“Damn you’re an expert at this.”
“Lots of practice,” he said with a little wink. “Now go. Scamper into whatever hot outfit your friend told you to wear at the eleventh hour.”
Grace couldn’t help but laugh as she followed instructions and headed into the bedroom. “If you put any of this male genius up on that damned website, I’ll deny all of it!” she called.
“No website business tonight, Grace. This is just us. And don’t start with that no-men nonsense either, or I’ll take this champagne a couple streets over to that hussy I
was with the morning we met.”
Grace found herself smiling as she wiggled into her jeans.
Damn it. She was really starting to like this guy.
* * *
Grace knew that she and Greg had held hands during the course of their relationship. She just couldn’t remember the specific moments.
She didn’t remember it feeling this right. Or this natural.
Or this wonderful.
They’d finished dinner, and Jake had suggested they take a walk, which Grace had pointed out as his first misstep of the evening. If he knew women even half as well as he thought he did, he’d understand that women in high heels didn’t do walks. They could walk. From point A to point B. Sometimes. But ambling with no destination? Not so much.
“What if I give you a destination?” he asked.
“Now, now, is that just a clever way of suggesting sex?”
He grinned. “Do you want it to be?”
Yes. “I don’t believe you’ve uttered the magic words.”
“Please?”
“Cheese plate.”
Jake tilted his head back and laughed, and it was then that he’d reached out and gently linked his fingers with hers.
She tried to be cool about it. Tried not to let herself look down at the way their hands joined, her smaller fingers twined with his larger ones. Tried not to think about how warm he was, or how good he felt.
“Seriously, where is our destination?” she asked once she realized that she was indeed being led in a specific direction.
“Tell me you’ve heard of La Maison du Chocolat.”
Grace groaned. “Only the most expensive, most sinful, most amazing chocolate in the city. In the world. Aren’t they from France?”
“Indeed. The damned French are always doing it right. The fries. The cheese. The chocolate … the kissing.”
He tugged at her hand, pulling her to a stop under the awning of a boutique long closed for the night. Then he kissed her. Right there for anyone and everyone to see.
One hand continued to hold her hand as the other found her cheek, his lips gently moving over hers. It was the first time in a long time she’d been kissed in public. Greg hadn’t been one for PDAs, and Grace hadn’t thought she was either.
But here with Jake, kissing on a quiet side street in downtown Manhattan felt right.
Sweet.
She was just a little bit breathless when he pulled back, and he took one last nip of a kiss before he stood upright and resumed walking as though it had never happened.
“You’re good at that,” Grace said.