Page 14 of Come Ride With Me
He brow furrowed. “You’re asking me to have lunch with you?”
The way she put it sounded like he was asking her out on a date. Nash hadn’t been on a date in more than a year. He’d had his share of midnight rendezvous with a couple of carefully selected women he’d met in town, but nothing any more important than a quick fuck. Now he was going to take Mica to lunch. Well, he thought with an inward sigh, he’d almost done more than that to her on a grassy hill in broad daylight, so sharing a meal with her shouldn’t be that much of a jump.
“Yes, I’d like to take you to lunch. Is that okay with you? Do you have a boyfriend that would object?”
Common sense told him not to give one good damn about what this woman did or did not have. She wasn’t for him. At least, logic told him she wasn’t. His body, specifically his dick, had other plans. So, he hoped like hell she didn’t have a boyfriend. He wanted to kick himself for not getting those preliminary issues out of the waybeforehe’d touched her. Normally, he would have. But Nash was quickly concluding that there was nothing normal about how Mica made him feel.
“No to the boyfriend and yes to lunch. After, um, all that, I’m starving.”
She smiled at him then and moved away to head towards the bike. And because he was a red-blooded man he couldn’t do anything else but watch the sway of her tight ass as she did. In that moment he knew his hunger for her was only going to grow, until he had no choice but to ignore every warning and charge full speed ahead to have her—business connection be damned.
Chapter 5
Nash
“You like meatloaf and mashed potatoes?”
Mica nodded. Her mouth was full and she was chewing as she smiled at him. He really liked her smile. He liked her hair, which he now noted was more of a sandy brown color. He’d been up close and personal with her out at that clearing just a little while ago and he’d noticed so many more things about her then. Like the line of her neck and that silky smooth spot where her pulse beat steadily. How the cuff of her ass fit perfectly against his rough hands and the sound of her moans rippled through his mind like a fuckin’ lullaby.
Nash chuckled and shook his head in a futile attempt to clear his mind. “I hate meatloaf. My moms used to cook it every Sunday when she came home from church. Pops and my brother ate it like it was caviar or something better.”
“So, you never ate it?” she asked when she’d finished chewing and used a napkin to wipe her mouth.
In that moment he wished she would’ve ordered any of the more than sixty dishes on the menu. Any of them, but the meatloaf.
“I did,” Nash admitted. “Didn’t have a choice. Pops didn’t play that leaving food on the table game. If Mama cooked it, we ate it. Case closed.” She was watching him intently, waiting for him to finish his story. He didn’t want to, but he’d opened the door on this topic, so he knew he was going to tell her, no matter how it made him feel.
“I liked the ketchup sauce Mama made. My Grams used to make a meatloaf that was big as a Thanksgiving turkey.” He rubbed a hand over his chin as that memory warmed a part of him that had been cold for far longer than he’d realized. “Hers had a spicy beef gravy. I liked the ketchup sauce better. That may be because I drown most of my food in ketchup anyway. Mama used to hate when I did that.”
“Used to?” she asked, her eyes already holding the sadness she was prepared to feel when he answered. The pity he normally despised from others but settled over him in a weirdly calming way.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “My parents died when I was thirteen. My brother was ten. There was a fire in the basement of the church where they were at a leader’s fellowship. They were both so dedicated to that church. So deep into whatever feeling they got from being there.” The only feeling he could relate to now and whenever he let himself relive this part of his past, was anguish. “They’d been using space heaters on the days the church was open except on Sundays because it was hard raising money to pay for oil for the furnace. The cord from one of the heaters short-circuited. Electrical fire started in the hallway and eventually burned the whole building down.”
Mica reached a hand across the table and let it rest on top of his before saying, “I’m so very sorry.”
His gaze fell to her hand, the smaller, lighter one resting over his. Her nails weren’t long, but they were manicured and painted with a pale color that almost matched her complexion. She wore no rings. This simple touch,hertouch was warm, comforting. He liked it.
“Thanks. It was a long time ago,” he said with a shrug because he desperately needed the melancholy that had washed over him to disappear. “Anyway, I haven’t eaten meatloaf since the Sunday before she died.”
Mica nodded.
Then she picked up her fork and cut a piece of the meat on her plate. Good, that line of conversation was over. He was relieved and picked up his fork preparing to dig into his chicken pot pie.
“Take a bite,” she said and he looked up to see that she had extended her arm across the table. She was holding a forkful of meatloaf in front of him.
It had a ketchup sauce and he could smell the tangy tomato base. His stomach growled and he brought his gaze back to her. “What are you doing?”
“It’s really good,” she said. “I like the ketchup sauce, too. You should try it.”
It smelled good, which was shocking since they were in a diner and not sitting at Mama’s dining room table.
“Come on. If you don’t, I’ll have to eat all of this by myself and I hate to even think about how many calories that will be.”
She moved the fork toward his face again and he considered how silly they must look with her attempting to feed him in a public place. But then he also thought of how damn pretty she looked sitting across from him with those penetrating eyes, the pert nose and that luscious full mouth that he knew he’d taste again.
Thoughts like that would easily take this already weird-looking situation to that intense place they’d been out in that clearing when he’d barely been able to keep his hands off of her. So, to get this over with Nash leaned in, took the food from the fork, and chewed, hoping like hell he wouldn’t regurgitate it. She used that same fork to scoop a puff of potatoes from her plate and slip it into her mouth. Now, they both chewed and watched each other.
“How old are you?” she asked after a few moments.
