"I'm just saying that it's not totally out of the question, that's all," Champagne said. Her words were bland enough, but the little tap that she gave to her bronzed nose said otherwise.
I considered arguing, but knew it wouldn't get me anywhere. So instead, I forced myself to keep my mouth shut. At least, when I checked myself out in the mirror, I had to admit that the gaudy earrings kind of matched the shimmering belt, in a "she's stealing the crown jewels of England" sort of forward, imposing way.
But when I stepped out of the car at the restaurant, a few hours later, I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Tanner's eyes land on me – and his mouth drop open as he froze, staring at me.
Thanks, Champagne.
"Wow," he said, advancing forward towards me, as if there wasn't another single person in the crowded, packed place. "You look..." He stopped, running out of words.
"Good?" I asked hopefully.
"Amazing." He stepped forward, running one hand lightly over my thigh, his fingers lingering on the shiny belt. I felt even that soft little touch as if I wasn't wearing anything at all. "Better than I could have imagined."
Looking up at him, I felt him drawing me in closer, felt my eyes being pulled almost magnetically to his lips. I blinked, fighting instinctively against giving in. Trying to distract myself, I turned my head to look around the place that Tanner had picked out and told me to appear.
It wasn't what I expected, to say the least.
"This is... quite the joint," I said, frowning as I ran my eyes over the dozens of license plates that were bolted onto the walls, the rough wood floors and unfinished ceiling. "Very unique."
Looking back at Tanner, I saw him step back, the brief enchantment between us broken. He reached up and scratched the back of his head with one hand, wincing. "Yeah, I guess that I don't really eat at many fancy places. Need to keep my connection to the everyday, you know," he added quickly, as if he was anticipating a cross-examination of follow-up questions.
"No, it makes sense," I assured him, nodding. "After all, as a writer, you probably don't want to spend all your time in five-star restaurants, right? You won't be able to relate to your readers if you only talk about Michelin star chefs."
"Yeah, that's totally the reason." Tanner still didn't look thrilled with the restaurant, as if it somehow was letting him down. "Look, if you don't want to eat here, I totally understand." The words 'with me' hung, unspoken but clearly heard, in the air. "I know that you're probably expecting waiters in tuxedos and wine bottles with fancy labels and-"
I reached out and rested my fingers against his forearm. "This is fine," I promised him. "It's... different, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing." The words felt like they were about more than just the location of the restaurant.
For a moment, he still looked uncertain, but then his entire face brightened as he smiled. "Then let's get some food," he said, tugging me towards the front counter. "Because trust me, I'm starving."
The place was... was rustic the right word for it? I felt almost like a tourist in a foreign city, constantly turning my head to take in new sights. I'd visited a couple of restaurants that the Zagat guide described as rustic, but those were usually high-class places masquerading as charming little half-finished industrial buildings. The sort of places with tons of exposed hardwood beams, but only a dozen tables in a thousand square feet of space.
This place... it really felt unpretentious. That was the best word for it, I decided. Behind a wooden counter that looked as if it had been nailed together using unfinished two-by-fours left over from some construction job, a largely overweight man leaned heavily forward and occasionally itched his stained white wife-beater. His eyes ran over me, and I saw bushy eyebrows climb up towards an untidy hairline as he took in the diamonds and jewelry accents. I suddenly felt very overdressed.
That feeling only grew stronger as I looked over at Tanner. He wore a pair of ripped and well-worn blue jeans, the fabric so worn away at the knees that hints of his skin shone through the tatters. A plaid shirt stretched to cover his broad shoulders. He'd trimmed his beard, so it looked neat and groomed rather than totally wild and unkempt. He looked like a sexy lumberjack, a mountain man come down to sweep this foolish city girl off her feet and away to his private little cabin.
"I feel overdressed," I murmured to Tanner.
"You look perfect," he replied, confident and sure once again. "Just how I'd imagine my muse to look."
Those words made me brighten slightly as we headed up to the counter. Maybe, just maybe, this date wouldn't go so badly after all.
