“First time.”
“Really? I would think this place would be in your dating arsenal—impressive restaurant with a view and a long drink menu on top of a hotel. It’s like a playboy’s one-stop-shopping dream. Couple of drinks…grab a room…”
“I prefer to keep a mattress in the bed of my pickup. It’s cheaper and easier to dump them off when I’m done.”
I laughed. “Smart.”
“You know I’m not really a whore.”
The waitress delivered our drinks, so I sipped mine. It was the most delicious drink I’d ever tasted—like a melted, toasted coconut ice cream bar.
“Really? So how many women have you dated in, say, the last month?”
He thought about it for a minute. “Three.”
“Hmph. That’s not so bad, I guess.” I sipped my drink again and squinted at him. “Unless you slept with all of them. Sleeping with three different women a month would be thirty-six a year…after ten years of singlehood that would be upwards of three hundred and sixty different women. That’s kinda gross.”
Hunter frowned.
I smirked. “Slept with ’em all, huh?”
“I travel a lot for work. Sometimes I spend the better part of three months on a job site out of state, so I don’t always get to date that often.”
“So you don’t date when traveling? You’ve never met a woman at a bar while on the road and brought her back to your room?”
Another frown. “Did we or did we not meet when I overheard you deciding to bring some random—boring as shit, I might add—guy back to your room while you were traveling?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“I have a good reason for not wanting anything more than sex from a man these days. Plus, I don’t do it very often.”
Hunter said nothing. He seemed to like to argue with me, so my guess was his sudden silence was because I’d hit upon something he didn’t want to talk about. Perhaps he had his own good reasons for not wanting anything but a sexual relationship with someone.
“So, tell me something about your love life, birthday boy who isn’t a whore. I gave you the thirty-second version of my heartache this afternoon. What’s your deal?”
“Not much to tell.”
“Ever married?”
“Nope.”
“Engaged?”
“Nope.”
“Serious girlfriend.”
“One.”
I took another sip. “Now we’re getting somewhere. How long was that relationship?”
“A few years.”
Although that surprised me, it did make sense. I wanted no part of a relationship because of my sour outlook after my marriage. “Why did you break up?”
He shifted in his seat. “Life.”
“Ah. That tells me a lot.”
“I prefer to live my life looking forward, not backward. You look in the rearview mirror too often, sometimes you miss what’s right in front of you.”
Huh. Not the answer I expected. But a damn good point.
The waitress came back to our table. Her timing was perfect for a change in the tone of our conversation. After she took our dinner order, and I finished off my large margarita, I shared something I’d been thinking about earlier as I was getting ready.
“My mom’s a big gardener. Growing up, she would plant a different flower on my birthday each year—one that would bloom around my spring birthday. Every year, we’d go outside to plant a new one, and all of my birthday plants would be in bloom. When I went away to college, she would snap pictures and send them in my card. It’s kind of goofy, but I loved it and looked forward to it each year. Yesterday, when you showed me your mom’s birthday birdhouses, it made me think maybe we could start some sort of a tradition for Caroline.”
Hunter sat back in his chair. “I’d like that. What did you have in mind?”
“You know the big oak tree that’s right outside Caroline’s bedroom window in the yard?”
“Yeah.”
“I was thinking maybe we could send her plants every year to hang from that tree on her birthday. You could make Anna and Derek a flower box to keep all the flowers in individual containers with hangers. Then on her birthday each year, we could take turns going over the night before and hanging all the plants on the tree—sort of like a Christmas tree, but a birthday tree instead.”
Hunter stared at me funny for a minute. I thought it might’ve been a look of disappointment, which caused me to say, “If you think it’s silly, we can just forget it.”
“No, not at all. I think it’s a great idea.”
“Oh, okay. You made a weird face, so I thought maybe you thought it was a dumb idea.”