Instead, she smiled and said, “This is amazing! Thank you!” and watched as some previously unnoticed tension melted out of Grissom’s shoulders. Had he really worried that she wouldn’t like any of this?
Ana’s smile softened.
“Really,” she said. “I like everything here. Thank you.”
Grissom grinned. “I’m glad.”
“Ice?” asked Ana and Grissom nodded.
“Please,” he said.
Ana’s refrigerator was one of those utilitarian white ones with no ice maker or water dispenser. Instead, Ana filled her cups with ice from an ice tray, watching from the corner of her eye as Grissom hesitated by either the garlic knots or the red Chinese ribs before settling on the hot and sour soup.
Ana got it. She loved ribs and garlic knots too, but she didn’t eat anything messy or garlicky on dates – not that this was a date. Ana didn’t know what this was, but it probably wasn’t that.
Placing ice-filled cups and spoons next to their respective places at the counter, Ana claimed the bowl of wonton soup and an egg roll.
Grissom smiled again. As he poured their drinks – coke for him and, at a point of her finger, orange soda for her – he said, “That’s my sister Freddie’s favorite too.”
“Sister?” asked Ana. She hopped up onto her stool. “Do you have just the one?”
Grissom laughed.
“I’m one of nine,” he said, astonishing Ana. “And I think mom’s still sad that she couldn’t get an even dozen out of the dads.”
“Nine?” repeated Ana. “And I thought being one of four was bad!”
“Four?” echoed Grissom, sounding surprised. His gaze swept over her, making Ana flush again. “At once? Is your mother’s frame much bigger than yours? My mother looked like she might pop when she was carrying my younger siblings.”
It was Ana’s turn to laugh.
“Oh, no! No, no, no!” she giggled. “We were all singles! My sisters and I were born one at a time and with a couple of years between each of us.”
“Really?” asked Grissom. He sounded unaccountably interested in such a mundane fact. “We were all triplets.”
“All of you?” demanded Ana, flabbergasted. She absolutely couldn’t imagine carrying three babies at a time. And she definitely couldn’t imagine doing it three times. She would have murdered the man who got her that pregnant that often.
“Yeah,” said Grissom, smiling. “There’s Abbie, Bea, and Connie in the first set, then Ellis, Freddie, and me in the second, and Harry, Irwin, and Jamie in the third set.”
“That is a lot of brothers and sisters,” said Ana. “It must have been hard getting ready for school in the morning.”
“Not particularly,” said Grissom. He looked perplexed. “Why would it have been?”
Swallowing a bite of eggroll, Ana asked, “Did you have, like, assigned shower times? Or a chore wheel or something? My sisters and I had to share a bathroom, and we nearly killed each other every morning.”
“Oh! No, we each had our own bathrooms. So did our parents.”
“Ten bathrooms?” squeaked Ana.
Where did he grow up? A mansion? Ana had heard that there were some tucked away in the hills outside the city – not that there were any true hills in Florida, and Ana was willing to throw down with any Floridian who said otherwise. But the north of the state was definitely hillier than anywhere further south, and there were definitely mansions in them there hills, so to speak.
“More like an even dozen,” said Grissom carelessly. “Plus the ones attached to the guest rooms and the smattering of half baths tucked around the place.”
That sounded liked a mansion to Ana. He was definitely from one of those loaded families out in the hills – assuming that his family wasn’t from parts richer and more glamorous than Triton County, Florida. Maybe they just kept a tiny beach mansion in the hills outside of town.
“Why are you even a police detective?” demanded Ana, too astonished to be tactful. “Shouldn’t you, I dunno, be managing the family’s assets somewhere?”
Grissom smiled, but it wasn’t happy. It was… dark and a little bit bitter, especially compared to his previous smiles.
“I don’t have much of a head for the more complicated maths,” he said. “And… I wanted to make a difference in the world.”
“Well, you certainly made a difference in my world,” said Ana, meaning it. “Thanks again for that, by the way.”
