***
My stomach bulged against my waistband, but I was not about to stop now. Why had I suffered through a sixty-five-minute swim and a two-hour run that day if not to overindulge on a special occasion? I’d eat like an Ironman contender tomorrow. Meanwhile I’d savor each bite, made even more dear because my Oxheart meal cost what I’d normally spend to eat for a week.
Tex, our Vietnamese waiter, arranged my dessert in front of me and backed away with a theatrical flourish. His voice was pure epicurean hip. “Your tapioca pudding caressed by Buddha’s Hand citron, ginger-galangal ice cream, and apple mint.”
Oxheart was definitely on the cool side: local ingredients and hip, rustic-leaning décor, light years away from our elderly Jewish neighborhood.
Tex lifted a bowl from his tray and held it high and away from his body like he was serving up a dead rat. “Your berries, sir.” He thunked the bowl down on the table. Plain ole fruit hadn’t been on the menu.
“Great, thanks.” Adrian was oblivious to the waiter’s pique.
Tex nodded at me, gave his head a barely perceptible shake at Adrian, and left.
I dug into my pudding. “Oh my.” I held a bite in my mouth and moaned, letting the flavors seep into my tongue. Heaven. Heaven in a spoon.
Adrian stabbed a strawberry with his fork, then held it suspended in the air in front of him, forgotten. He looked at me instead, looked into me, in a serious way unlike his usual self. “Lately I’ve noticed more strangers recognize me. I don’t like it as much as I thought I would. You’ve got to promise me you’ll be careful. Watch out for the crazies, don’t take chances, tell me if anyone does anything weird around you. You’re my world, Michele.”
I couldn’t recall a single time my free-spirited husband had scared me, but he scared me so much right then that I pushed my tapioca away. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.” He shifted upwards like he was going to interrupt, so I hurried on. “I promise, though, I’ll be careful. Will you promise me the same?”
“Yes. I promise.”
His definition of careful and mine don’t even belong in the same dictionary, but I accepted his answer. “Is something going on?”
“No.” He drew out the word. “I’m just sentimental because it’s our anniversary.”
I narrowed my eyes.
He held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
A lump rose in my throat. “I wouldn’t last a day without you.”
“Sure you would. You’re the strongest person I know. You’re my little Itzpa, my Butterfly.” He held up his hands bent into claw shapes. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Seriously, you know it’s me who’d crumble.” He leaned toward me and extended his hands palms up across the table. I put mine on his, our hands and fingers barely touching. “Please, honey, whatever you do, don’t leave me alone in the house with those two teenagers.”
The tension slipped off of me like a silk robe to the floor. Annabelle, his seventeen-year-old daughter, and my Sam were good kids, but they were your normal handful of hormones. I tickled his palms with my fingertips. “I think Belle and Sam would love it. Party every night and sleep all day.”
He snorted. “Your nose is growing, Pinocchio.”
I smiled and pulled my tapioca bowl back into place. I couldn’t help but think, though, that if anyone’s nose had grown that night, it hadn’t been mine.
To continue reading Going for Kona, click here.
~~~
Excerpt from Heaven to Betsy (Emily Mystery Series, #1)
Saving Grace (What Doesn’t Kill You, #1): A Katie Romantic Mystery Page 56
