Page 78 of Known By You
Of course he’d be more paranoid I’d done something wrong—he was perpetually trying to make sure he stayed on her good side.
But after getting to know her, I knew there was no bad side. She might seem severe and intense but underneath it she was just… lovely. Beautiful and funny and smart and sincere.
“I guess Elise couldn’t make it?” I asked, hoping to move on from commentary about my very unsmooth announcement.
Cookie’s gaze dropped to his beer as though any of us didn’t know he was absolutely tuned in to what the woman was or wasn’t doing.
“Haven’t seen her. Nik said she had to cancel a lunch earlier this week, too,” Bruce said, sending a wink in the direction of the table, no doubt toward his fiancée.
“Huh,” I said, as though I cared. I mean, I likedElise and all, but I wasn’t tracking her attendance at the weekly happy hour.
Our beloved Jean-Luc Doux, however?
Mais oui, he absolutely was.
“Anybody seen Stone this week?” Doc asked.
“I stopped by Wednesday, but he’s been checking on Kit for me during the day,” I said, resisting the pull to look for Liz. She would come back to the table when she was done saying hi to the girls. It was also a great thing for her to have friends here.
If there was any hope she’d come back, the more people here she liked, the better. The more at home, the better. So this was all good.
I’d been having more of these kinds of thoughts lately. More hopes she might return to Silverton for another extended leave, or perhaps suddenly retire from the CIA, even though I was fairly sure agents couldn’t access full retirement benefits until a full five years after military personnel usually could at twenty.
Whatever the case, I was slipping into delusions and we hadn’t even gone on a real date.
“Ready?”
I turned, instantly settling my hand against the curve of her lower back and beginning to move. “Have a good night, guys,” I said to whoever was still at the table because I didn’t care about any of them but Liz.
Obviously, I did care about them in a global sense, but in this moment? When I was about to have her to myself for the first time in days?
Yeah, no.
“Hungry?” she asked, a smile in her tone as I held the door for her to exit Craic.
She glanced over her shoulder as I followed her out and caught her dark gaze. “Starved.”
For her. And yes, sure, I had eaten an early lunch and was quite ready to eat dinner, but I’d passed the point of being subtle. If we only had a few weeks left, I didn’t want to spend them at separate ends of the couch and I’d resolved to confirm she felt the same and then… sit next to her.
Wow, real hero shit there, man.
“Where are we going?” she asked, accepting the hand I held out and weaving our fingers together.
I must’ve been hungrier than I realized because I couldn’t think of the name of the restaurant. I couldn’t think of anything other than how much I wanted to ask her that very question.
Wherewerewe going? Where could we possibly go?
Thankfully, logic hadn’t abandoned me entirely, so I told her the name and promised myself to enjoy the moment, the evening, the time with her, and not worry so much about those questions.
And whatever voice would normally shout at me to stop this because it simply couldn’t last? That voice had been choked out by whatever dream we’d walked into together and until it ended, I’d have to embrace it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Elizabeth
Silver Ridge Brewery’s pub was charming and rustic but also somehow modern, and it landed on my ever-growing list of reasons to love Silverton.
My eyes fluttered closed as I savored the bite of locally sourced cheesecake with chocolate chip cookie crumbles and chocolate espresso drizzle. This was by far the most decadent thing I’d eaten in a long time and not even something I’d typically eat. But Kenny had ordered it, taken one bite, and had been silent ever since I’d taken my first taste.