At her words, Grissom’s smile brightened and became more natural.
“It was no problem,” said Grissom. “I wanted to stop for you… and I was hungry.”
Ana felt her face go warm again. It was good that her complexion wasn’t pale otherwise she might have never stopped blushing around this man.
Waving the wrapped and still uneaten eggroll at Grissom, she asked, “Interested?” and he nodded.
“If you don’t want it,” Grissom added.
“One’s my limit,” said Ana cheerfully, and passed him the eggroll. Resolutely, she ignored the fluttery feeling that she got in her stomach when his fingers brushed against hers on the waxy paper wrapped around the eggroll, because that was just hunger, not nerves.
Not that you’re nervous, thought Ana sternly as she peeled the lid from her bowl of soup, because there’s absolutely no call to be nervous around Detective Grissom Hale. You’ve already scared him off. No one wants to date a disaster, much less a dirt broke, unemployed disaster that they found on the side of the road.
“Don’t look so sad,” said Grissom, breaking into Ana’s thoughts. “You can have the other eggroll if you want it.”
Ana found a smile for him.
“It’s not the eggroll,” said Ana. “I just… had a stray thought, I guess.”
“Don’t give him another thought,” ordered Grissom. “He’s the worst sort of man – barely a man at all. You can do better.”
Ana’s smile warmed.
Like you? Ana wondered. Could I pull you?
She doubted it, and it would only bring her heartache if she tried. This moment – and her earlier rescue – would have to be enough.
Reaching out, Ana plucked up a garlic knot. She could eat what she wanted, because this definitely wasn’t a date.
Chapter 06 – Grissom
When Ana took a garlic knot, Grissom happily took one too. Garlic didn’t count on dates if you were both eating it.
When Ana had emerged from her bathroom, looking cute and warm in her pajamas pants and fitted white t-shirt and smelling fantastic, Grissom had been nervous. He had perhaps gone a little overboard when ordering dinner, he was wearing borrowed pajama pants, and he had had no idea what he was even doing there. No storm dragon needed to come in from the rain, but there he was: warm, dry, and flirting with Ana.
She didn’t seem to mind.
Nor did she seem to mind him coming to the table without a shirt on. His family would have been horrified, of course, but Ana just snuck looks at his chest when she thought that he wasn’t paying attention to her.
Grissom had always believed in playing to his strengths. And so he did a lot of casual reaching and stretching to get things that were just barely out of his reach. His manners were appalling – it would have been far more correct to simply ask Ana to pass them to him – but judging by the way that her amazing grey eyes caught and lingered on him, Ana didn’t seem to mind that either.
As for Grissom, he found that for once he didn’t mind being indoors during a storm. He was… enjoying it. And he was enjoying Ana.
He watched, touched and amused, as Ana tried to eat a little bit of everything. She couldn’t, of course – he had ordered far too much food for that – but she certainly tried. Watching her, though, Grissom thought that she perhaps liked the Italian and Chinese food best. Or maybe she just never quite got around to the food from the deli.
When they were finished, Grissom stretched again, enjoying the way that Ana watched him as he did. Turning sideways on his stool so that he
faced her head on, he asked, “Did you have fun?”
“Yes,” said Ana with a quick, ready smile. And to his pleasure, she mirrored him, moving so that she faced him directly too. The rounded fronts of her knees just barely brushed his, but Grissom still fancied that he could feel her warmth radiating through him from that tiny point of contact.
“Was it better than your earlier date?” he inquired, leaning closer.
Ana bit her lip, hard, but she nodded.
“Much!” Quickly, she added, “But I know it wasn’t really a date!”
“Too bad,” said Grissom, leaning closer still. Dropping his voice, he murmured, “If it were, I’d kiss you,” and to his pleasure, Ana’s breath caught. She swayed towards him, and choosing to take that as permission, Grissom leaned over to capture her lips with his own.
Ana moaned low in her throat, her hand going to the back of his neck as his mouth moved gently over hers. She kissed him back sweetly, and in that moment, Ana was everything that he had ever wanted.
