Page 45 of A Rose of Steel
“Okay,” I said.
“Are you around your auntie?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“I could tell,” he said. “Look, I’ll ask around here for a nice place between here and there and I’ll text you the address and time.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
“Can’t wait to see you.”
“Me either,” I said, a blush coming over my face.
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye.”
“Who was that?” Nosy-Zanne asked as soon as I got off the phone.
“A friend.”
“You don’t have any friends.”
“Well, if that wasn’t a punch in the gut,” I said.
“Was it Chief-of-Staff?”
“I thought we agreed about the name.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” she said. “I was going to say, Chief-of-Staff Alex.”
“We’re going out to dinner tonight.”
“Do you want me to make a batch of tea for you to give him?”
“No.”
“Good,” she said, and blew out a breath acting relieved, “because I don’t think I have anything powerful enough to get that man on the right track.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Dinner with Alex turned out good. A small Italian restaurant in Jasper, only a forty-five minute drive for me, a little over an hour for him. The food was scrumptious, the atmosphere in the restaurant inviting. I didn’t try so hard to get “gussied up” as Auntie Zanne put it. A pair of sensible pumps, a deep purple lace dress, and a simple pair of gold earrings. I looked pretty, I thought, but didn’t look like I was trying. The rest of me was what it was, my hair and skin is what it is, and good or bad, Alex didn’t say a word about it.
“You’re looking good,” I said to him. “Face all cleared up. Pain gone away?”
“Sure is.”
“Stomach better?”
“Everything’s better now that I’m here with you.”
He wore an Italian virgin wool, light gray suit I’d bought him. If he did it to impress me, it worked. A light gray shirt, a gray silk tie with diamond shapes peppered throughout. His low-cut hair, short beard and moustache recently trimmed and lined. I pictured him venturing out in St. Charles to find a barber. It all made me smile.
I thoroughly enjoyed his company, and it seemed he enjoyed mine. It seemed as if we fell right back into sync with each other, the way it had been before I moved back to Roble. We talked, laughed, we touched and it seemed like a warmth of tenderness surrounded us.
“And this is the second murder now,” I said, telling him how the little place I’d avoided was becoming almost as exciting as the metropolis I’d been pining for.
“Well, let’s hope that crime here never gets as bad as it is in Chicago,” he said.
