He paused as he watched her take another bite.
She noticed his lower lip open and the tip of his tongue peek out before he realized he was staring and pulled himself together. A perfectly female part of her did a little happy dance. She hadn’t meant to be enticing, yet here she was, capturing the attention of a charming, gorgeous man by simply eating her dessert.
Mary wiped the edges of her mouth and tried not to stare. “Why did you go through all this effort, Glen? I’d have been just as happy with a quiet meal in a nice place close to home.”
Her question pulled his gaze away from her lips and onto his own plate. It was his turn to shrug. “I think we’ve both been wanting this for a while. I wanted to make it count.”
Mary lifted both hands in the air. “Mission accomplished.”
He grinned, flashed a dimple on the left side of his face, and ate half his dessert in one bite. “Besides . . . a nice meal close to home would have ended hours ago,” he said around his food.
Mary actually put her fist to her chest. “How the heck can you be so charming and such a . . . a . . .”
“A what?”
She couldn’t put to words what she thought. “You stole Dakota’s monkey from me.”
“I touched it first.”
“I saw it first,” she said, laughing.
“And you thought I’d just give it up.”
“It would have been the chivalrous thing to do.”
“On a date, maybe . . . but don’t hold your breath . . . in a hospital gift shop. No way, babe. It’s like a Bluelight Special at Kmart. Every man for himself.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re too young to know about a Bluelight anything from Kmart.”
He finished the rest of his dessert and continued to talk while waving his spoon. “I saw a movie.”
Mary gave up on the chocolate, gave the rest to Glen, who happily devoured it. She enjoyed watching him eat and had to shake herself to look away.
“Did you get away with everything when you were a kid?”
“Trent got away with everything. Jason got away with nothing . . . I lingered in between.”
“Middle child syndrome. Did you try and fix things between your brothers . . . make your parents happy?” She was analyzing him, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“Some.”
Hmm, the great negotiator. “So what exactly do you do at work?”
He hesitated and had a lingering smile as if he was surprised she’d asked. “I’m the CFO.”
She didn’t waver her stare.
“I work with a lot of finance in the company. I try and find ways of building the business, maintain parts that are lagging. Analyze what’s working.”
“Sounds like an imperative part of the company.”
He shrugged. “Jason was always bossy, Trent had a hard time following instructions, I had the numbers and schmoozing thing down.”
“It all worked out.”
“Yeah . . . I like what I do.”
Mary sat forward in her seat. “Did you pick it?”
“Chose my job?”
“Yeah . . . was it your decision, or did your father suggest that leg of the company to you at some point and you felt obligated to do it?”
Glen tilted his head as if questioning her question.
“You analyze everyone, don’t you?”
She was doing it again. “Occupational hazard. Forget I asked.”
This time Glen pushed his plate away and leveled his eyes to hers. “Shortly after our parents’ death, Jason, Trent, and I sat down . . . we got shitfaced drunk, and we talked about what we wanted to do. Trent was the most torn. Couldn’t do the desk. Said he needed to ease into the company. Jason spent the largest amount of time with our father in the office. He’d already been working with the company and knew more of the staff than any of us. I had a position, but it wasn’t CFO. I’d worked with our head of operations, and with his help, took on the position I now run.” He paused. “We all had a choice. Our father didn’t force anything on us and we were more than happy to jump in when we needed to.”
He delivered the information with very little emotion on his face. They were simply the facts that no longer bothered him to provide.
“Your parents must have been very proud of you all.”
Now he smiled. “We gave them a fair share of grief, but I think we turned out all right.”
It was after midnight when Glen walked her up to the front door.
She turned and smiled. “Should I invite you in?”
He tilted his head for a second in thought and gave a quick shake. “If you invite me in, I won’t want to leave.”
Her whole body shivered with the meaning of his words. “Are you flying home tonight?”
“I have a room at The Morrison.”
“That’s silly. You’ve slept on my couch before, you can—”
Glen stepped into her personal space and brushed her chin with the backs of his fingers. “I don’t trust myself to stay on your sofa bed, Mary. And I don’t want you to think this night was about that.”
Mary wanted to analyze what the night was about, but her head was too fried to think that hard. “Okay.”
“However, I do want to kiss you again.”
It was as if he was asking. “Dessert before dinner, and after?”
“I like to indulge.”
Mary tilted her chin higher and rested a hand on his chest. “I had a wonderful time.”