Dr. Strange Beard: Winston Brothers #5

by Reid, Penny

  I’d showered, trimmed my beard and shaved my neck, applied aftershave and cologne, and dressed.

  Now, my momma had always said—when on a date—it was the woman’s job to dress like the painting and the man’s job to dress like the frame. Our mother had some hokey sayings, some poignant, some out-of-touch and definitely old fashioned, but I could usually find some kernel of truth in all of them.

  However, if Simone wanted me to wear what I was wearing, who was I to argue? She’d said I looked great, didn’t she? And besides, as far as I was concerned, no one could ever outshine Simone.

  I moved my fingers to the buttons of my shirt as she said to Cletus, “At least eighteen, maybe forty-eight, possibly sixty, but I’ll bring him over here tomorrow morning.”

  I stilled, straining my ears, my gaze moving to her profile.

  Eighteen, forty-eight, sixty? Was she . . . did she mean hours? Was she planning to stay here with me for days?

  Before I could think too much about that, she pulled a length of purple fabric from the bag on the counter. Sluggishly, I realized it was a dress. She then absentmindedly pulled out a few other items and my brain catalogued them before I could comprehend their meaning: toothbrush, underwear, a bra, a satin scarf, lotion, a shoebox, a black lace something.

  Holy shit. . .

  And

  FUCK YEAH.

  And

  Holy shit.

  At that moment, her gaze swung around and connected with mine. Something about my expression had her lifting her eyebrows in confusion. She looked down at the pile of items on the counter and when she lifted her eyes again, they were wide with what seemed to be embarrassed alarm, but also amusement.

  “Shoo!” she said, fighting a smile, flicking her wrist and shaking her head at me. “Stop being so nosy and go get dressed.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I grinned, feeling dichotomously ten feet tall, nervous as hell, and more than happy to do as I was told.

  Tonight was the night, and I was all in.

  * * *

  There were two kinds of dresses: dresses, and dresses.

  Simone was wearing the latter—a thin-strapped dark purple slip of a thing that left nothing and everything to the imagination—which meant my collar and pants felt too tight, and my neck was hot.

  Eighteen, forty-eight, sixty.

  She was touching me while letting me touch her. I held her hand on the way to my truck, I held her hand in the truck, I slipped my arm around her waist on the short walk to Rene’s Bistro while she tucked herself close to my side. She smelled fantastic, like night jasmine.

  I struggled for words while I struggled to hold back memories. All the times I’d wanted to be with her like this, on a real date, on the same page, just she and I, but with the obtuse and chaotic force of a teenager carrying around unrequited feelings.

  I struggled because I wanted this memory to be perfect, unspoiled by thoughtless or inane conversation. I wanted everything to be meaningful.

  “Relax,” she said, her arm squeezing my waist as we followed the maitre d’. “It’s just me.”

  “You’ll never be just anything,” I murmured.

  Her hand came to my chest as we stopped at our table and she pressed a soft kiss to the underside of my jaw. “Relax or I’ll hum ‘It’s a Small World After All’ all through dinner,” she whispered.

  Before I could respond, her arm fell from my waist—followed by a quick, sneaky smack to my backside—and she slipped away, taking the chair the maitre d' held out for her.

  Dammit, I lamented, I should’ve pulled out her chair, even as I grinned inwardly at her clandestine backside pat, making plans to return the favor.

  As I took my seat adjacent to hers, I consoled myself with the possibility that she’d have to stand at some point, maybe to use the ladies’ room, and then I would pull out her chair. I’d be ready next time. . .

  The man rattled off the specials in French while placing our napkins on our laps. He then departed, wishing us a pleasant evening, also in French. As soon as he left, Simone picked up her menu and began humming my least favorite song.

  I grinned at her nonsense, breathing out some of my nerves. “Do not, please.”

  “What?” She gave me a wide-eyed, guileless look while she seemed to be battling a smile.

