Riya’s face suffused with color as she looked away.
“Thanks,” she mumbled. She bent her head and looked around the room. “There’s the card.” She hurried over to the dining room table and pulled a pen out of her purse. He saw her pause and then take her time to write something appropriate.
She grabbed her card, her purse and a shopping bag she’d had sitting by the card and came over to the couch. “Can you hand me my shoes?” she asked as she sat down.
Gray grabbed them and knelt down in front of her. “Let me help put these on.”
“I can do it.”
He traced his thumb over her cute toes, then slipped her peep-toe shoe on. He repeated the process with the second shoe, garnering another sigh from her. He wanted a kiss, but there wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to risk it here in her home before they had to be somewhere. Especially not on their first date.
She got up from her seat and went over to the table and opened up the shopping bag.
“Gray, can you slip the packages in here?”
“Sure thing.”
He picked up her white trench coat lying across the sofa and helped her put it on.
“Thank you, you’re quite the gentleman.”
“I was raised in Missouri. My two aunts would kill me if I failed to live up to the Southern gentleman standard.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t think Missouri was a Southern state.”
“I grew up in Springfield. According to my great-grandfather who was still alive when I was eight, he said his father and uncles fought for the Confederacy. My aunts only hold onto the Southern etiquette and hospitality something fierce.”
He escorted her out of the condo. Outside, he snagged the umbrella he had left by the side of her entrance.
“You brought an umbrella?”
“There was a possibility of rain. Figured you would have a fancy hairdo, and you do,” he smiled easily. “Give me your keys and I’ll lock your door.”
Riya handed over her keys, then frowned at him when he went to pocket her keys after he locked the door. “Give those back to me.”
“No can do. I have to be able to unlock it when I bring you back.”
“Uhm Gray, isn’t that kind of control freaky?”
“Nope.”
“I can’t believe you said that with a straight face. That is so much being a control freak. Miranda warned me about that.” His gaze slipped sideways and he watched as she thought over a new way to approach him. “Wouldn’t it be more comfortable for me to have the keys in my purse instead of you having them in your pocket?” she reasoned.
“Nope.”
He helped her into the passenger seat, then got into the driver’s seat.
“Is it really important for you to be able to unlock the door for me when we get back?”
Gray liked the fact that she never sounded upset, just curious. It made him relax.
“Yes, it is.”
She sat back in her seat. “Well, okay then.”
* * *
Gray pulled out into the little side street and Riya concentrated on the bougainvillea lining the fences.
“So how well do you know Susan?” Gray asked.
“I’ve been working with her about a year. She’s been a lifeline for me at the lab, and she’s let me babysit for her. Plus she has a dog. And a cat. And a rabbit. I love it over at her house.”
Riya clamped her hand over her mouth. Then immediately took it away to see if any of the lipstick came off. Good it didn’t. It was living up to the hype. But seriously, she needed to stop saying everything that came into her head.
“It sounds like you didn’t come from a large family if you’re so excited about babysitting a girl, a boy, a dog, a cat and a rabbit.”
“How do you know Susan’s kids are a girl and a boy?”
“I met them when they were little.”
“You did?” She looked over at him curiously.
“It’s a long story. So no brothers and sisters, or was it that you were just whisked away for schooling?”
“I was the youngest child of five girls. Amira, my sister closest to me in age is six years older than me. Then when I went to school I was always in grades with older kids, so I didn’t get to interact with kids my own age. Plus, I was so busy studying I didn’t have a chance to do anything like babysit when I was growing up, so spending time with Hope and Jeremy is a pleasure. What about you? Siblings?”
“I was raised by my two aunts, and spent a lot of time over at the Conway’s house. They had three kids and five foster kids, so they really didn’t notice that one more was at their table most nights.” Gray tilted his head. “There’s the church.”
Riya looked and saw the building through a faint haze of drizzling rain. The parking lot was full. Gray drove to the front entrance of the church and idled the car, then pressed a button on his steering wheel.
A man’s voice came over the speaker, “Hello.”
“Hey Griff, you got Miranda settled?” Gray asked.
“Affirmative.”
“Can you come out front and escort Riya in, while I park?” Gray asked.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” Griff answered.
Gray disconnected.
“Isn’t this taking the Southern gentlemen etiquette a little too far?” Riya asked.
“Not really,” Gray said looking over at her. “Griff would have asked me to do the same thing for Miranda if the situation were reversed, and he was born and raised in Los Angeles. So this isn’t a Southern gentleman thing, this is a Navy thing.”
Suddenly her door opened, surprising her. Riya hadn’t even noticed that Griff had come out of the church.
“Hi Riya,” Griff grinned. He held out his hand for her. “You look gorgeous.”
She looked over her shoulder at Gray in surprise. That’s exactly what he had said. She wasn’t used to all the praise.
I should get out of the lab more often.
Gray reached over and unhooked her seatbelt, then he brushed the side of her cheek. “I’ll be there in a minute, after I park the car.” Then he looked over her shoulder. “Make sure she doesn’t slip in those shoes. It’s beginning to drizzle.”
