“What’s taking them so long with the food?” I wondered aloud.
“You in a hurry, Chicken Nugget?” he teased.
I met his eye again. “My pants are too tight.”
His laugh brought out a dimple on his face that was doing a serious number on my equilibrium. “I can help take them off later.” He took a slow sip of his beer. My eyes followed his lips as they wrapped around the bottle. “With my teeth,” he added with a grin.
I raised my hand and tried to get our server’s attention. “Check, please.” Champ’s laugh was loud as he grabbed my arm and pulled my hand down to kiss it.
“Patience, baby. You’re going to need your energy, so we might as well wait for our food.”
Once again, the casual and sincere “baby” went straight to my gut, which didn’t help the pants situation at all.
We passed the rest of the meal in a comfortable kind of flirt-fest. It had been a long time since I’d enjoyed dinner out with someone as much as I did with Champ. He was good company: smart, funny, engaging. He told me stories about various deployments with his team, and I shared several wedding disaster stories to lighten the mood. Unlike my ex, Champ was attentive. He seemed to enjoy the stories I told, even when they overflowed with minute detail and went off on unintended tangents.
I babbled my way through several vodka cranberries until I was happily chirping at him the whole drive back to the farm.
“This isn’t the farm,” I said stupidly when Champ parked the truck behind my shop.
“No, babe. It’s not.”
I followed him out of the vehicle and to the back door, remembering Herc was here. “Oh my God, you remembered the dog for the second time today! It’s a miracle.”
“Herc’s here?” he asked. I opened my mouth to ask if he was serious when I noticed him wink at me. “That’s not the only reason we’re here.”
Champ unlocked the door and stepped inside, greeting Herc with pets before reaching for his leash. It took me a minute to realize my keys were still in my pocket.
“How did you get the door open? Did I forget to lock it?” The idea of accidentally leaving both the shop and apartment vulnerable to break-ins sobered me up quickly.
He clipped the leash to Herc’s collar and stepped past me to take him out back. “Nope. I used my key.”
I followed him to the large patch of grass on the far side of the parking area. “Your key? Your key?”
“No. Hercules is a poodle.”
It took my alcohol-soaked brain a minute to get the joke, and I quickly realized he was trying to distract me from the revelation that he’d had my key copied.
“Boundaries, Champion,” I growled at him.
The streetlamp above him lit up his blond hair and sent shadows moving across his face. Despite the strange lighting, he was still gorgeous, even when his smile faded and his eyebrows furrowed.
“Remember when you had the flu before Christmas and you could barely get out of bed for a couple of days?”
“How did you even know about that? I told you I was out of town for a job.” I hadn’t wanted him to see me red-nosed and bleary-eyed, sounding like a hundred-year-old chain-smoker.
He stepped closer and cupped my cheek with his big hand. The warmth of his touch reminded me how cold it was outside.
I nuzzled into it.
“I’m an intelligence operative, sweetheart,” he said softly. “And you needed someone to take care of you.”
I stared up at him. “I had… I had… delivery.”
He leaned in and pressed a kiss to my forehead before turning back to urge Hercules back inside. “You had homemade chicken soup from Thelma’s Sandwich Shack, organic throat lozenges from that bougie Summer Honey store, and Triple Chocolate Cake from Annie’s.”
Champ grabbed my hand and yanked me along like I was another animal he needed to corral. My brain spun with a new reality. “You brought that stuff to me? I thought I’d ordered it in a fever state.”
“You did, sort of. You called me. And I couldn’t just ignore you. I mean, protecting people is kind of my job, so.”
I dug my heels in so he couldn’t pull me further. “Hold up. You’re telling me that you answered my delirious phone call, then delivered me organic food and throat drops from three different stores because you’re a professional bodyguard? Really.”
Champ’s face turned beet red.
“I’m not your client, Champ,” I said softly. “Not now. Not then.”
“No,” he agreed just as softly. “But I think…” He sucked in a deep breath, and his whole body went tense, much the way it had when he’d tried to say “date” earlier. “I think even back then I knew you were mine. Mine to take care of. Mine to protect.”
I gasped. Literally gasped. “But you don’t… and I don’t… And you never said! You never fucking said a word!”