  “You know what,” I responded, low and deep, my attention dropping to her luscious mouth, and I remembered in a vivid flash kissing that mouth earlier today. I swallowed. “Thank you for coming to dinner.”

  She sat a little straighter. “Thank you for inviting me.”

  “You’re—” I had to clear my throat and try again, forcing my eyes back to hers. “You’re beautiful.”

  A slow grin claimed her features as she gazed at me and it took me a few seconds to realize my error.

  “I mean”—I rolled my eyes at myself—“you look beautiful. Tonight.”

  Simone leaned her elbow on the table, her stare moving over me. “Why can’t it be both? Why can’t I be beautiful and look beautiful?”

  I returned her grin. “Well of course it’s both. But I wanted to make a special point of verbalizing my admiration for that dress.”

  “Oh yeah? Why is that?” Her index finger dropped to the low cut of her neckline, tracing the edge of the fabric over the swell of her breasts.

  I didn’t take the bait, but I wanted to.

  Keeping my eyes on hers, I leaned forward an inch. “Because I’d like to see you wear it again. On another date. With me.”

  “Hmm . . .” Simone considered me, tilting her head to the side, but her eyes gave her away. My words made her happy. “I thought you wanted to stay for dinner.”

  Confused, I nodded slowly. “I do.”

  She leaned back in her chair, returning her eyes to her menu. “Your flirt game is very strong, young Winston.”

  “I’m not flirting with you.” I wasn’t. Flirting was meaningless fun. No part of tonight with Simone would be meaningless to me.

  “If you continue being so sexy and alluring, I shall have to cut the meal portion of tonight’s evening short and seduce you in your truck.”

  It was a good thing I wasn’t drinking anything, because it would have gone down my windpipe.

  As it was, I choked on nothing. “Excuse me?”

  “What’s good here?” She frowned at the menu. “It’s literally all French to me.”

  I covered her wrist and held it until she gave me her eyes. “I’m not flirting with you.” For some reason, it was important to me that Simone understand this.

  She gave me a look as though she didn’t believe me, but still found me cute.

  “Simone—”

  “There’s nothing wrong with flirting, Roscoe.” She covered my hand with hers, her eyes full of her soft smile. “And I think maybe you do it without realizing, it’s just second nature. Also, do you speak French? If so, would you mind ordering for me? I know what fromage is, but everything else might be endangered turtle soup and I’d have no idea.”

  I frowned, not ready to move on from the flirting issue, but then the waiter arrived, interrupting us.

  “Do you like wine? Or cocktails?” I asked her.

  “Wine. Red.”

  Good.

  It was easy to plan a meal around a bottle of red wine.

  Turning to the waiter, I ordered for us both. “Hello, thank you. We will begin with the escargots de Bourgogne, two petit bucherondin de chèvre to follow. The lady would like the duck confit for her main, and I’ll take the tartare de boeuf. To drink, let us have your house Bordeaux.”

  The waiter bowed, collected our menus, and left.

  I returned my attention to Simone and found her watching me through narrowed eyes.

  “What?”

  “Do you speak French?”

  I shrugged, told a white lie. “Just a little.”

  “But you said all those words, like butcher-rodan and bord-doh like you know how to speak French.” Her gaze sharpened. “Could you have o
rdered entirely in French? If you wanted to?”

  “Yes.” I took a sip of my water, replacing it on the table exactly where it had been.

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “Because you just said you didn’t speak French.”

  “All the more reason. Think of how impressed I might have been.”

  I shook my head, giving her a face. “Uh, no. You wouldn’t have been impressed. You would have been annoyed.”

  A small smile danced behind her eyes. “You think so?”

  “I know so. You would have thought me pretentious and made fun of me all night. No, thank you. Plus”—I straightened my fork so that it was perfectly parallel to the plate—“what’s so impressive about leaving a person out? If someone doesn’t know a language, and you knowingly speak that language in front of that person, well, I think that’s pretty rude.”

