“Thanks, Mom!”
I go down the stairs first, and Grace almost smashes into my backside when I stop abruptly on the final stair. In the foyer, standing beside my father, is the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen.
Seriously… if I were to close my eyes and conjure up my dream man, he’d be it.
He’s tall—at least six feet—with smoldering chocolate eyes and a carefully groomed scruff covering his square jaw. He’s wearing a charcoal-gray suit and he just happens to have a tie on that matches the subtle polka dots of my dress. His eyes burn into mine as I hesitate on the stairs, suddenly feeling a little weak in the knees and wondering what kind of mistake has occurred.
Surely, this is not the pathetic bookworm who has to rely on his grandfather to arrange dates for him.
“Chuck?” I ask as Grace pushes me off the stairs toward him.
He smiles, a confident, slightly crooked smirk that actually gets me a little wet, and extends his hand. “You must be Cassidy.” He kisses the back of my hand and adds, “Or should I say Cookie?”
Call me whatever you want, I think, wishing for the first time ever that I didn’t still live with my parents. If I had a place of my own, I’d be severely tempted to say forget the date and simply drag this gorgeous man into my bedroom.
“Well, what are you two kids up to tonight?” my dad butts in, effectively dumping cold water on my racing thoughts. Nothing like a parent’s presence to kill the mood…
“I made reservations at La Rose,” Chuck says, and my dad nods his approval.
“Fancy place.” He looks at me with a raised eyebrow. “Expensive.”
Oh lord… we’ve got to get out of here before my dad asks Chuck how much he makes or what his intentions for me are. It’s not his fault—with five daughters, he’s bound to be protective—but that doesn’t make his pre-date questions any less mortifying.
I step toward the door and Chuck surprises me by draping my hand over his arm. I can feel the muscles beneath that finely tailored suit, and his cologne is rich and intoxicating. I manage to squeak, “Shall we go?”
“Whenever you’re ready,” he says, his voice low and rumbly. Damn, everything about him is sexy. Charles should have lead with that information… although I suppose it would have been weird if he did. Hey, my grandson is a real panty-dropper… what do you say, want to take a ride?
No, that wouldn’t have worked at all.
Chuck opens the door for me and we’ve nearly made our escape when Grace calls behind us, “Don’t keep her out too late—she’s got work in the morning!”
My cheeks turn rosy but Chuck smiles as he opens my car door for me. “Your family seems nice.”
“If by nice, you mean nosy…” I say, sliding into the luxury car with its black leather seats. Sheesh… Charles said that his grandson had a decent job, but between this and the fancy restaurant, it seems more than decent to me.
When he slides into the driver’s seat beside me, I ask, “So what do you do for work?”
“Luxury real estate,” he says. “I’ve got my own brokerage.”
“Oh,” I say. “That sounds like a lot of work.”
Okay, so I’m fishing a bit—trying to figure out why this Adonis with great hair and a big… bank account… needs his grandfather to find him dates. And by the time we’re seated in the dim, candlelit dining room of the restaurant, I think I understand.
Chuck may be chiseled out of marble, but he’s as stiff as a statue too… and not in the fun way.
He’s perfectly polite, and those dark brown eyes rarely leave mine, but he’s proving incredibly difficult to draw into conversation. We talked about his real estate company in the car ride over, and I told him about why I wanted to follow in my older sister’s footsteps and become a librarian—because my mother’s a writer, our house was always filled with books when I was a kid, and reading got me through some tough, shy times as a teenager.
But Chuck just stiffens even more at that, and I’m starting to think that despite the obvious physical chemistry, this is turning out to be my worst date ever—not that there’s a large pool to choose from.
It takes a while for our drinks to arrive—I’ve got the feeling this is one of those slow, leisurely expensive restaurants—and by then, I’m determined to find a way to salvage this date. I will not sit here awkwardly for an entire meal, and I doubt he wants to do that either.
So Chuck doesn’t want to talk about his work, or mine.
He seems uncomfortable with the topic of family for some reason.
How about something completely different?
I’m just about to quiz him on his favorite book—Charles said his grandson was a reader—when Chuck surprises me. He takes a sip of his whiskey and says bluntly, “I know my grandfather twisted your arm into coming out with me tonight. To be honest, I wasn’t so crazy about being set up, either. Dating’s not really a priority for me right now.”