“I figured you heard me make the reservation.” Logan turned away and tried to hide his grin, but Callie could tell something else was up. “Nice speech, but how did you know?”
“After the night when you kissed me at the bar and ran off, I had your name added to a list. Whenever you so much as step foot inside this restaurant, I know. I got a call earlier about your reservation for two. I had thought it was a joke.”
Callie pulled the blindfold off. “Way to ruin the surprise.”
“Oh come on, I thought it was great, the way you drove around for half an hour. To be honest, it took me a while to figure out what you were doing, I thought you were lost.”
Callie’s patience was growing thin. “If you keep this up, only one of us will be getting lost.”
Logan held his hands up in the air. “I’m done. I promise.”
“Good, because I’m starving,” Callie added. She made note that the hostess was the same one she had impersonated on her first trip to the microbrewery, and she felt nervous until she took her seat in a back corner of the restaurant. The table was hidden away from the main dining room. Above it, a dim filament bulb hung from a weathered brass fixture, casting a warm glow over the table. She had to give him credit. Logan sure did know how to set a mood.
After they had ordered dinner, their conversation turned back to more personal matters. And now that she felt more comfortable letting her guard down around him, Callie felt free to admit something she had barely even admitted to herself. “Sometimes I wish I were more adventurous. I’m always the one cleaning up messes, and I’m never the one making them. It would be fun for once to act with abandon the way you get to.” She surprised herself by saying it because she had always prided herself on being dependable and drama free, but it was true, every word of it, and she felt like Logan was the kind of person who could understand exactly what she meant.
“Well, you don’t need my permission. Just decide what you want to do and go do it,” he said.
“It’s not that easy. It’s never that easy. I have expectations to live up to. When this is over and the bill either passes or fails, I have to head back to DC and take the reins of one of the top crisis management firms in the country,” she said. “I have to be perfect at all times. I spend 15 hours a day fixing other people’s problems. I don’t have time to do things for myself.” Why was she getting so defensive about this? After all, she had been the one to bring it up.
“We all have expectations to live up to. Do you think my parents didn’t want me to make something of myself? My brother and I were supposed to be titans of industry, renaissance men, everything you could dream up. Now look at us. He’s out west playing forest ranger, and I’ve pissed away a decade of my life. I’ve bitterly disappointed my family, but I’m not going to let that get to me. Sometimes you have to decide what you want and go get it, regardless of the cost, regardless of what people think.”
Callie didn’t want to sound impertinent, but she couldn’t keep from pushing back a bit. “I know you lost your mother when you were in college, but I lost mine when I was just a kid. My father worked all day every day on Capitol Hill, my sister basically raised me. The people at Haven Communications are my family. I can’t let them down. They’re all I have.” Why was she saying this? She wanted to clap her hands over her mouth and just stop. She was ruining a perfectly nice evening for no apparent reason, but she couldn’t help it. She just felt like this was something she needed to tell him if they were going to have any chance of having a relationship beyond the week.
“You have me,” Logan said. The earnestness of his statement surprised her. He reached across the table and held her hand. “You have me, Callie. I will support whatever decision you make, but you should be whoever you want to be. You don’t need your sister telling you how to live your life. You don’t need anyone to make your decisions for you. Live a little. I promise, it won’t kill you.”
She let out a long breath and shrugged her shoulders. “You make it sound so easy.”
“Well, hang around drinking with me a little longer, and maybe it will be. I mean you’ve already got a blindfold. Like I said, I have a few ideas of how to use it.”
Callie laughed. Instead of killing the conversation, her admission had brought her closer to him. She reveled in each glance he gave her across the table, laughed at every joke. By the time the food arrived, she barely felt hungry. She just felt elated to be with Logan in the moment living for herself and no one else. By the time they were done, she wanted nothing more than to pull him into a back room and have her way with him. “Get me home,” she said, “Or I’ll be forced to take you here and now.”