How in the hell can she make me want to laugh? He really liked the idea of a little make-believe.
Chapter Thirteen
“I don’t have a menu for you, but I can tell you about today’s specials.” He picked up his vest, went back to the room and grabbed a couple of things, then wandered closer to Eden. Her skirt had ridden up high on her leg. He might not have been able to see her eyelashes, but he sure as hell could see her toned thigh. She knew it too, the little vamp.
“Uh-um. You were going to tell me something?” she reprimanded with a knowing grin.
Asher shook out one of the tablecloths and covered the table, then placed a bottle of water in front of her and bowed.
“Your drink,” he said in French.
“Thank you,” she responded in kind.
He grinned at her ease in getting into the game. “For the appetizer, I would suggest that you start with our wild seed option. It has a hint of salt, while providing that satisfying crunch for the most discerning palette.” Asher rustled around in his pocket.
“Not sunflower seeds,” she begged in English. “My brother Bobby lives on those, I can’t stand them.”
“I said discerning palette, Mademoiselle,” Asher continued in French. “I would only provide the best options in such an exquisite establishment.” He pulled out a baggie of corn nuts and Eden burst out laughing.
“Monsieur,” she switched back to French. “I stand corrected. I should have realized that of course, you would continue to provide me with only the best this evening.”
Asher’s cock ached as he remembered Eden’s naked body beneath his. But enough of that, now they were just having playtime.
Sex is playtime.
‘Shut up!’ he told himself.
This time, Asher was close enough to where he could see her eyelashes slowly close and open, luring him into her fantasy.
He poured out the corn nuts for her.
“Kind sir, are you going to dine with me?” Her French accent was perfect.
“It is my duty to first provide for the lady. For the main course, I would suggest one of our healthy options. There are four different flavors to choose from, each has a chewy cardboard texture base, layered with a sawdust cream filling that is then coated with a facsimile of either chocolate, strawberry, peanut butter, or mint. I must say, they are all very healthy and contain quite a bit of protein.”
“I think a corn nut and strawberry pairing would go nicely together,” her voice went up an octave as she visibly cringed.
“You are being too kind. I think you should leave that to me. I would suggest you go for the peanut butter and corn nut.”
Eden’s laugh was throaty. “Thank you. I will.”
Asher handed her the protein bar, then settled himself down with the strawberry bar. He left the corn nuts for Eden.
“How do you speak French so well?” she asked in the same language after she took another delicate sip of water.
“My mother is from Belgium. I grew up speaking French and Flemish.”
“But you’re American.”
“Yeah, Dad was Army Intelligence assigned to NATO. He met Mom there. According to him, it was love at first sight.”
“And your maman?”
Asher grinned. “She needed a little convincing. She was young and was the baby of the family. The idea of marrying a foreigner didn’t sit well with her.”
“What was the age gap?”
“Eight years. Dad says their first date was horrible. He couldn’t speak French worth a damn, and mom’s English was almost non-existent. What was worse, her sister tagged along.”
Eden laughed as she popped another corn nut in her mouth.
“I can top that. When I was fifteen, my dad sent out Eddie and Bobby on one of my dates.”
“They were your brothers?” Asher guessed.
Eden nodded. “Bobby was seventeen and Eddie was nineteen. It was summer so he was home from college working the ranch.”
“What the hell was your dad doing, letting you go on a date when you were fifteen?”
Eden laughed at the outrage in his tone. “You would get along with the men in my family, I can tell.” She took a dainty bite out of her protein bar and immediately followed it up with some water. “So, Flyridge is a really small town. Mom and Dad are third generation, and I found out from the town librarian that Mom and Dad started dating when Mom was fifteen. Boy, Lori and Jenny were pissed that I got that information and not them.”
“This I want to hear about. Mom’s sister sat at the table with them. Did your brothers sit with you?”
“Our date was at the DQ. They sat in the booth directly behind Clayton. I could see them the entire time, but Clayton couldn’t. I thank God for small miracles, but it was terrible. Bobby kept sticking straws up his nose, but Eddie just glared. He’d been glaring as soon as I came downstairs wearing my pink angora sweater. He told Daddy that he should make me go up and change.”
“But he didn’t.”
“Nope, Mom stepped in. She said it was cute, and it really was. I was flat as an ironing board, so it wouldn’t have mattered if it was three sizes too small—which it wasn’t—it wouldn’t have shown off a damn thing.”
“Still, angora. And pink.”
“Still, no boobs. It was amazing I was asked out. It was because Clayton needed help in Spanish class.”
“Now, I don’t want you to feel objectified or anything, but I might have noticed that eventually, you overcame the ironing board issue.”
“I noticed that you noticed, Asher,” she purred. “I like how you took your time thoroughly taking stock of my attributes.”
Asher threw back his head and laughed. “Being thorough is part of the job,” he was finally able to gasp out.
“Anyway, it took three more years before I was able to start luring boys in for realsies.”
“I bet you had the whole school chasing after you. Were you a cheerleader?”
Eden snorted. “Not hardly. What about you? Athlete?”