Sliding off of his stool, Grissom crowed closer to Ana. He claimed the v of empty space between her legs as his own, and leaned down to murmur in her ear, his voice deeper and rougher, “You thinking of counting this as our first date yet?”
“Kiss me again? Just so I can be sure?” asked Ana, and Grissom laughed.
Moving back a step, he leaned down to claim her mouth again. This time when their kiss broke, Ana was panting. She was charmingly mussed and even more charmingly flushed, her cheeks a hectic shade of pink.
Ana nodded up at him, her gorgeous grey eyes shining, and said, “Yup, definitely a date.”
And Grissom leaned down to kiss her again, delighted.
Sighing with pleasure, Ana stretched up to meet his mouth with her own, her arms coming up and around his neck. Her damp hair was soft between Grissom’s fingers, and her soft breasts brushed his chest on her every heaving breath. Ana whimpered a protest when he broke the kiss.
Grissom smirked, manly pride sufficing him at the sound as well as at the sight of her, flushed prettily and wanting him. Her grey eyes were very bright.
“Can I count this as our first date then?” he teased.
Quickly, Ana nodded, and Grissom laughed. He was still laughing when she leaned up to kiss his chin and then his mouth. Her mouth was clumsy against his, the reach just slightly too much for her until Grissom obligingly leaned down to kiss her back.
Then Ana’s lips curved against his – a smile – and she tried to pull him in closer. Grissom appreciated the sentiment – he really did – but the only way that he was going to get any closer to her was if she came up off of that stool.
When their lips finally separated again, he murmured, “Ana?”
“Mmmm?” she hummed.
“I can have – your? – pajama pants laundered by, say, Thursday night,” he murmured. “Could I return them to you then? Say around seven o’clock?”
“Alright,” she said. “And they are my pajama pants. My great-aunt lives in the belief that I have a brother too, and it’s useless to try to correct her. Last Christmas, it was my turn to take the boy’s gift and write the thank you card. At least the waistbands are elastic. And they have drawstrings.”
“How egalitarian of you,” laughed Grissom. He kissed Ana again before saying, “And Ana? Wear sneakers with your pretty dress, okay?”
Ana laughed.
Chapter 07 – Ana
The next morning, Ana woke slowly, feeling rested and amazing.
Yesterday had had a pretty terrible start, but it had ended really sweetly. Just remembering how sweet made Ana squirm and giggle, her hands pressed to her hot face like she was still a little girl.
Best date ever, thought Ana bounding out of bed… and immediately regretted it.
“Oowwwww! Ow! Ow! Ow!” yelped Ana as she fell back into her bed.
She’d forgotten about her poor feet. But now that she had been forcibly reminded about their hurt, they throbbed with a vengeful ache. Shoes weren’t going to be fun for awhile. And sooner or later, she was going to have to wear them, if only on her date with Grissom.
Her next date with Grissom!
Grissom, who had asked her out!
Remembering it had Ana grinning again.
Happiness buoyed Ana against the worst of the pain as she eased herself out of bed and hobbled into the bathroom to take care of her morning routine.
Half an hour later, Ana was clean, dressed, and eating cold Chinese food while she waited for all of her resumes to finish printing. Nothing beat cold beef and broccoli for breakfast, except maybe cold eggrolls.
Grissom had left all of the assorted takeout on her counter last night, which meant that it was now all safely stashed in Ana’s refrigerator. By her estimates, she had enough to last her at least a week and a half, maybe a little longer.
Thinking about it, Ana wasn’t certain that anyone who grew up in a mansion with an even dozen bathrooms – plus however many guest bathrooms and half baths to take advantage of – would even know that leftovers were a thing.
Which means more for me, thought Ana happily.
Ana was full, her teeth were brushed, and her makeup was perfect, when she finally went to pull on her sneakers… and promptly kicked them off again.
Ana settled on flip-flops instead. Flip-flops were better. They were easier on her feet. And no one was going to want to interview her on the spot anyway. She would be lucky if she got to talk to an actual, real, living person about any potential job openings.
