She took in a quick breath, catching again that faint, faint hint of his cologne, and realized that might not have been the best idea. The scent seemed to trigger all her nerve endings, bringing back the previous Friday night, the way his arms had gone around her, the feel of his lips on hers, somehow soft and strong and insistent all at the same time.
A shiver went over her, and she forced herself to look out the car window, to focus on the trees wheeling about them as Lucas turned the SUV around in the enormous driveway so they wouldn’t have to back out onto the street.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said. “Maybe a little hungry.”
It was a now a few minutes past two; she’d had some soup and crackers before she left Jerome, but the light lunch didn’t seem to be holding on very well. That could explain her current unsettled state.
“Well, I have a nice dinner planned for us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get a snack while we’re out. I know just the place.”
She forced a smile. “Sounds great.”
They wound their way down through his neighborhood, so much more orderly and well-manicured than anything you’d see in Jerome, and on past that to a much larger street that went through a commercial area, with the sorts of chain stores she guessed were common to most medium-sized towns. It was of course much busier than Cottonwood, where she did the majority of her shopping, and even busier than Sedona, which was choked with tourists most of the time. And yet, in the grand scheme of things, Flagstaff wasn’t really that large a town. Out of curiosity, she’d looked it up once. Sixty thousand and some change. Nothing compared to Phoenix or Los Angeles or New York, but still an order of magnitude bigger than tiny Jerome.
At least the downtown area, once they got there, felt more familiar, most likely because many of the buildings were of the same vintage as those in Jerome. She’d come up on Tuesday, to avoid the weekend crowds, but it still felt congested to her, and they ended up having to leave the BMW in a subterranean structure, as no street parking was available.
“This way,” Lucas said, once they emerged on the street level.
She noticed he was careful not to reach out and take her by the hand, but instead pointed in the direction they needed to go. At that moment, she actually would have welcomed his holding her hand, simply because the wind had picked up and had a definite bite to it, chilling her fingers. She’d brought gloves with her, but she hadn’t thought she would need them on a sunny afternoon. Flagstaff looked so much warmer than it actually was.
But since they set a brisk pace, she found it wasn’t so bad, and before long they were taking a shortcut down an alley to a sort of outdoor mall with shops and restaurants. Lucas led her into the first restaurant, which turned out to be a tapas place, one Margot thought she’d heard Angela mention once or twice. The food had sounded delicious, but Margot had certainly never thought she would get the opportunity to eat there.
It was a seat-yourself kind of establishment, so they chose a table by the window and sat down. At this time of day, after lunch but before happy hour, it was deserted except for the wait staff.
“It’s two o’clock on a weekday,” Lucas said, dark eyes twinkling at her over the top of his menu. “Is that late enough for drinking sangria or not?”
He really wasn’t ever going to let her live that remark down. “It’s afternoon,” she replied calmly, “so I think it’s safe. Although I do wonder why you’d want to drink something cold when it’s barely fifty degrees outside.”
A quick grin. “Once you’ve had a glass, you’ll know why.”
The waiter came over then, and Lucas ordered two glasses of sangria, along with some bacon-wrapped dates. “We’ll take it easy at first,” he told her, once the waiter had gone. “That’s the fun thing about tapas — you can just keep ordering different ones until you feel full.”
“I thought you said you had something special planned for dinner.”
“I do, so scratch the ‘full’ comment. Let’s go for ‘moderately satisfied.’”
She could only shake her head at that, and watch as he poured her some water from the carafe on the table. Since she’d forgotten to bring along any bottled water for the drive, she was fairly thirsty at this point, and gratefully accepted the glass from him when he handed it to her.
“I do appreciate you coming here, Margot,” he said then, his expression quite serious. “I know it’s a big step.”
Was it? She’d been trying to play it safe, think of this as…what, a fact-finding mission? A way to step outside the boundaries she’d set for herself all these years? Not because she wanted to spend time with him. The thing was, she knew she did. She liked talking to him, especially if they weren’t sparring over her refusal to admit that an elder couldn’t be allowed much of a personal life.