Page 169 of Small Town Firsts
“We can’t do this. Not now.”
His dark eyes fired. “Why not?”
My chest was heaving. My fight or flight instincts were in full-on escape route mode. “Please, let me go.”
I don’t know if it was thepleaseor something he saw in my eyes. Whatever it was, he dropped his hands and I stumbled back and out the door.
I didn’t look back to see if he followed. I could only pray he wouldn’t.
My breath returned to normal when I was inside my car. I finally dared a look and quickly returned my eyes to front and center. To the moonlit water off the bank of his property.
To the lake that had been the only home I’d ever truly known.
I had to.
I couldn’t watch him stand on that huge staircase and drive away from him. So I stared out the back window until I was on the road again, and I didn’t look into my rearview mirror.
Not even once.
SIX
Shakingoff the rain on my hair, I stepped into the darkened, intimate atmosphere of the Sherman Inn. My stomach was roaring and my mind was in knots.
As for my dick, I wasn’t going there.
It had taken me days of wearing her down, but Ally had finally agreed to meet me for dinner and “some time” in town on Friday night.
“Some time” probably being an hour or less, considering her skittish tone as we’d talked that afternoon. But hell, after Sunday’s kiss, I considered it huge progress that she was talking to me at all. She’d run awful damn fast the other day.
I couldn’t even really blame her. I’d pushed for the kiss to happen and it had still almost blown my fucking head off.
“Table for two, please,” I told the maître d’. I was running late, but Ally tended to run even later so I felt safe in assuming I’d be snagging our table.
Normally, I would’ve placed a reservation, but this wasn’t supposed to be a date. Reservations screamed dates, according to Ally, so she’d wanted us to try our luck for a table. At one of the busiest restaurants in Crescent Cove on a Friday night at the start of summer.
Right.
“This way, sir,” the maître d’ said, proving me wrong. Even as I followed the tall, severe-looking man in black, Ally’s voice echoed in my head.
Hamilton money buys tables. You don’t need a reservation. Watch.
“Did someone just leave?” I asked.
The maître d’ shot me a cool smile. “On weekend nights, we’re booked solid all day and night. Your table, sir.” He gestured toward a secluded corner table with a lake view and candles flickering under glass domes.
“You know who I am then.” Why I needed the confirmation, I didn’t know. Maybe some part of me hoped Ally was wrong. She had to be wrong now and then.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t know my family’s influence in Crescent Cove. Of course, I did. Hamilton Realty had been a fixture in the community since my grandfather was a young man. I was also a regular at the Sherman Inn. But I’d never seen this guy before in my life.
“Yes, sir.” He pulled out a chair and gestured. “Your server will be here in a moment with the wine list. Your companion’s name so I can direct her to your table?”
“Alison Lawrence. She should be here soon?—”
“Right behind you,” she said cheerfully. “Got a table, huh?” she commented as I turned and tried not to swallow my tongue.
She wasn’t wearing anything special. Correction—she wasn’t wearing anything I hadn’t seen her in a hundred times before. She had on a pale-yellow sundress with tiny purple flowers, cowboy boots, and a tight jean jacket, with her long hair flowing in every which direction and matted a little from the misty rain. It didn’t matter. She was simply stunning.
How hadn’t I noticed before?
