Page 29 of 28 Dates

Thin, red brows rise, and she sets her drink down next to mine. “And you want it?”

“Yeah. It’s the perfect space. Small and it doesn’t have a kitchen, but it wouldn’t need one. But I could have a small stage up front for open mic nights or something. I could either open it all up together or keep a wall separating the bars with a walkway, but it’d keep the newer part quieter. It’d be separated but still one place.” I hand her the phone. “That’s my most recent idea.”

Her fingers brush mine as she takes my phone. That familiar spark of chemistry hits my finger and slides up my arm, straight to my chest.

It quickens as she zooms in on the photo. I take a sip of my drink to calm my nerves. Her opinion of me has always been far more important than I’ve ever showed her, but watching her study my dream rattles me.

I might have been joking about there being a sommelier, sort of—I’d love to work with her, side by side—but expanding Dirty’s…it’s been something I’ve always dreamed of.

She’s literally holding my dreams in the palm of her hand. Her tongue is poking out at the corner of her lips, the corners of those turned up. Brows are pulled together as she examines the drawing. She might need my help in explaining it to her. This particular one isn’t done on graph paper, and my handwriting has been compared to a doctor’s signature more than once or a thousand times.

“Do you get it?” I ask.

She raises a finger in the air. “Shh.”

She turns the phone. I take a larger sip of my wine. Her fingers pinch together on the screen and separate, expanding something. She pulls it closer to her face, eyes narrowing. I drain the rest of my glass.

“Caitlin?” It’s a small photo. It can’t take this long to examine. I assumed she’d glance, smile, and hand my phone back to me and give me an “Atta boy. Looks good.” I didn’t expect her to spend more time looking at it than I have since I drew it.

“Hold on a sec,” she says. She turns the phone again and frowns, reaching for her wineglass and taking a sip. Her glass wobbles on the table as she sets it back down, and I grab it before it spills over. Her head pops up, and that tongue in the corner of her lips disappears. “I need some paper. I have an idea.”

What? She sets down my phone and scurries off the couch. “Don’t go anywhere,” she calls out when she disappears down the hall. “I’ll be right back!”

Like I can move. I’m paralyzed. What is she doing? My mind scrambles. I truly didn’t think my night over to see if she was doing okay would spiral so quickly into my plans for Dirty Martini’s, but hell if I’m not enjoying her excitement over my business.

I come unglued from shock and go into the kitchen. Grabbing the bottle of wine, I bring it back to the living room and set it on the coffee table. I’m setting the bottle down after freshly refilling my own glass when Caitlin returns, file folder in one hand and a handful of colored markers in another.

She points the hand filled with markers at the wine bottle. “Excellent idea. Now, I love what you’re thinking for Dirty’s, but I have some questions and a couple ideas came to my mind to make it even more awesome.” She waves her hands in the air. Papers swish and markers wiggle while her smile lights up the room. “So, how about it? Want to plan your future with me?”

Excitement bubbles off her so much it’s contagious, and I doubt she realizes what she just asked me.

Do I want to plan my future with her?

Hell fucking yes I do.

Chapter 11

Caitlin

Want to plan your future with me?

Geez. Where’d that come from? If I could smack my forehead without being obvious I would, but since Jonas has this strange look on his face, I quickly focus on the paper in front of me.

He’s joked around about expanding Dirty’s for so long, ever since he took it over a year ago, that I’m more than excited to help him. And sure, he didn’t really ask for my opinion, but he has to know by now I’m going to give it.

I take his sketch and make it larger, the perfectionist in me drawing it closer to scale. I’m sitting on the floor, feet tucked under me, and as I scratch his drawing, I can feel the weight of his gaze on me as he drinks his wine. Then I draw an exact replica of the bones of the space without the bars and stage and table he’d drawn in the first one.

Once finished, I take a sip of my own wine and wave him over. “Come here.”

The warmth of his body is so close to me I fight a shiver as he takes a spot next to me, settling down and stretching out his long legs beneath the coffee table. One of his arms slides along the couch cushions behind me. We’re so close his thigh is pressed against mine and I scoot over. The minuscule space I set between us does absolutely nothing to quell my rapidly beating heart.

He smells so good. All man. It takes everything I have to turn my head and meet his eyes. “I love your idea.”

Has my voice gone raspy? It has. I clear my throat and sip my wine.

His grin is lopsided. “Yet you want to change it.” He nods toward the paper. “Go on. Let’s see the master at work.”

I’m far from a master, but my fascination with numbers and math helps me with angles and plans. It’s all concrete.

---