“Sure thing,” Griff said.
She could practically smell the testosterone in the air.
“Uhm, gentlemen, I have made it almost twenty-six years without falling on my butt, thank you very much.”
Griff took her hand and she stepped out of the vehicle. The pointed heel slipped out from beneath her, and if it hadn’t been for Griff’s quick reflexes she would be sitting in a puddle in the church parking lot.
Perfect, just perfect.
Her purse had fallen and everything was scattered to the four winds. She’d just bought that lipstick.
By the time she looked up from the security of Griff’s arms, Gray’s SUV was no longer idling. Instead it was in park, and Gray was pulling her out of his team member’s arms.
“I’ve got you. Are you okay?” Gray demanded. She looked up into his face. His voice had come out all angry, but his eyes were the soft blue of concern and worry, not the mad blue. Which was it? Angry or concern? God, she hated not being able to read people.
Suck it up buttercup.
She gave a fake smile.
“How did you move that fast?” She looked over at his vehicle, then back at Griff who was crouched at her feet gathering up all of the things that had fallen out of her purse and putting them back in.
Really? A tampon? Kill me now. Where’s a hole I can crawl into?
She looked up at Gray to see if he noticed, but he was staring down at her face. “You’re looking flushed. Let’s get you inside.”
“Here you go,” Griff handed her the purse.
“Here’re my keys, can you park the SUV while I get Riya situated?” Gray asked.
“Sure thing,” Griff smiled.
“I’m really capable of walking by myself.” But as she looked at the wet steps leadin
g up to the church, and considered her brand new high heels, having someone to hold onto sounded like a great idea. Darn it, she really needed to have gone for girly classes or shorter, thicker heels. But as soon as she’d seen these shoes at Nordstrom, it was a done deal. By golly, she’d intended to look tall and sleek walking down the aisle with the groomsman. What was his name again?
“Honey, you’re daydreaming. Are you ready to go?”
She looked up and saw that she and Gray were standing under an umbrella. How had she not noticed that happening? She relaxed, this was definitely nice and concerned Gray.
“Let’s get this show on the road.” She nodded.
Gray put a bracing arm around her shoulder and the other under her elbow. Riya felt surrounded as they walked up the stairs. She took her time considering the sensation, and by the time they reached the top she decided it made her feel safe.
“That’s quite the smile,” Gray said as he closed the umbrella underneath the eves of the church.
“I’ve decided I like how your aunts raised you,” she murmured.
His eyes brightened, and when they did little laugh lines fanned out from the corner of his eyes. “Let’s get you in with the rest of the beautiful women, shall we?”
She shivered at the compliment. Oh yes, she definitely liked how he’d been raised.
4
At the reception, Riya was practically bouncing up and down in her chair. Her black eyes sparkled. Riya had teased Gray the entire short drive from the church to hotel where the reception was being held. Miranda and Griff’s two-year-old daughter had seen him as they were leaving the church and had yelled out for her Uncle Gay-Gay. She wanted to be held and cuddled. Gray loved his honorary niece, but he was sincerely looking forward to the day that she would start calling him Uncle Gray.
“Did you see it all, Gray? You were seated near the back, and over to the right, so I didn’t know if you could catch it all. I was dying. I laughed so hard, I was crying. I tried not to make any noise.”
“Admit it Dr. Patel, you were crying, and it wasn’t because you were laughing.”
She bit her lip. “Okay, to begin with I was laughing, but then I was crying, crying. How could you not? It was so touching.”
Gray had watched as every single bridesmaid had cried. He’d even choked up. “It was one for the record books, that’s for sure.”
“I adore Susan’s kids.”
Jeremy had been the ring bearer, and Hope had been the flower girl. When Susan had said, “I do,” Hope had walked right over to her brother, grabbed his arm and dragged him up to the dais where the couple stood in front of the minister.
Mike and Susan, full of joy at the moment, had done nothing but smile at the two small children.
“I do, too, Mike,” Hope had said in that high pitched voice of hers, still stuck between a baby and a little girl. “Are you my daddy now?” she’d asked.
Mike had swept the child up high into his arms, “I am definitely your Daddy if you want me to be.”
Gray knew that Susan’s first husband had died while serving overseas when Jeremy had been a toddler.
“Can I say ‘I do,’ too?” the six-year-old boy had asked.
Mike crouched down so he would be eye level with the child. “Absolutely, Champ.”
“Can I call you Dad?” the young boy asked with a slow gap-tooth grin.
Mike cleared his throat. “I would be honored.”
The ministered coughed. “Would this fine family like to turn around so we can finish the ceremony?” he’d asked kindly.
“Yay!” Hope cried. “We’s getting married.”
Gray shook his head, coming back to the present and looked around the ballroom. He spotted the little girl in question, then smiled back at Riya. “Yes, I saw the whole thing. It’s going to be tough for any wedding to top that one.”
“Look at Hope out on the dance floor. She is definitely in her element.” Riya’s smile was soft.
“Is she that much of a handful when you babysit her?”
“I usually have structured play time, so there isn’t a lot of wiggle room for her to do too much outside of the parameters.”