  “Yes. Thank you. I agree,” she said, leaning toward me like this was a major issue with her. “It’s like, I’m happy for you that you speak another language. But how would you feel if I launched into a diatribe using a plethora of terms specific to forensic science research, knowing full well that you’d have no idea what I was saying?”

  I was nodding before she’d finished speaking. “Yes. That drives me nuts. Like, why am I here? Just to listen to someone talk at me about shit I don’t understand. If I wanted that, I’d hang out with Cletus and ask him about his tractor engines.”

  Simone chuckled. “Oh good Lord, is he still fixing up old tractors?”

  “Sure is. He bought a stretch of land near the homestead, you know the old Coleman place? Well, he removed that trailer, demolished the foundation.”

  “Holy cow, the Coleman trailer is gone?”

  Our waiter returned and unobtrusively opened our wine, pouring it for me to taste while I caught Simone up on Cletus’s latest machinations, which turned into a story about her brother’s adventures in California teaching astrophysics and working at the observatory, which flowed into swapping stories about our respective college years and the horrors of finals week.

  We finished our escargot, our salads, and had just poured the last of our wine when our waiter brought out Simone’s duck and my beef tartar, conversation never slowing, time passing at a steady, easy pace. Everything was so easy between us, and I found myself laughing more than I had since . . . well, since I was twenty, right before my momma died.

  I indicated to the waiter that we’d need another bottle of Bordeaux while Simone popped a roasted potato into her mouth, making a pleased sound as she chewed.

  “This is really good.”

  “I like this place,” I said, glancing around the interior. “I never get a chance to go, only when Dr. Yi wants me to take out a client, or for the office Christmas party.”

  “This is where you have your Christmas party?”

  “Yep. Dr. Yi is from France, or her parents were, so she favors the food.”

  “Huh.” Simone ate another bite of potato, her gaze moving over me. “So, by clients do you mean pet owners?”

  “Uh, no.” I sighed, moving the pieces of beef around on my plate. “Dr. Yi is an equine specialist. There’s three of us in the practice. Dr. Tucker is the boss, it’s her practice, but she’s basically retired. Though she does come in for a tricky or interesting surgery if she has the time. I focus mostly on domestic animals, cats, dogs, birds, turtles, and such. Dr. Yi travels a lot, meets with breeders in the field, makes house calls to some of the big horse folks in Tennessee. It’s those horse folks we sometimes have to take out to dinner, wine and dine them as it were.”

  “That’s interesting. Have you ever had an interest in working with horses?”

  “No. Not full time. They’re beautiful animals, but—hey, speaking of which—” I sat up straighter as an idea occurred to me. “You want to come to the Kentucky Derby with me this weekend?”

  Her eyes widened and she stared at me, like a stunned doe in front of an approaching truck. “Kentucky Derby?”

  “That’s right.” I examined her closely, searching my earlier words for anything that would explain the odd alteration in her demeanor. “Unless . . . are you afraid of horses?”

  “No.” She shook her head quickly, picking up her napkin and touching it to her lips. “No. I’m not afraid of horses. And, y-yes,” she stuttered. “I don’t- I mean, I would really like to go. With you.”

  She seemed flustered.

  “Are you sure?”

  “M-hmm.” Simone reached for her wine glass with one hand and scratched her neck with the other, peering at me while she took a gulp.

  I thought about giving her another out, or suggesting we do something else the following weekend. Before I could think of a way to steer the conversation, she said, “So why don’t you want to work with the horses full time?”

  “Oh, uh, well.” I picked up my earlier train of thought. “Interacting with the breeders requires too much schmoozing.”

  Simone grinned at her plate, setting her wine glass on the table, and when her eyes lifted to mine they were full of mischief. “I would have thought you’d enjoy schmoozing.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you’re so good at it.”

  I smiled, but I didn’t mean it, and took a bite of my broccoli.

  “Hey.” She placed a hand on my arm, her thumb sweeping a caress on the inside of my wrist. “What’s wrong?”

  Cutting into my beef, I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  “Liar.”

  I smiled again, but this one was sincere.

