the menu and told the waitress, “I’ll have whatever he’s having.”
Dean looked at her in surprise. “That’s brave.”
She giggled. “Should I be worried?”
“Hell yeah, you should. I’ve eaten arena food for most of my adult life. My standards are questionable.”
“I trust you.”
Those three words settled somewhere deep inside his chest. She probably hadn’t meant anything by them, but there was no denying they meant everything to him.
Dean forced himself to look back down at the menu—it was that or get lost in her lovely dark eyes—and placed their order.
“We’ll start with cups of the crab corn chowder.
Then we’ll have the Brussels sprout salad.
After that…” He glanced up at her. “How do you feel about splitting the seafood platter?”
She rested her forearms on the table. “Sounds perfect.”
Dean handed the waitress the menus.
Over lunch, they talked about anything and everything—books, movies, childhood memories, favorite vacations, worst haircuts. The last topic was prompted by the fact Pip had gotten her hands on a pair of safety scissors at school and decided to give herself bangs.
“Mercifully, she didn’t go too short, so Belle was able to straighten them without it looking like a really bad bowl cut,” Vivian said, pulling out her phone so she could show him a photo. “Even so…”
Dean winced dramatically. Not because Pip’s hair looked that bad, but because he wanted to hear Vivian laugh again.
It wasn’t until last week, when they were laughing in bed, that Dean realized she’d been doing that more and more whenever they were together.
Hell, he was doing it more, and it felt good.
The waitress came over to refill their water glasses and to see if they wanted dessert. They both said, “no thank you,” and Vivian looked at the time almost regretfully. She didn’t want this lunch to end any more than he did.
“You need to get back?” Dean had a couple of hours before he absolutely had to be back at the arena for tonight’s home game. Truthfully, he typically spent the entire day before a game in his office, going over his plan, his lineup. Today…that felt less important than this meal.
She tapped her phone a few times, then her eyes lit up as she shook her head. “Turns out, I don’t! My next patient canceled his appointment, so I don’t have to be back until three. You have time?”
Dean waved the waitress back over, grinning. “We changed our minds. We’d like to split a piece of…” He looked at Vivian, who had her answer ready.
“Cheesecake,” she replied.
“And a couple cups of coffee,” Dean added.
“You’re sure I’m not keeping you from anything?” Vivian asked, when the waitress left. “I know you have a game tonight.”
“I have things well in hand for that. I’d much rather be here.”
She smiled.
“You planning to come tonight?”
Vivian sighed. “I wish I could, but I got a little overzealous when Pip started school. Signed up to join the PTA, then added my name to the Halloween party committee. We’re meeting tonight to put the finishing touches on our costume carnival.”
“Sounds fun,” Dean said, chuckling when Vivian shot him an “are you serious?” raised eyebrow. “Or maybe I’m supposed to call it hell on earth? I have no frame of reference here.”
Vivian snorted. “Somewhere in the middle of those two. Personally, I’d rather be cheering on the Rays.”
And he would rather have her in the stands, though he suspected it would be better for his work ethic if she wasn’t.
Dean didn’t doubt for a minute, he’d spend too much of the night sneaking peeks up at the team’s family box, hoping for glimpses of her.
Without her in the arena, there was a chance he’d be able to focus on the game. A slim one, but a chance just the same.
The waitress returned with a large slice of cheesecake and two clean forks, then she poured them each a cup of coffee. Dean couldn’t help but notice they both took theirs with cream, no sugar.
“So why coaching?” Vivian asked, before taking a bite of the dessert.
Dean shrugged. “While my body was ready to give up hockey, my head and heart weren’t.” He tapped both those places as he said them.
“That makes sense.”
“I’ve lived and breathed hockey since I was Pip’s age. It’s all I’ve ever known.”
“So you think you’ll always be a coach?”
Dean rubbed his jaw. “This tends to be a cutthroat field. One bad season and I could be kicked out on my ass. But, optimistically speaking, yeah, I’d like to keep coaching for the foreseeable future. I’m not ready to retire from the sport yet.”
“You mentioned commentating in Boston. Do you think you’d ever pursue that? For the record, I think you’d be great at that.”
“I’ve been approached with offers. It’s not something I’ve considered since stepping behind the bench as a coach, but I never say never. If things with the coaching gig go south, that would be one way to keep a foot on the ice.” Dean licked his fork. “Okay. Your turn. Why genetic counseling?”
“That wasn’t actually my dream job. It was the backup plan, the one that allowed me to stay at home, work normal hours, and provide Pip with stability and a proper home life.”
“Oh,” he said, surprised by that confession. He seemed to recall her talking about being a geneticist back when she was eighteen and in her first year at college.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she added hastily. “I genuinely enjoy my work at Hopkins.”
“So what was the dream job?”
“Paleopopulation genetics.”
He chuckled, shaking his head. Her career had become a running joke between them, because once she started talking about work, he realized just how fucking smart Vivian was, and it always became obvious that he didn’t fully grasp what it was that she did.
“You didn’t realize those were two different careers, did you?” she asked.
“In my defense, they both have the word gene in them.”
Vivian threw her head back, laughing loudly. Dean joined her.
When they finally settled down, she continued. “Paleopopulation genetics is a subspecialty of paleoanthropology.”
“Dinosaurs?” he asked.
“No. Technically, paleontology is the study of all ancient life. Dinosaurs are just the sexiest of fossils.”
“Obviously,” he replied, enjoying her jest.
“Paleoanthropology is the study of human ancestors. Paleo for ancient, anthropology for humans. Paleopopulation genetics means using not just the bones themselves but DNA extracted from those bones, to better understand modern human ancestors.”
“So, the genetics of neanderthals?”
“That’s part of it,” she said. “We can trace some bits of earlier archaic human DNA to various geographic populations of modern humans. And there are actually nearly twenty different species of early humans.”
“So you got to dig up the bones and then look at their DNA?”
She nodded. “For the first few years of my marriage to Phil, I spent a lot of time traveling back and forth to Africa.”
“To the dig site where you spent this past summer?”
“To fund the research on introgression on allele mutation in a subset of modern human population.”
It was at that point that Dean realized Vivian was fucking with him. “Now you’re just showing off.”
She laughed. “I committed to writing a book about the findings. That got put on the back burner after Phil died. Last spring, the publisher threatened to hand all of my work over to another researcher to finish it. I’d put so much of my heart and soul into the project, I couldn’t stand the thought of that, so I asked Victor and Belle if they’d watch Pip while I returned to Africa.
Completing that book brought me closure I didn’t even realize I needed. ”
“I’m glad you got that. Do you think that once Pip is grown up, you’ll ever go back to that career?”
Vivian shook her head. “No. I don’t think I will. I’ve grown somewhat sedentary in my old age.”
Dean snorted. “Oh yeah. You’re practically a geriatric at thirty. Wait until you hit your forties. I swear I creak more than a haunted house every morning when I get out of bed.”
Vivian wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “I haven’t noticed you slowing down. At. All.”
Dean stroked his finger across the top of one of her hands. “What can I say? With you, I feel like a horny teenaged boy again.”