Ana left her apartment armed with a handful of resumes and a butt-load of determination, both of which carried her through two mornings filled with numerous rejections, apathetic stares, and pat speeches about applying on their website.
On the third morning, Ana was just about to throw in the towel, go home, and start her afternoon of applying online when one last ‘Help Wanted’ sign caught her eye. It was the only one that she had seen all day that didn’t have a web address underneath it. That, more than anything else, was what prompted Ana to walk past the small patio filled with wrought iron furniture and old men playing dominoes and into Affla Coffee.
Inside, Affla Coffee was… cozy. The walls were painted a very pale shade of yellow, and the hardwood floors gleamed in the morning light. Pieces of nondescript art hung every few feet on the walls.
The coffeehouse had been divided into three areas: the counter, the small tables, and the larger tables.
The small tables were situated at the front of the space where light from the shop’s large plate glass windows could slant across them. The square tables had four chairs apiece, the round ones only two each. Most of the people sitting at the small tables were there alone or with one other person, a forgotten cup of coffee somewhere on their tabletop.
Lined up across from the long counter was a row of sagging couches, their patterns mismatched and their backs pressed up tight against the wall. In front of each couch stood one of the larger tables, their other sides graced with either love seats or single seats. Student study groups seemed to have claimed those areas as their own.
The line at counter was long, but Ana got into it anyway. When it was her turn, Ana ordered a hot cocoa and a slice of lemon cake to go. While the girl fished it out of the pastry case, Ana asked, “Is it always this busy in here?”
“Yeah, since the semester started,” said the girl behind the counter, a blond who had pulled her hair back into a sleek ponytail. “Otherwise, it’s pretty dead around now.”
“Huh,” said Ana. “And do you like it? I mean, do you like working here?”
“Oh, yeah! The owner’s really sweet, and the managers are super laidback,” said the girl as she put Ana’s pastry into a little paper sleeve. “We’re just short right now.” Straightening, she studied Ana over the counter for a moment, before asking, “Why? Are you looking?”
“Yeah,” said Ana.
“There’s no health care, but the hours are good, and they pay on time,” said the gir
l. “Here, I’ll get you a piece of coffee cake.”
“Coffee cake?” echoed Ana, now confused.
“Yeah, the owner has a real weakness for it,” said the girl. “His name is Abel Baker, and he’s in the back office today. He’ll like it if you bring him some cake when you ask him about the job opening.”
“Thanks!” said Ana, feeling cheered. At least the people who worked here were nice!
In a matter of minutes, Ana was juggling her cup of cocoa and two slices of cake as she knocked on the door to the back office.
“Come in!” shouted a man’s voice.
Obediently, Ana pushed the door open and walked into a room as cheerless as the front room was cozy.
It was painted the same cheerful shade of yellow as the coffee shop and even had the same hardwood floors, but the walls were bare and, in places, mildly scuffed. Cheap blinds had been drawn tight over the window, leaving the overhead halogen bulbs as the room’s only source of illumination.
There were only four pieces of furniture in the room: a battered metal desk, which took up most of the space in the office, the computer chair that slouched behind the desk, and the two low back chairs that stood in front of the desk. The computer chair had once been covered in faux black leather, but now its faux leather finish was cracking and peeling off, leaving it with white strips along the seams. Fortunately, the two chairs in front of the desk appeared to be in better shape, although Ana found it unfortunate that their fabric was vomit colored.
Seated in the peeling computer chair behind the desk was a balding, badly overweight man in a rumpled yellow dress shirt, its sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a thin brown tie that had been pulled loose around his thick neck. The ring of shiny black hair around his head was long enough to be pulled back into a ponytail and his cleft chin was stubbled, but the look in his brown eyes was very sharp.
At Ana’s entrance, he smiled at her warmly, his dark eyes gleaming with good humor.
Her Detective Dragon_A Paranormal Mystery Romance Page 4