“Nope, that was my younger brother, Law. I was student council and I started a group of us who would go volunteer at the local VA hospital.” Before she could question further, he grinned. “I was really hoping to imagine you in a cheerleader outfit.”
“You can imagine me in seven different bridesmaid dresses, does that help?”
He filched some corn nuts. “Depends how short the skirt was.”
“Yeah, trust me, you wouldn’t have been interested in me in any of those. Especially the tangerine-colored one. I don’t know what Kimmie, my sister-in-law, was thinking. My sisters and I blame it on the pregnancy hormones. The next one I’m supposed to wear is green and purple. I’m going to kill my cousin.”
“I want to see you in it.”
“I’m never telling you when and where the wedding is happening, and I’ve bribed every friend and family member a good chunk of money not to post a picture of me on social media.”
He was definitely going to have to put Kane on the job to find pictures.
She pushed the pile of corn nuts towards him. “I’m done. I’m savoring my main course.” She held her protein bar in between her breasts. “This you can’t have, the nutty flavor of trans fat coursing through my veins is too good to be denied.”
“Here I was thinking about sharing, now I’m not,” Asher chuckled. “Mine has the tangy flavor of high fructose corn syrup combined with strawberry seeds. It’s to die for.”
“Yeah, well,” Eden said in English. She set down her protein bar. “Everybody wants a tasty last meal. At least the company is awesome.”
Last meal? Did that just come out of my mouth? By the look on Ash’s face, it had. She reached out and grabbed his hand. “I didn’t mean it. We’re getting out of here. I just let it get to me for a moment. I’ve got my head back in the game now. I promise.”
“Ah, Honey, it’s okay. This is a shit situation, you can have your doubts. Everybody does.”
“I know, b
ut I should remember that the ‘only easy day was yesterday.’” Eden tried to smile.
“You know our motto?” Asher grinned.
She’d totally caught him by surprise. She liked that.
“I definitely have to know ‘to liberate the oppressed’ since that’s the Green Beret’s motto, and Pete is a former Green Beret. But I looked up the others, and yours stuck with me. There were days that I had to lean on it.”
“I think everybody in the world has,” Asher agreed.
“But now I’m living it in a SEAL mission way. Parts of this have been really fun.”
Asher leaned his other arm on the table and stretched forward so that their heads were almost touching. “Do tell. What was the most fun?”
“Seeing Leland go all He-Man on Suzanne. Trust me, she’s been Ms. Control throughout these talks. She didn’t take crap from anyone. You know that she could easily have run this project, but she deferred to Heinrich. Then, seeing Leland do the Neanderthal thing and Suzanne allowing it, even appreciate it, that cracked me the hell up.”
Asher’s thumb rubbed against her palm, and he gave her an appraising look. “It only made you laugh?”
Eden opened her mouth to say yes, then closed it. Right now, in these circumstances, it wasn’t the time for surface conversation. She thought back to Leland’s behavior.
“At first it totally took me by surprise, you know?”
Asher nodded like he could understand. “And later?”
He was so close she could taste his strawberry breath.
“Later, I was relieved that he was taking care of her. Somebody needed to, and I was really, really, relieved that she had someone in her corner. A man.” She said the last word with a reluctant grin. “You can’t ever tell any of my family I said that it would ruin my rep.”
“I promise.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Hey, did you just sit up a little taller?”
Asher grinned broadly. “Well, I am a man, after all.”
“Don’t let it go to your head. What about you, do you ever have fun on these missions, or is it all scary adrenaline?”
Asher rubbed the bridge of his nose. “There was this one mission where for a week I was on thong patrol. That was both embarrassing and fun.”
“You’re going to have to give me a little more than that.”
“There was an amateur singing contest in Europe that we had to babysit. They were worried about a terrorist attack. In order to fit in, we helped out the producer of the show, A.J. There was this one act that had a tendency not to wear their panties. Anything to win votes, I guess. I’ll tell you, A.J. was pissed. But she had her hands full trying to herd those cats, so we helped.”
“Poor you,” Eden mocked.
“Yeah, it was a hard job, but somebody had to do it.” Ash grinned.
“Okay, that was your best day, what about your worst?”
“I’ve got a better idea; tell me about your best and worst date. But you can’t use this as your worst date, this is a gimme.”
“Oh no, having dinner with you is one of the best dates I’ve ever had. You speak French, you’re smart, you have a good sense of humor. The food sucks, and I’m not real thrilled with the ambiance, but the company? The company is outstanding.”
“In that case, I really want to hear what your worst date was.”
Eden pulled her hand from his grip and settled back in the chair. She crossed her legs and wiggled her back against the plush velvet backing to get really comfortable
“It was five years ago, when I was twenty-three. I really was a dumb bunny, just out of college—sure I knew everything, but oh-so-dumb.”
“You went to college in Idaho, right? Were you still there, or had you moved back home?”
Of course, he knew about her. Probably had her resume memorized, along with everybody else’s in the finance contingent.
“I moved to Boise to intern at the State Capital. My double major was Political Science as well as Animal Sciences. The Animal Sciences degree was to help out at the family ranch, but I wasn’t eager to go home right after graduating, so I took the intern job.”
