“I- uh- do you have pets?”
“Actually, I don’t. I work at a pretty demanding job and I’m not home enough. I want to get a dog, but yeah- you can’t do that when you’re gone for ten-hour stretches.”
“Oh. What do you do?”
“I work in social services actually. Kind of. Yeah.” Alex glanced around awkwardly, for something that shouldn’t have been awkward at all.
Muffy shifted. “Uh- well I’m an accountant, which is really boring. Social services. That’s great. It must be really rewarding to know you’re making such a big difference in people’s lives.”
“It is. Yeah. For the most part.”
They lapsed into easy silence, which was a first. It was surprisingly not at all stressful or awkward. Muffy tried to figure out something to say. She didn’t think the whole grilling twenty questions deal was appropriate and all she could think about was Alex taking her back to his place after and getting back in the saddle like Carla said and that wasn’t appropriate conversation at all.
She let the silence lapse until their food came out, which was surprisingly fast. And equally as delicious when she dug in.
Silence or not, she was doing a happy dance on the inside. That dance kept going strong through the small talk she and Alex made while they ate. It kept going, right until he whipped out his credit card to pay for their meal, which was really quite nice of him and it declined.
CHAPTER 6
Alex
Well, phase one of the date was complete. He’d successfully got an applicant after putting an extraordinary amount of effort into setting up the bet. God knew he didn’t do things halfway. He’d never been one of those people who were able to settle for mediocre or half-ass. Maybe it was the way he was brought up. Maybe it was in his genetics. Maybe after such a shitty start in life, he needed to prove to himself that he could be something, or at least someone he himself was proud of. He wasn’t quite sure.
He’d taken things right to the point of the credit card declining. He had a recorder going on in his phone, just to prove to Jay that he’d actually done it, as part of the parameters of the bet. He’d been thinking up a bet of his own, something special just for Jay. He couldn’t be outdone when it came to bets and as far as they went, this one was pretty damn challenging.
Their waitress, the blonde girl who was probably just past twenty- a good fifteen years younger than him- sent him an undisguised look of distaste when she passed back his credit card.
Okay. Maybe Jay was onto something. The girl wasn’t plastic at all. She was a natural blonde and her makeup was tasteful. She was working as a server, which meant she probably had some pretty good work ethics even as a young person and blam! There it was. Like a freight train, that look was so thorough and fast and horrible, it astounded him.
“Oh. Uh- that’s no problem. Here you go.” Muffy gracefully pulled her purse out of the bag beside her, dug out her wallet, and passed over her card.
The waitress shot her a look, because apparently, it was true what they said about women always having a silent hatred/challenge thing going on with each other and Muffy was very pretty, even if she was obviously a little shy and called herself mousy and didn’t think so. The girl slammed the card through, printed off the receipt and thumped it down in front of Muffy without a word.
Muffy waited until she was gone before she raised those gorgeous hazel eyes and blinked her long thick lashes. “Uh- do you think I should leave a tip? She wasn’t very nice. She didn’t even ask us about drinks. She never checked back in on us, but the food was good, and I think part of the tip goes to the kitchen. It’s not really fair to deprive them for her behavior, is it?”
Alex’s mouth nearly fell open. Muffy didn’t say anything about him being a loser. She didn’t ask him why the hell he didn’t have fifty-two dollars in his bank account. She didn’t spout off rhetoric about it being his duty to pay for the meal or at least inform her that she’d have to pay before they ate. She didn’t look at him like he was some lowlife broke-ass piece of trash horrible blind date.
No. She was concerned about the inner workings of the restaurant.
God, she was sexy.
He’d been a little choosy in his search. He had to find someone who was at least baseline attractive to him or it would never work. Muffy’s profile was a good representation of her in person. Thoughtful. Attractive. Intelligent. Compassionate. Interesting. Gorgeous. Boner-inducing.
Okay, scratch that last one off the list. He had no right to be thinking that on their first date but yeah, she appeared to be the real deal.