She looked around the half-full dining area. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we can seat you now.”
Ellie walked them over to one of the tables by a side window that looked out over the Skokomish River where it fed into the ocean. The sun was dipping low over the water, the rays sparkling off the still surface of the slow-moving river. There were people milling along the wooden boardwalk that was bordered by docks on one side and storefronts on the other, before being split by the highway and starting again, leading down to the beach.
He looked away from the scenery, back at Anna. They had shared countless meals together, but this was different. Normally, they didn’t sit across from each other at a tiny table complete with a freaking candle in the middle. Mood lighting.
“Your server will be with you shortly,” Ellie said as she walked away, leaving them there with menus and each other.
“I want a burger,” Anna said, not looking at the menu at all.
“You could get something fancier.”
“I’ll get it with a cheese I can’t pronounce.”
“I’m getting salmon.”
“Am I paying?” she asked, an impish smile playing around the corners of her lips. “Because if so, you better be putting out at the end of this.”
Her words were like a punch in the gut. And he did his best to ignore them. He swallowed hard. “No, I’m paying.”
“I’ll pay you back after. You’re doing me a favor.”
“The favor’s mutual. I want to go to the fund-raiser. It’s important to me.”
“You still aren’t buying my dinner.”
“I’m not taking your money.”
“Then I’m going to overpay for rent on the shop next month,” she said, her tone uncompromising.
“Half of that goes to Sam.”
“Then he gets half of it. But I’m not going to let you buy my dinner.”
“You’re being stubborn.”
She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms and treating him to that hard glare of hers. “Yep.”
A few moments later the waiter came over, and Anna ordered her hamburger, and the cheeses she wanted, by pointing at the menu.
“Which cheese did you get?” he asked, attempting to move on from their earlier standoff.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I can’t pronounce it.”
They made about ten minutes of awkward conversation while they waited for their dinner to come. Which was weird, because conversation was never awkward with Anna. It was that dress. And those shoes. And his penis. That was part of the problem. Because, suddenly, it was actually interested in his best friend.
No, it is not. A moment of checking her out does not mean that you want to...do anything with her.
Exactly. It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t anything to get worked up about. Not at all.
When their dinner was placed in front of them, Anna attacked her sweet potato fries, probably using them as a displacement activity.
“Chase?”
Chase looked up and inwardly groaned when he saw Wendy Maxwell headed toward the table. They’d all gone to high school together. And he had, regrettably, slept with Wendy once or twice over the years after drinking too much at Ace’s.
She was hot. But what she had in looks had been deducted from her personality. Which didn’t matter when you were only having sex, but mattered later when you had to interact in public.
“Hi, Wendy,” he said, taking a bite of his salmon.
Anna had gone very still across from him; she wasn’t even eating her fries anymore.
“Are you... Are you on a date?” Wendy asked, tilting her head to the side, her expression incredulous.
Wendy wasn’t very smart in addition to being not very nice. A really bad combination.
“Yes,” he said, “I am.”
“With Anna?”
“Yeah,” Anna said, looking up. “The person sitting across from him. Like you do on a date.”
“I’m just surprised.”
He could see color mounting in Anna’s cheeks, could see her losing her hold on her temper.
“Are you here by yourself?” Anna asked.
Wendy laughed, the sound like broken crystal being pushed beneath his skin. “No. Of course not. We’re having a girls’ night out.” She eyed Chase. “Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m going home with the girls.”
Suddenly, Anna was standing, and he was a little bit afraid she was about to deck Wendy. Who deserved it. But he didn’t really want to be at the center of a girl fight in the middle of Beaches.
That only worked in fantasies. Less so in real life.
But it wasn’t Wendy whom Anna moved toward.
She took two steps, came to a stop in front of Chase and then leaned forward, grabbing hold of the back of his chair and resting her knee next to his thigh. Then she pressed her hand to his cheek and took a deep breath, making determined eye contact with him just before she let her lids flutter closed. Just before she closed the distance between them and kissed him.
Four
She was kissing Chase McCormack. Beyond that, she had no idea what the flying F-bomb she was doing. If there was another person in the room, she didn’t see them. If there was a reason she’d started this, she didn’t remember it.
There was nothing. Nothing more than the hot press of Chase’s lips against hers. Nothing more than still, leashed power beneath her touch. She could feel his tension, could feel his strength frozen beneath her.
It was...intoxicating. Empowering.
So damn hot.
Like she was about to melt the soles of her shoes hot. About to come without his hands ever touching her body hot.
And that was unheard-of for her.
She’d kissed a couple of guys, and slept with one, and orgasm had never been in the cards. When it came to climaxes, she was her own hero. But damn if Chase wasn’t about to be her hero in under thirty seconds, and with nothing more than a little dry lip-to-lip contact.
Except it didn’t stay dry.
Suddenly, he reached up, curling his fingers around the back of her head, angling his own and kissing her hard, deep. With tongue.
She whimpered, the leg that was supporting her body melting, only the firm hold he had on her face, and the support of his chair, keeping her from sliding onto the ground.
The slick glide of his tongue against hers was the single sexiest thing she’d ever experienced in her life. And just like that, every little white lie she’d ever told herself about her attraction to Chase was completely and fully revealed.
It wasn’t just a momentary response to an attractive man. Not something any red-blooded female would feel. Not just a passing anomaly.
It was real.
It was deep.
She was so screwed.
Way too screwed to care that they were making out in a fancy restaurant in front of people, and that for him it was just a show, but for her it was a whole cataclysmic, near-orgasmic shift happening in the region of her panties.
Seconds had passed, but they felt like minutes. Hours. Whole days’ worth of life-changing moments, all crammed into something that probably hadn’t actually lasted longer than the blink of an eye.
Then it was over. She was the one who pulled away and she wasn’t quite sure how she managed. But she did.
She wasn’t breathing right. Her entire body was shaking, and she was sure her face was red. But still, she turned and faced Wendy, or whichever mean girl it was. There were a ton of them in her nonhalcyon high school years and they all blended together. The who wasn’t important. Only the what. The what being a kiss she’d just given to the hottest guy in town, right in front of someone who didn’t think she was good enough. Pretty enough. Girlie enough.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice a little less triumphant and a lot more unsteady than she would like, “we’re here on a date. And he’s going home with me. So I’d suggest you wiggle on over to a different table if you want to score tonight.”
Wendy’s face was scrunched into a sour expression. “That’s okay, honey, if you want my leftovers, you’re welcome to them.”
Then she flipped her blond hair and walked back to her table, essentially acting out the cliché of every snotty girl in a teen movie.
Which was not so cute when you were thirty and not fifteen.
But, of course, since Wendy was gone, they’d lost the buffer against the aftermath of the kiss, and the terrible awkwardness that was just sitting there, seething, growing.
“Well, I think that started some rumors,” Anna said, sitting back down and shoving a fry into her mouth.
“I bet,” Chase said, clearing his throat and turning back toward his plate.
“My mouth has never touched your mouth directly before,” she said, then stuffed another fry straight into her mouth, wishing it wasn’t too late to stifle those ridiculous words.
He choked on his beer. “Um. No.”
“What I mean is, we’ve shared drinks before. I’ve taken bites off your sandwiches. Literally sandwiches, not— I mean, whatever. The point is, we’ve germ-shared before. We just never did it mouth-to-mouth.”
“That wasn’t CPR, babe.”
She made a face, hoping the disgust in her expression would disguise the twist low and deep in her stomach. “Don’t call me babe just because I kissed you.”
“We’re dating, remember?”
“No one is listening to us talk at the table,” she insisted.