Page 60 of Grit
Her smile was shy. “Okay so… I really love the way you normally smell, which is kind of like dust and oranges.”
“And you like that?”
Her cheeks got a little darker. “Yes?”
Cary couldn’t stop the grin. “But tonight I took a shower and put on cologne.”
She leaned forward and smelled his shirt. “And it’s very nice. It just smells different. Kind of like cedar trees and leather? And I like both things, it’s just different. But nice!”
“Would you like to say nice again?”
She smiled. “Very nice.”
He started laughing and he couldn’t stop. Luckily, Melissa started laughing too. She put her forehead on his shoulder, and he could feel her breath against his neck.
“I feel like a dork now.”
“Did you call yourself a dork?” He laughed harder. “At least you’re a dork with the sexiest fucking legs I’ve ever seen.” He still had his hand on her ankle. He ran his fingers lightly up the back of her leg, behind her knee and just above it, teasing the skin on her thigh.
Melissa stopped laughing and her whole body shivered.
Cary turned his head and whispered in her ear. “I’m glad you like how I smell.”
“I’m glad you like my legs.”
“I’m glad we’re going on a date.” He kept his voice low. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.”
“I’m glad too.” She lifted her head. “Should we go?”
“It’s either that or we cancel our reservation for a dinner we don’t have to cook or clean up after and make out for a couple hours in Sandy Strathmore’s tangerine orchard.” He shrugged. “I’m good with either.”
She gently pushed him away. “You better feed a girl, Nakamura.”
He ran a hand over her leg one more time.Goodbye, ladies.“Fine,” he said. “But only because I’ve seen how mean you get when you’re hungry.”
“You are not wrong.”
Like Melissa,Cary had only had brunch or lunch at Café Georgette. During the day, it was a small restaurant with a pretty, flower-filled courtyard covered by umbrellas.
At night the umbrellas were removed and sparkling lights and candles decorated the walls surrounding them, lending the bricks, flowers, and trees a fairy-tale atmosphere. Small candles burned in the center of each table. Most of the parties were couples or tables of four.
Cary took Melissa’s hand and walked to the hostess stand. “We have a reservation for two. We’re a little late.”
“Oh!” The hostess smiled. “The name?”
“Nakamura.”
“Let me just check and see if your table is ready.”
She walked away, and Melissa curled her fingers around his. Cary felt the rightness of it down to his bones. Her hand was relaxed. Her shoulders were relaxed. The line that lived between her eyes had disappeared.
He knew she was capable. She was capable as hell. He knew she was strong. She was so strong sometimes that he thought she could take on the world with one hand, all while nursing a premature calf and fixing a barbed wire fence with the other. He often suspected she hid a third arm somewhere on her person, because he didn’t know it was possible to do everything she did with two.
He just wanted her to breathe.
Cary desperately wanted to just take a couple of things off her plate sometimes so she would just be still and relax. He found his stress relief on the side of mountains. She found hers on the back of a horse.
When she wasn’t working. Which was almost never.
