Fight or Flight

Caleb rolled his eyes. “You take offense tae everything.”

“Everything you say is offensive.”

“Ah, there you are.” Emily suddenly appeared at the booth, looking a little flustered as she eyed Caleb. “You switched tables.”

“Aye.” He held out his hand for his plate of food, which I noticed was also the filet mignon.

“There you go. Can I get you anything else, sir?”

“No.” He immediately started to dig in without a thank you.

I looked up at Emily and she gave me a pained smile. “I’ll be right back with your order.”

“Thank you so much.”

As she walked away, I eyed Caleb with a mixture of distaste and longing. Distaste for him, longing for his steak.

My belly grumbled loudly and I quickly drank the rest of my champagne. Caleb looked up from his plate, amusement in his eyes. Amusement that made him five million times more attractive than the haughty chill did. “Hungry?”

“Starving. Is it good?”

“Aye.” He grinned, one of wicked taunting, and took a huge bite.

Thankfully, Emily returned with my dinner before I could consider stealing Caleb’s plate out from under him.

“Oh my God. Thank you,” I said, practically ripping it out of her hands.

She laughed. “You’re welcome. Can I get you anything else?”

“Champagne, please.” I tapped my glass with my fork.

“Would you like a bottle instead?”

If I was going to get through dinner with an arrogant Scot, I was thinking yeah. “Oh, yes, please.” I threw her a quick smile before I started cutting through my filet. I squished pomme purée onto the fork with the steak and rubbed it in the sauce before shoving a huge mouthful through my parted lips.

I closed my eyes and groaned around the tasty beef. When I swallowed, my eyes popped open in preparation for the next bite, but instead of going directly to my plate they got stuck on Caleb’s.

He was staring at me with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth, frozen, his features taut with tension while those ice eyes had melted into blue pools of heat. My breath caught in my throat. “What?” I whispered.

His eyes narrowed. “Do you always eat like you’re having an orgasm, or is the show just for me?”

Blush blazed across my cheeks. “Excuse me?”

“On the plane with your coffee. Now here with the steak?”

My cheeks felt hot enough to cook on. Did I really do that? “I … I just like coffee. And steak.”

What happened floored me more than his insinuation that I got the same kind of pleasure out of food and coffee as I did from sex.

Caleb Scott grinned.

And it was not a wicked smile or an arrogant smirk. Just a wide, amused grin that caused a strange flutter in my chest. “You really are something else, babe.”

I had wanted to find something likable about him to feel better about my physical attraction, but the sudden compression on my chest, the feeling of breathlessness that I remembered from when I first realized I had a crush on Nick, stunned me for a moment.

It scared me.

One moment of normality didn’t eradicate the last day of him being a total prick to me. I frowned, busying myself with my food. “Don’t call me ‘babe.’ ”

There was no response and we continued to eat in silence. When we finished up, Emily returned to take our plates and offer us the dessert menu.

“Thank you,” I said as she gathered the plates in her hands.

I waited for Caleb to follow suit and was not surprised when Emily walked away without receiving a thank you from him.

“Why?” I took a huge gulp of champagne.

His eyebrows drew together. “Why what?”

“Why do you never say please or thank you?”

“I noticed years ago at work that my staff responded better tae me when I stopped saying please and thank you and just started expecting them to do a good job. It’s psychological.”

“One, that’s still shitty. But two, okay, that’s your staff and maybe that really does work for you in the office. But you’re not in the office. People are doing you a kindness and you don’t thank them.”

“They’re not doing me a kindness. They’re doing their bloody job.”

“True. So say you got a shitty waitress or crappy flight attendant … you’re right. You shouldn’t thank someone when they’re doing a shitty job. But none of these people today have been doing a shitty job. It’s just good manners to thank them.”

“Why does it bug you so much?”

“It’s common courtesy. I know when I spend weeks, sometimes months designing a space or a house, that it feels amazing when the client thanks me. And it feels horrible when they don’t say anything. You know they like it because they’ve called a national magazine to have them photograph it or you see them plastering it all over their social media showing it off. But they never said thank you or good job.

“Being underappreciated is like being a ghost. They know once upon a time you were there, that you made a mark, but they already stopped caring before you even said good-bye. That’s shitty. And maybe being a flight attendant isn’t making someone’s home or office a place they love to spend time in, and it’s not making sure a tech company stays on the right path upward financially … but it’s making sure someone who is afraid of flying, or is tired and grieving, has a good flight at least. That they didn’t have to put up with obnoxious service. The same with Emily tonight. She got our food out to us and she did it with a smile. And we don’t know what kind of day Emily is having. If those assholes over there have been giving her a hard time.

“So maybe a please or a thank you doesn’t seem much to you. But I’m pretty sure that every time I say thank you to Emily—including the thank you I’ll leave in my twenty percent tip—it helps her deal better with the assholes who were rude to her while she stands on her feet for a twelve-hour shift in the four-inch heels her boss insists she wear.”

I drew in a breath after my rant and sat back in my chair, waiting for his sarcastic reply. It didn’t come. Instead, he just stared at me, his expression inscrutable.

“What?”

His answer was to look at the menu. “Are you getting dessert?”

Would it have been wrong of me to pour my champagne over him?

Yes, yes, it would have. That didn’t mean I didn’t feel the urge. I sighed and looked over the menu. “I am.”

We didn’t speak as we waited for Emily to return. “Dessert?”

“I’ll have the chocolate fudge cake.”

“Whipped cream or ice cream?”

“Ice cream, please.”

“Great.” She turned to Caleb.

He shook his head and handed her the menu. “Nothing for me.”

As Emily walked away, I frowned at my companion. There was a possibility if I stuck around him any longer I was going to form permanent wrinkles between my brows. “I thought you were eating dessert. I wouldn’t have ordered if you weren’t.”

“Why not? Frankly, it’s refreshing that you eat steak and chocolate cake.”

“I don’t normally. It’s a treat.”

“Because you’re grieving and tired?”

Stunned that he’d picked up on that and that he was curious enough to ask, I attempted to shrug it off. “I’m not drunk enough to talk about that.”

“Fair enough. But I’ll still wait with you while you have your dessert.”

“Well, as begrudgingly as it is given, I’m grateful.” I snorted. “I’m looking forward to that damn cake.”

This time there was no mistaking the male appreciation in those spectacular eyes. “Aye. Me too.”

He was obviously referring to my reaction to eating good food. I flushed and hoped he attributed it to a champagne blush. But if that cocky smirk of his was anything to go by, he didn’t.

Oh boy.

Six

Somehow after cake we still hadn’t left the table. After we’d paid for dinner (separately!), Caleb said he needed another drink. When I stood up from the booth to leave, he’d put a hand on my lower back and led me to the bar.