“Is that fun for her?”
Riya’s eyes got even brighter. “Since I never babysat before, I was really worried about what to do. So I researched it. The kids seemed to like it, and I conferred with Susan afterwards and she said that they wanted me to come over and play again, even if I wasn’t babysitting. So I’m thinking it was a success.”
He was curious what the little scientist would have found to play with the young children. The fact that she’d researched it, slayed him. “What did you do?” he asked.
“Well, I wanted to do something that would both entertain them and teach them. I was always happiest when I was learning something as a kid.”
“Is that true now?” Gray wasn’t surprised, but he wanted to hear more about her childhood.
“Oh yeah, I love new experiences,” she grinned. “For instance, this wedding has been fantastic. I’ve only ever been to one wedding before, and it was an Indian wedding. This was totally different.”
He watched her eyes jump to the dance floor again, but before he could ask her to dance, she was talking.
“I bought Jeremy and Hope sketch pads and a bucket so that we could do a nature walk along the bike trail near Susan’s house. I asked them to find different kinds of plants and flowers and put them into the bucket, and then sketch the different kinds of bugs, lizards and birds that they saw. I had planned to go back to the house so we could research everything they had found on the internet.”
Gray smothered a grin as he asked, “How’d that work out?”
Riya frowned a little bit. “Actually things didn’t go to plan.”
“Really?” Again, he tried to keep a straight face.
“I had talked to Susan about my plan initially and she was enthusiastic about it, and said I should definitely try it.”
“Hmmmm.”
“So we got close to a little stream, and Jeremy heard frogs. That’s when everything went to hell.”
“He wanted to catch frogs,” Gray guessed.
“I just thank God the stream was only five inches deep, but it was almost all mud.”
“I told them that frogs are impossible to catch, and he told me that his mother let him catch them all the time.”
“And you believed him?”
“How did you know he’d lied?” Her eyes were wide as she asked the question. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t. He swept in for a swift kiss.
“I was a little boy once, I would have done anything to play in a creek, even lie. So what happened next?”
“Oh, Gray.” She laughed and moaned at the same time. “That wasn’t a stream, it was a slow moving mud puddle. “Jeremy jumped in with both feet, and was covered from head to toe. He was in heaven. Then Hope was crouching down wanting to hunt for frogs.”
“How muddy did you get?”
“By the time we got home, I had to strip all three of us down and throw everything into the wash machine. I had to steal some of Susan’s clothes. Thank God her wash machine is close to the backdoor.”
“Did you catch any frogs?”
“Not a one. Hope came the closest, that’s why I had to shampoo her hair three times.”
“I bet the kids had a ball.”
Riya looked at Gray in amazement. “How did you know? I thought the day was an unmitigated disaster, and instead I’m now considered their favorite babysitter.”
“What’s on the agenda next time?”
“I want to teach them how to make homemade ice cream in a plastic bag. I just hope that we don’t make a mess.”
Gray couldn’t stop his bark of laughter. “I don’t know how you do that, but having a four- and six-year-old make ice cream in a plastic bag sounds like all kinds of a mess. Hell, having my SEAL team do it, sounds like a mess waiting to happen.”
“Nuh-uh. I’ve read up on you guys. O
nly the best and the brightest make it in. You have to adapt on the fly. You’re open to new situations, new stimuli, and like to compete. You succeed in what you set out to accomplish.”
Gray tilted his head. “You read up on us?”
“I bought six books, I’ve only had time to read three. Then there were two studies. One was fascinating, it was the Personality Profile of SEALs.”
Gray hadn’t found and read that particular study until he was a Lieutenant.
“You’re amazing.”
“No I’m not, remember me? Research is my life.”
She had a point. He needed to stay on top of his game with this woman. “So did you read anything that scared you off?”
“Everything I read made me happy for Miranda.” Her mouth twitched and her eyes sparkled.
The little minx.
Nope, he wasn’t going to ask. She finally started to laugh. “I kind of thought it was a good thing for me, too. That is if we go out on a second date.”
“You can take that to the bank.”
Gray stood up and held out his hand. Riya looked up at him confused.
“Can I have this dance?” he clarified.
She jumped up from her chair. “Absolutely.”
Once more he was charmed by her delighted response.
“Ooops,” she said. It was then he realized she was short again. Before she had a chance to crawl under the table and every man in the thirty yard radius had a chance to ogle her butt, he volunteered to fish out her shoes.
“You don’t have to,” Riya protested.
Gray crouched down and grabbed her shoes.
“Oh yes I do, trust me,” he grinned ruefully, as he held up the first shoe.
“Aren’t you going to hand them to me?”
“I’m going to help put them on.” Gray realized he was developing a foot fetish.
She put her hands on his shoulders for balance, then arched her foot and he slid it on the first shoe. Gray couldn’t resist smoothing his hand up her calf as he helped set her foot down onto the ground. Then he held up the next one.
“I think you’re enjoying this,” she said, clearly surprised.
“Ya think?”
Her Captivated Hero: A Black Dawn Novel Book 6 Page 4
