Page 92 of Moonshine Kiss
Long game, I cautioned myself, as a vision of tangled sheets and Cassidy writhing on top of them popped into my mind.Nope. Get out of my head naked goddess Cassidy.I was determined to make this night perfect.
“What’s going on in that brain of yours?” Cassidy asked as the host led us through the dining room.
“You really don’t want to know.”
She was scanning the room, seemingly in cop mode, picking up and storing details of the other diners.
“You’re looking for Baxter, aren’t you?” I teased.
She made a gagging noise that had the host glancing over his shoulder.
“She’s fine,” I promised him.
The host pretended we were just another pair of polite diners and showed us to the table.Ourtable.
“The same table?” she asked, eyeing me with suspicion.
If Cassidy didn’t know that I was a romantic at heart, well, she was gonna have to get used to it right quick.
I pulled her chair out with a flourish. “Welcome to our first, official date.”
She sat and tucked the cloth napkin into her lap. I could tell by the tension in her shoulders that she was nervous as a cat in a rocking chair store. “Relax, Cass. I don’t bite,” I said, taking the chair across from her.
“Before we get to the biting, I think we need to talk business first,” Cassidy said, scoping out the other diners.
“I’m fine if we skip to the biting.”Down, boy! Charming, not horndoggy.
“How is this supposed to work?” she asked. It was a big, fat, loaded question.
But I was prepared for it.
“First things first,” I said, reaching for my water glass. I wet my whistle. “I’ve been thinking romantic thoughts about you since you were sixteen years old.” Honestly, it was probably closer to fifteen, but I felt like that might be skirting a little too close to the creepy old guy line.
“You had a damn funny way of showin’ it,” Cassidy said.
I could tell by the set of her jaw she wasn’t gonna take it easy on me tonight. “You were my little sister’s best friend. And during the teenage years, an age difference like ours is a serious deal.”
“And then my father opened his trap and you fell in line like a good boy.” Cassidy crossed her arms.
“What do you suppose would have happened if I hadn’t listened to the sheriff?” I asked her. “What if instead of lying to you when you came to Gibson’s the next morning, I did what I really wanted to instead?”
She leaned in almost imperceptibly. I knew I had her hooked. “What did you want to do?”
“Welcome. May I offer you a beverage tonight?” Our waiter, a ten-foot-tall man with a ponytail and a hooked nose, hovered over our table.
“Jesus, man! Give us a minute,” Cassidy yelped.
I gave him an apologetic smile as he scampered off.
“You were sayin’?” she demanded.
Reaching forward, testing my luck, I covered her hand with mine. I stroked my thumb over the ridges and valleys of her knuckles. I knew she felt it too, that electroshock charge every time we touched.
“I wanted to push you up against that wall and kiss you senseless. I wanted to tell you that you were done messing around with summertimers and jerks your own age. Because you were mine and it was high time you realized it.”
Cassidy didn’t move a muscle. She was staring at me with the slightest frown tugging on her pink lips. “Damn it, Bowie. You could have taken the most humiliating moment of my life and turned it into the most exciting, romantic, delirious teenage fantasy.”
“And then one of us would have done somethin’ stupid and screwed the whole thing up, ruining our shot.”