Chapter Sixteen
HELEN
*
"So if you didn't get it from our last date, I have to admit that I don't know very much about you," Tanner said to me as we sat across from each other at a rickety little table, tucked back in the corner of the restaurant.
Of course, given the restaurant's small footprint, just about everywhere felt like a corner. Between the chairs that cluttered up most of the pathways around the tables, to the rough-hewn pillars that threatened splinters from just a brush against them, there wasn't a lot of space for maneuvering. I wondered how the waiter would get our food out to us without tripping or falling over an obstacle.
At the front counter, Tanner had greeted the large, burly man taking orders with casual friendliness, calling him by name. Randy, his name had been – rather appropriate, I thought to myself privately with just a trace of humor. Clearly, Tanner had eaten more than a few meals here.
The menu looked to be mainly hamburgers and hot dogs, many of them with strange nicknames printed next to the item in quotation marks, scrawled up on the blackboard mounted on the wall in chalk of various colors. I'd looked at it for a minute and then turned, helpless, to Tanner.
"Need some help?" he asked, grinning.
"Please." I glanced back at the board, but it still looked just as mystifying. "What in the world is a 'Big Belly Joe', and why do I need to choose whether I want it 'with dirt'?"
Tanner chuckled. "The more I explain, the more questions you'll have," he promised. "Do you trust me to order for you?"
"Sure."
Tanner placed an order for two of something called a "Juicy Lucy," whatever that might be. The man behind the counter – Randy – grinned, shifting his eyes over to me. I had to fight for a second to not shrink back under the frank stare.
"Now, what's a classy girl like you doing with a scruffy guy like Tanner?" he asked, those eyebrows wriggling over his forehead like live caterpillars. "Or are you hired to look this nice? How much is Tanner paying you?"
"Randy." Not a single muscle on Tanner's face had changed, but his voice was suddenly cold and hard as iron, and it cracked like a whip. That one word carried volumes of subtext. He stepped slightly towards the man, and I felt myself become hyper-aware of how his muscles bulged and flexed beneath that plaid shirt.
It worked. Randy immediately dropped his gaze, pink rushing up his neck and into his cheeks. "Right, yeah, sorry," he muttered, not looking back up at me. "Didn't mean any offense, ma'am."
"That's okay," I said, still a half step behind. Hired? Wait a minute, had this man just called me a prostitute?
"I'm really sorry about him," Tanner hastened to tell me as he guided me over to a table up against one of the walls. "Randy's a great cook, but he grew up in a barn, and he learned most of his manners from the bulls that lived in the stalls beside him."
"That's okay – I can definitely see that I don't fit in here," I answered, feeling the wooden chair shift slightly as I settled down in it. I prayed fervently that it wouldn't collapse under me. "I'm guessing that they just think you're one of the guys, right? A writer, broke as the rest of them? They don't know about your visits to things like the Poverty Ball?"
Tanner winced, I assume because I was bringing up his other life in here. "Yeah, something like that," he said. Quickly, he shifted the topic of conversation. "But I'm telling the truth when I say that I don't know much about
you."
"I'm afraid there isn't much to know," I answered, wondering what he could have avoided hearing. Surely, everyone had commented on the vicious rumors about me by now?
"I beg to differ." He reached forward, catching my fingers. They felt small and delicate in his big hand. "But I've been busy with writing, so I haven't heard even the main details," he added, as his eyes probed mine. "Treat me like I'm a total stranger. Give me the basic life of Helen O'Callahan."
Gosh, but my name sounded good coming from his lips. I looked back up at his honest face, those sharp, intelligent blue eyes probing at me, and couldn't keep from smiling back. "You know, most total strangers haven't seen me naked," I pointed out.
His eyes briefly lost focus as a memory swam up. "And they are definitely missing out on a hell of an experience. But no matter how much you want to show off to me some more, you need to keep your clothes on while we're in Randy's Eats."
