Ugly Sweater Weather

"You got a car?" she asked, looking over at me with a wide-mouthed smile.

"I thought the theme of the evening called for it."

"You're awesome," she declared, insisting I shuffle in first because she claimed she wasn't going to be able to get in gracefully, and she didn't want me to watch. "Oh, my God," she said as soon as she was settled, as I'd placed the flowers down on her lap. I'd chickened out of bringing them to her door, but from the looks of things as she pulled them up to take a sniff, Clarence was right. Women still enjoyed getting flowers. "You brought me flowers," she said, eyes wide.

"I thought they were a nice touch," I said shrugging.

"Will they last through the play? Without being put in water?"

"They'll be fine," I assured her, leaving out that we weren't going right home after the ballet. I wanted to keep my surprises up my sleeve until it was time for them."That was actually even better than I imagined," Dea declared a while later as we moved through the crowd of people as they left the theater.

"It was," I agreed, though, admittedly, I spent most of the night watching her watch the ballet. What can I say? Dea was very animated when she was fascinated. Her eyes went wide, her lips opened and closed with wonder. She gasped and sighed and smiled sweetly. You could practically know what was going on in the ballet just by watching her face.

"I'm glad we got dressed up. I swear it made the whole show feel better. That makes no sense, but it's true. We should dress up more," she decided as we stepped back onto the street.

"We should. We can have a standing dress-up night every month or something," I suggested, sliding into the car, waiting for her to do the same as I reached for the ice bucket and glasses the driver had moved into the back as I'd asked.

"Oh, fancy!" Dea said, beaming at me as she clicked her seatbelt. "I haven't had champagne since like last New Year's."

And she hadn't been a fan.

"That was crap," I told her, handing her a flute. "This is the good stuff."

She took a sip as the driver looked over his shoulder at me. "We are early," he told me. "Do you want me to drive around first?"

"Early for what?" Dea asked, brows furrowing.

"We are going to dinner," I told her.

"Listen," she said, tone mock serious. "I am not in the kind of dress that will allow me to have all-I-can-eat without looking like I am a couple months pregnant. You should have told me it was a Spanx night," she said, smiling.

"We aren't having all-you-can-eat," I told her, topping off her champagne before I put the bottle down. "You can just bring us. We can take a walk around the area for a couple minutes," I told the driver.

"Are you not going to tell me where we're eating?" she asked, brows lowering.

"No. It's a surprise."

"I guess I can trust you," she decided, leaning back in her seat, watching out the window as we rode through the city. "What is this neighborhood?" she asked when the driver parked a few blocks away from the restaurant in West Village full of its quaint brick and brownstones.

"You'll see in a minute," I assured her. We didn't end up being as early as the driver expected thanks to traffic. By the time we walked the fifteen minutes to the restaurant, we would be just five minutes early for our reservation. "How are your feet?"

"Fine for now," she said, pulling her wrap tighter against her body.

"Here," I said, shrugging out of my jacket, slipping it around her shoulders.

"But now you're cold," she told me, leaning her face into the lapel to take a deep breath of my cologne.

"Alright, how about we share a little?" I asked, slipping my arm under the jacket, curling it around her waist.

She tensed for the barest of seconds.

And then a shiver coursed through her.

"It's so cold," she said, but I knew better. That wasn't a cold shiver. That was an anticipation shiver.

"Mmhmm," I agreed, trying not to focus too much on how I could feel the body heat through her thin dress, how it did very little to hide the soft curves underneath.

After a few steps, I could feel her leaning against me a bit, and couldn't help but wonder if she noticed that she did it, if she was starting to recognize her desire to be close to me for what it really was.

"Okay, here we are," I said when we stepped in front of the unassuming brick-front building with brown doors and window frames.

"What is this?"

"One If By Land, Two If By Sea," I told her, watching as she looked over at me, brows furrowing a bit as she searched her head for her knowledge of this restaurant. I could see it when she placed it, her lips parting, her eyes going soft.