Page 22 of Her Surprise Protector
But I couldn’t see any of it. Truly, we had to depend on our sense of touch, smell, hearing and finally our sense of taste to complete our unique dining experience.
Anthony seated us and filled our water and wine glasses before leaving the table. The voices around us spoke in hushed tones, and subconsciously, Elena and I did the same.
By mutual consent, we didn’t ask the waiter about the aromatic food we were served a short while later. My varied experience with gourmet foods gave me an edge over Elena, though, when it came to speculating what the complex flavors at the end of our forks might be. I had to admit, even I wasn’t entirely sure what the main dish was called, or even what kind of animal had supplied the meat. All I knew for sure was that the food was delicious. And by the sound of Elena’s voice and the occasional feel of her warm hand on mine, I hoped I could give myself a pat on the back at the end of the evening for another enjoyable surprise date.
Partway through the meal, another thought struck me as Elena’s voice floated across the table, telling me a story about her work. I had known all along that Elena was beautiful, but I had never realized how much her voice and the little sounds she made contributed to that beauty. Laughter showed amusement and pleasure, but so did tiny huffs of breath and soft tones from the back of her throat. Normally, her smile captivated me and masked those small sounds, but the darkness made them as clear as the day made her smile.
When we finished, we joined hands so Anthony could show us out. We paused for a moment at the door to the entryway, stepped from one complete dark space into another, then looked around, blinking, as the lanterns slowly came to life.
After giving the woman at the desk a glowing review of our experience at Four Senses, we braced ourselves and exited onto the street. Luckily, the harsh sunlight had faded into the softer hues of early evening.
“That was amazing,” Elena said as we climbed the few steps to the cabin of my private jet. Then while waiting for the rush of takeoff, she kissed me on the cheek and whispered, “Thank you for the surprise dinner, Riker. I loved it!”
She always did that. Elena always thanked me for taking her places, like I shouldn’t consider it a privilege just to spend time with a woman like her. I replied with “you’re welcome,” like always. But sometimes I wondered if Elena knew how much I needed this time together - how I needed her.
All too soon, the jet landed, and all that was left was to take Elena home. With a heavy heart, I pulled up in front of her house. By now, the sun had crept to just above sea level, and I didn’t want the evening to end.
Elena, bless her, read my mind. “Hey, I know it’s almost dark, but do you want to come down to the beach for a bit? I was thinking that it’s been long enough since we ate for an after-dinner swim.”
“Sounds perfect. I actually have swimming trunks in the backseat, too.” I had been planning to go to the marina and take out thePersistenceearlier if I had time, but that hope had vanished when I remembered the conference call. Not that it really mattered, though. A minor detail like having no swimming trunks wouldn’t have been enough to keep me from spending more time with Elena.
“Let me grab towels and get changed. Come on in,” Elena told me. “Guest bathroom is down the hall.
I let her go first and watched as she disappeared into her bedroom. Then, I followed behind her, stopping to admire and smile at the various crayon drawings taped on the walls. One of them was mine, and I brushed my fingers over that one before heading into the bathroom.
Elena had invited me over to spend time with her and Bree last weekend. And I had accepted, thrilled that Elena wanted to share the evening with me along with the most precious person in her world. The day had gone wonderfully. Bree and I had taped our crayon drawings next to each other on the wall with the others in her collection. I absolutely couldn’t draw and had sketched a terrible seahorse, but Bree hadn’t minded the misshapenness of the creature, and Elena hadn’t either.
When I emerged from the bathroom, Elena was waiting for me by the back door, towels in hand. “Ready?”
My eyes undertook an arduous journey from her scantily-clad ass to her eyes, making a not-so-subtle stop at her tempting valley of cleavage along the way. “Yep, I’m ready,” I affirmed, not bothering to look bashful about being caught staring. I had seen the swimsuits Elena normally wore, and they weren’t this revealing. It would be rude not to stare when she had gone to so much trouble for me.
“Then, let’s go.” Her bright smile fended off the onslaught of dusk, lighting the way through the door and across the dunes that separated the backyard from the beach.
I followed, for once totally blind to the beauty of the setting sun over the ocean. Elena didn’t normally move her hips this much when she walked, either. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought that she was trying to tease me.
Not trying. Succeeding.That swimsuit left so little, yet so much to the imagination. And my imagination had a hold over that part of my body that always seemed to get way too excited around Elena.
I had brought Elena home several times now, but something felt different about tonight. Or I thought it did. I couldn’t be sure, not yet, not after our dark dinner, because the feeling could be the lasting effects of not seeing Elena for a whole two hours, only hearing her voice…
We played in the water like little kids, splashing each other and tripping over the knee-high surf in our haste to dodge. For the first time since I had learned of Elena’s ex, I was glad she didn’t have any immediate neighbors to hear the laughter and shouting that echoed over the deserted beach.
Satisfied with the exercise, we worked together to lay out a blanket Elena had brought down to the beach. “So I brought this too,” she said, popping up a little collapsible lantern and tapping the side to bring it to life. “And this.” She held up a slightly ragged notebook. “It’s some poetry I’ve written. I figured that maybe if I share mine, you’ll share yours with me sometime.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I told her wryly, lying on my side on the blanket and propping my head up with one palm. “But I’d love to hear some of yours.” How people wrote could say a lot about them, and I couldn’t wait to hear Elena’s style.
“Okay.” Elena flipped through the book page by page, scanning them in the lantern-light. “This is a good one. Well,” she amended, “I don’t know if it’s good as in good poetry, but it’s one I don’t mind sharing.”
“Elena. You’re already braver than me for being so open about your poems. Anything you’ve written will be amazing.”
She began to read with a blush, and it took me only a couple lines to know that I was right, and Elena’s poems were incredible. Many of her works took something normal and mundane like a house or a car and delved deeper to find some emotion that lurked under the surface, tied to the object’s location, situation, owner or appearance. I could feel Elena’s wit and insight in her poetry, and I found that while I enjoyed them greatly, none of them surprised me because they rang true to her personality.
Despite the interesting insight, this reading was giving me into the way Elena saw things, my foot couldn’t help but do a little restless bouncing. Don’t get me wrong, I loved poetry, and I still couldn’t believe my luck in finding a woman who did too, but…that woman was half-naked right now, sitting with her legs shamelessly crisscrossed, one edge of her swimsuit bottoms creeping in a very dangerous and revealing direction. A man could only take so much and still call himself a man.
“-do you think?” Elena waited expectantly, peering at me over the top of her notebook.
“That we should have brought wine down here?” I said promptly to hide the fact that my ears had shut off to let my eyes admire better.
“No, we shouldn’t have. We had enough with dinner.” Elena started to close the notebook, but my hand shot lightning-fast between the pages.
