“Okay, yeah, sure! A cruise sounds great. Did you already get tickets?”
He squinted and furrowed his brow, confused. And then his face went neutral. “Oh, no, actually, not yet. I just figured we’d go there, and, you know, climb on.”
You can climb on me, she thought. Her eyes widened. Hopefully, those words hadn’t actually come out of her mouth, because at this point, she didn’t know what she was thinking as she squirmed and straightened her shirt again. The black lace seemed to pop out like an erection. If she could see his package from across the table, she suspected that he had his own little version of the black lace pokin’ out going on somewhere in his pants.
The waitress brought the check and she had that internal dialogue that all single women have when going out on new dates. ’do I offer to pick up the check? Do I offer to go halfsies? Do I…’
He didn’t even give her a chance. He grabbed the check, handed a credit card to the woman, and waved it off. Turned to her, he reached for her hand, and said, “Thank you for a lovely date. Or, thank you for a lovely meal.”
“Oh, well, my goodness!” she said, a little taken aback that she didn’t even have an opportunity to fight for the check. “Well, thank you so much! I mean, I, really, I, can I, I’d like to offer to pay the…”
He nodded. “You can get the next date.”
“Oh! Oh!” She said, his words sinking in, finally. “Yeah, get the next date.”
***
He couldn’t read her. It was driving him nuts. He just couldn’t read her. What, had he gone too far with the next date thing? Was she offended that he was implying that she should pay for the next date? Mike had suggested that there was a great way to handle women who tended to have good solid careers, but you didn’t know exactly how to handle the awkwardness of who paid for first dates. He had his own thing about paying.
When he was taking women on dates, he had more than enough money these days now that he had come into his trust fund, which he had always viewed as a bit of a curse – but now he viewed as one hell of a blessing, because if it meant that he could treat a woman like Laura right, then maybe he could have the future that he had hoped for, then it wasn’t just a blessing.
It was everything.
Discomfort gnawed away at him. How he had come into his trust fund was an issue he had not begun to explore, he and Mike the recipients of an annual income equal to approximately 2.7 percent of the $2.2 billion in the massive trust, split in half. The trust manager had laid it out in such clinical terms that Dylan had nearly vomited on the spot, the words twenty-nine million and change per year for life, minus management fees, pinging around his skull like a racquetball that never stops.
And that was two months ago. He still drove the same car, still worked his full shifts, but splurged in little ways, the enormity of his newfound – literally! – fortune not quite sinking in.
Mike had bought a cabin on the slopes. Cabin wasn’t quite the right word. Haven was more like it, a four bedroom ski palace that he knew would keep Mike happy for the rest of his life. The ski resort, too – which had been almost an after thought. Oh, yeah, I can save the struggling ski mountain I love, because I have more money than God now. Well, almost.
As Dylan caught Laura stealing shy looks at him, his money problems (twenty nine million of them per year) faded and he started to wonder if she could keep them happy for the rest of their –
“Dylan? Ready to go?” The waitress had taken the check, cleared the table, and was practically pulling out the vacuum to clean their spot.
The meal paid for, they stood and he put his arm around her waist. She leaned into him just enough to finally send him a signal that told him, Oh, yeah, and off they went outside. He reached for her hand, intertwining his fingers in hers. As they walked toward the boardwalk, he realized they weren’t going on that cruise.
Her scent was intoxicating. He couldn’t believe that her unique mixture of perfume, musk, and soap fused together to produce this. Even better – he knew that there were other scents, other tastes that would be even more divine if he could get there tonight.
Dylan stopped, finally, bursting at the seams with his own internal dialogue, his own body’s cravings, and just looked at her and decided that he needed to be as forthright with her as he had been with most people throughout his life, because these games weren’t cutting it anymore.
Time to make his move.
He leaned down, caressed her jawline with his right hand, and brought his lips to hers. She responded, pressing her body against his until everything, from breast to hip, was his, pushed into him, and anything he felt for her was extremely obvious right now.