  “Tell me,” she said, sliding her hand down to mine. “I said something I shouldn’t have. Tell me what it was so I don’t repeat the mistake.”

  I shrugged and gave her my eyes. “Just because you’re good at something, doesn’t mean you like doing it, and it definitely doesn’t mean it defines you.”

  A wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. “I don’t think of you as a schmoozer.”

  “Don’t you?” I kept my voice gentle, because I wasn’t upset. I was honestly curious. “If not, you’d be one of the only ones. But I’m not bitter about it, even though it’s just people looking at me through the image of those who came before. Jethro, Beau, even Billy and Cletus sometimes, they’re all charmers, just like our dad.”

  “But not Duane?” She gave me a sly smile that—paired with her question—made me laugh.

  “Oh God, no. Not Duane. It’s like our daddy saved all his surliness and poured it into Duane.”

  Simone chuckled, tightening her fingers over mine, and then releasing me. “Don’t sell yourself short. You have your fair share of surliness, too.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  She laughed harder and her smile captivated me, held me suspended in the moment. I sighed.

  Her smile waned.

  We swapped stares.

  Somewhere in the restaurant, someone laughed loudly, breaking the moment between us. Simone glanced at her plate, blinking as though trying to find her way back to the present, or clear her mind.

  “Uh, what were we talking about?” she asked, laughing a little.

  “You were calling me surly.” I took a big bite of my food, watching her as she tried to find her place in the conversation.

  “Wait, no.” She shook her head, placing her fork on her plate and pushing both forward. “We were talking about you and how you’re not a schmoozer, even though you schmooze all the ladies at Genie’s.”

  That earned her a look, and when I’d finished chewing my food I asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “Charlotte? Hannah? Ring any bells?”

  “Charlotte Mitchell?”

  “Yes.”

  I felt my forehead crease further. “Are you accusing me of schmoozing Charlotte Mitchell?”

  “I am. Or”—she lifted a finger—“more precisely, flirting shamelessly with her.”

  “Ahhh.” I leaned back in my chair, folding my arms as understanding dawned. Studying Simone as she studied me,
I detected a hint of something—not jealousy, not anger—rather, an edge of mistaken conviction. “You are right. I do flirt shamelessly with Charlotte Mitchell. But I’ve never schmoozed her.”

  Simone picked up her wine glass—which was now full again, even though I hadn’t noticed our waiter return with the new bottle—and examined me. “Please explain the difference between flirting and schmoozing.”

  “Well, you schmooze someone when you want something. Like my father, he’s a schmoozer, always looking for the con. But flirting”—I shook my head—“that’s just meaningless fun. You flirt to make someone feel good, to put a smile on her face, to give her a warm feeling about herself.”

  Simone continued to scrutinize me over her glass. “You mean—let me see if I have this right—you flirt with women to make them feel good about themselves, not because you want anything from them.”

  I nodded once. “Exactly.”

  The wrinkle between her eyebrows was back. “Then why were you so insistent earlier—when we first arrived to the restaurant—that you weren’t flirting with me?”

  “Because I wasn’t.”

  Now her nose wrinkled. “So you’re saying you want something from me?”

  “I most certainly do,” I said darkly, my gaze moving down to her lips, chin, neck, and chest in a meandering perusal. Maybe it was the three glasses of wine, but I said these words with every ounce of conviction I felt on the matter.

  Her mouth fell open, drawing my eyes back to hers. “You were schmoozing me?” she asked quietly.

  “Nope.”

  Simone returned her glass to the table and leaned her elbows against the edge. “Then what was that earlier? All that talk about me being beautiful and my dress.”

  “Sincerity.”

  We swapped stares again as all traces of humor dissolved from her features. But this time I could tell she was thinking, her mind working through possibilities, making me feel like I was one of her puzzles that needed solving.

  So I pushed my plate forward and mimicked her posture, leaning my elbows on the edge of the table, bringing us closer.

  “Simone,” I said, just above a whisper. “Do you know what I want from you?”