“I like it. So, you knew how to deal with political animals.”
“Sure, like I’ve never heard that joke before.”
Asher threw up his hands and grinned. Yep, she made out a dimple. “Sorry, didn’t mean to be redundant. But seriously, that’s quite a dichotomy, what made you get into it?”
“I saw how the mismanagement of our land resources hurt the regular ranchers and farmers. I figured that if I could understand how the government was thinking and maybe play a small role in state politics, I could change things.”
“Okay, how’d you come to be a translator?”
“Languages came easy to me. Mom was German, with a capital ‘G’. Her maiden name was Minnewit, and when Grandma and Grandpa Minnewit came to visit from Iowa, they only spoke German. Then we had ranch hands from all over the place. Our foreman was from China, so I learned Mandarin. This was all before I was six years old. I even had Ernie Lai teach me the Mandarin alphabet.”
“That’s impressive,” he tipped his head in her direction, but he kept his eyes on her face. “But back to the bad date.”
“His name was Edwin. Not Eddie, not Ed, nope, Edwin. The third. I tried calling him Trey, that didn’t go over either.”
“You did that to get on his nerves.”
“Well, when he comes out of the gate with all the rules about his name, hell yeah I had to poke the tiger,” she grinned.
“So, this was a blind date, you hadn’t met him before?”
“No,” she sighed. “I told you I was a dumb bunny. This was the son of the senator I was interning for. The senator had set it up.”
Ash put his hand over his face. “And you didn’t find a way to get out of it?”
“Nope,” she said succinctly. “I just blithely went ahead with it. I was rooming with another girl who’d gone to UI, so I wasn’t too freaked when the senator had given my address for his son to pick me up.”
Eden could tell from Asher’s expression he was not happy with that little tidbit. “Yes, it felt a little weird, but it was the senator, and he was nice, so I figured it was okay.”
“Not,” Asher rumbled.
“Yeah, not,” she agreed. “Now, I’m a farm girl, right? So, I don’t have a lot to wear, but luckily my roommate had fixed me up with a nice blue cocktail dress. Good thing too, because he takes me out to the country club for drinks and dinner. But before dinner, there’s cocktail hour with all the hoity-toity Boise. Not to say some of them aren’t really nice, because they were. But Edwin wasn’t. He referred to me as his father’s typist. When I tried to object, he looked me dead in the eye and said, don’t you get him coffee, Sweetie?”
“What could I say, I had. Everybody in the office had gotten his father coffee at some point in time. Whenever somebody tried to draw me into the conversation, he would say I wouldn’t understand.”
“You let that slide?” Asher asked in amazement.
“I didn’t want to do anything that would ultimately upset the senator,” Eden explained. “Then when we went to sit down for dinner, I found out we were with another couple. It turned out to be one of the partners from the firm where he was working. Edwin was just out of law school, but he was already trying to score points and work his way up the corporate ladder.”
Ash raised his eyebrow. “And then?”
“This guy was with his girlfriend. They weren’t getting along, and he was ready for something new, and apparently, I was it. Edwin was happy to deliver.”
“You’re shitting me, right?”
Eden sucked in her lips and shook her head. “Nope. Wish I was.”
“Somehow after dinner, we all ended up at Doug’s house. It was when Doug was insisting on a midnight dip in his hot tub that I’d had enough. So had his girlfriend. Of course, neither of us had our cars. I called my roommate who came and picked us up.
“I w
as so upset. Then Edwin started calling me to say it wasn’t what I thought that I had misunderstood things.”
“Don’t tell me you went out with him again?”
“I called Mom first. I needed her opinion. But first I got her to promise not to tell Dad. She gave me good advice, told me he was gaslighting me, trying to tell me what was actually happening wasn’t the truth. She assured me that I was seeing things correctly.” Eden snorted.
“What?”
“I screwed up by getting her to promise not to tell Dad. I should have said and don’t tell my brothers, because within days, my oldest brother Pete was in Boise.”
“The Green Beret?”
Eden nodded.
“Good for him.”
“The day Pete showed up at my door after work, the senator had mentioned that Edwin had to be taken to the E.R. because he’d fallen down some stairs. Needless to say, when I saw my brother, I put two and two together right away.”
“The more and more I hear about your family, the more I like them.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot to like,” Eden agreed. “What about your Mom and brother?”
Eden jolted when an alarm went off. It was a timer on Asher’s watch.
“Time to check back in,” he gave a half-smile.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you planned that.”
“Then it’s a good thing you know better.”
He untangled their fingers and got up from the table. He fished out a can of Altoids and put it down in front of Eden.
“Dessert, Mademoiselle.”
“Merci.” She smiled as she eagerly opened up the tin of mints.
“But beware, the mints aren’t going to stop me from asking more questions,” Eden warned. “But it was a good try.”
Chapter 14
“This is Leo. We’ve got a problem.”
“What else is new?” Ash asked. “Give it to me.”
He looked over at Eden, who was frowning, so he put the phone on speaker and set it down on the table in front of her. He couldn’t sit down. His blood was pumping too fast.
Her Chosen Protector: Navy SEAL Romance (Night Storm Book 3) Page 14