I frantically turned a laugh into a cough. I, Helen O'Callahan, a woman worth close to a billion dollars, was eating in a place called Randy's Eats! Champagne's eyes would literally bug out of her head when she heard the details of this date.
"Okay, the basic details," I said, once I'd managed to get my breath back. "My birth name is Helen Black, although I haven't used that name in years."
"You used to be married, right? To Marcone O'Callahan?"
Even now, after all these years, that name still hurt. I closed my eyes for a moment, swallowing the little dagger of grief that slid into me. "Yes, that's right. It was a marriage that... well, it raised a lot of eyebrows."
"Why?"
Did he not know? I looked back up at Tanner and saw pure and simple interest, no hint of conniving or scheming. Maybe he really was the last person on earth to hear my past, to find out my history.
In that case, I might as well rip the bandage off quickly and just tell him everything.
"We got married quickly," I began, but then paused and shook my head. "No, it wasn't just that. Everything about us suggested that we wouldn't work, that it wouldn't make sense for the two of us to be together. He was nearly half a dozen years older than me, and far more successful."
"I'm sure he wasn't-"
"No, he was," I reiterated, although I appreciated Tanner leaping to my defense even though he knew nothing about the situation. "I was a junior paralegal at a firm that Marcone hired to handle some of his finances regarding a land purchasing agreement. I met him when he ducked back into a conference room to reclaim a forgotten jacket while I was cleaning up after the senior partners. If it wasn't for that chance meeting, we never would have even crossed paths."
I leaned one elbow on the table, propping up my head as I felt misty memory swimming up to wrap fingers around my consciousness. "But we did meet, that one time. And that was enough to apparently convince Marcone to chase after me. He was..." I paused, remembering. "He was like no other man I'd ever met. He had a drive that burned inside him like it was the only thing keeping him alive. When he set his eyes on some goal, he'd do anything to achieve it, even if it meant devoting every waking second of his life to attaining it."
"And were you one of those goals?"
I nodded. "I think so. He chased after me, did everything to convince me to give him a chance. I turned him down at least a dozen times, but he never gave up."
"You turned him down?" Tanner repeated.
I laughed. "Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Why would I turn down a handsome and powerful billionaire who made it very clear that he wanted me? But I didn't want to be a trophy for him, just another notch on his bedpost or another conquest for him to chalk up to his name and wealth and power. I wanted it to be real."
"I get that," he said softly. His hand reached out to gently bump against mine, sitting on the table. I let my fingers curl around his.
"Finally, after I'd been convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn't just after me for a fling, I gave in," I kept going on my story. "We had a whirlwind romance, but it was also deeper than anything I'd ever experienced. Marcone didn't stop devoting all his passion to me after I agreed to see him. A date with him might involve jetting halfway around the world for dinner, and then to another continent, just to watch the sun rise. He had the money to do whatever he wanted, but he never let the money consume him. I knew that, even if he'd been broke and penniless, he still would have shown that same passion." I closed my eyes for a moment, my fingers trembling in Tanner's. "That was just who he was."
"What happened?" he asked softly, after a minute.
I forced myself to let out the breath I'd been holding in. It came out in little spurts and shudders. "He passed away, barely a year after we'd been married. The doctors said that it was a brain aneurysm, totally unpredictable. There was nothing that anyone could have done. One second he was there – and the next, the light just sort of turned off in his eyes. Like someone flicked a switch."
"I'm sorry."
"Everyone said that, at least to my face. But then, even at the funeral, people started spreading rumors. We'd been married quickly, after all – not by my choice, but by Marcone's. He wanted me forever, and he didn't see any point in waiting. But people started painting me in a different light, claiming that I'd been the one to seduce him, that I was just after him for his money. And once I had it, they claimed that I killed him."
I stopped, feeling tears starting to well up in the corners of my eyes. I heard Champagne's voice inside my head, chastising me for getting into such an obviously inappropriate topic on a date! I looked back up at Tanner, blinking quickly to keep any of those tears from emerging.
"I'm sorry," I said, still fighting against the upswell of emotion. "I shouldn't be talking about my old husband while out with you."
"No, it's okay," he said, his eyes softening as they looked straight back at me. "This is important. It's part of who you are. You wouldn't be the same without these experiences, painful or not. You shouldn't be ashamed of them."
The words were kind, soothing, but they only further brought on the tears. "You're being too nice," I choked out, reaching to grab one of the flimsy paper napkins from the table and press it against my eyes. Dammit, my makeup was going to be totally ruined!
"Yeah, that's what all my ex-girlfriends tell me," Tanner groaned. "I'm just too nice, and that's why they had to break up with me."
I laughed, even through the tears. "Now look who's bringing up the wrong topic for a date?"
"Just trying to help distract you!" Tanner tapped his lips for a moment, thinking. "One of them once took me out to have a Mother's Day brunch with her mother – and then broke up with me at the brunch!"
I giggled. "No way."
"Yeah. I sat down, and I told them that they could pass for sisters. I meant it as a compliment, right? She looks so young that her daughter might as well be her sister. That was my intent."
"What happened?"
He grimaced. "The daughter took it the wrong way, and thought that I was saying that she looked as old as her mother. She jumped up and screamed at me and then threw the 'bottomless mimosas' pitcher that came with brunch into my face."
"That's awful, but I don't think it's your fault," I said, laughing. How did Tanner know just the right way to defuse my pain and sadness? "Did you try and explain it to her later?"
He nodded, but the wry look on his face didn't go away. "Yeah, I chased after her and managed to explain things outside the restaurant. I managed to get her to come back inside – which lasted for forty minutes, until, after downing her sixth or seventh mimosa, her mother started pawing at my lap while telling me how her husband – my date's father – was a terrible lover in the sack."
This time, the tears on my cheeks weren't from sadness. "That had to have ruined it."
"Yup. I didn't even accept the mom's offer to join her in the bathroom and, and I'm quoting here, 'see how an experienced woman handles a trouser snake'. Sometimes, late at night, I still regret turning her down."
I smacked his hand
. "You're kidding."
"You got me," he admitted readily, smiling back at me. When he smiled, I noted, those blue eyes crinkled at their corners, making him look warm and adorable. No man should be able to go from strong and confident to soft and adorable so easily. It posed a danger to all womankind.
"Order up! Couple a' Juicies, right here!"
Tanner glanced up at the shout ringing through the small restaurant. "Ah, and there's our food." He answered my earlier question about the waiters – it turned out that this place didn't even have any! Tanner stood up and wove his way through the tables to a side counter, where he collected two red plastic baskets with waxed paper inside them. Moving carefully, he brought them back to the table, setting one down in front of me.
I looked down at the surprisingly thick hamburger. "Is there something special about this?"
"Take a bite and find out," he replied, watching me with clear anticipation. He paused for a second. "And probably lean forward when you do so," he added with a note of mystery.
Those mysterious comments made me feel a bit apprehensive, especially with his eyes on me, but I carefully wrapped my fingers around the big burger and lifted it up. If anyone from my life could see me now, I thought wildly to myself. Sitting in a... a dive bar, in a rickety wooden chair at an equally shaky table, about to eat this massive, greasy hamburger! On a date with a man in blue jeans and flannel!
I took a bite – and my eyes widened as, after sinking through the meat of the patty, my teeth encountered something warm and semi-liquid! "Oh my god!" I said, my voice muffled by the mouthful of burger. "It's filled with cheese!"
"That's right!" Tanner beamed at me, as if I was a star pupil in his class. "It's actually stuffed inside the burger and cooked along with the meat. Comes out all hot and gooey. Isn't that clever?"
I wasn't sure if clever was the word that I'd use to describe this discovery of dubious culinary distinction, but it certainly was surprisingly tasty. Tanner picked up his own burger and took a bite – and then immediately leaned forward as cheese dripped down his chin and mixed into his beard.
For Love of Passion (Stone Brothers Book 4) Page 11
