I loved booths.
The only thing that could potentially kill the excitement of this date, for me, was the fact that we weren’t alone.
Nope. We had security.
Since Ronan would be “distracted” while he was on this date with me, he’d insisted on having Andre meet us here. He was seated several tables away, at a hightop by the bar, with a good vantage point of the room, the entrance, the exits—and of course, us.
“Does Andre know we’re on a date?” I asked Ronan as we got settled. I was sitting way too close to him for a professional dinner.
“Who knows,” he said vaguely. But he didn’t make any move to put more space between us.
“Did he ask you if we’re on a date?”
“He did.”
“And?”
“And… I neither confirmed nor denied. But I did tell him to mind his own damn business.”
“You didn’t.”
“No. I was a little less polite about it than that.”
I glanced over at Andre, who was pretending not to watch us as he eyed the crowd and sipped a glass of water.
“Hmm. You realize the man isn’t blind or stupid.”
“Nope. Quite the opposite. He’s one of my best guys. He leads one of my event security crews, and I’ve put him on close protection with several VIP clients over the years.”
“Uh-huh. And you think there’s any way in hell he’s not gonna suspect we’re on a date right now?”
“He can suspect all he wants,” Ronan said, cooly sipping his water. “But it’s none of his—”
“Damn business,” I finished for him. “Well, I guess I can’t complain. Since you’ve made it his business to watch our asses tonight… so I can have your ass all to myself.”
Ronan cocked an eyebrow at me, and his gaze dragged down my body in a way that reminded me of the crazy-intense fuck we’d had on my bathroom counter less than an hour ago. I could still feel him. I could still see his cock ramming into me… He’d ordered me to watch it while he fucked me.
I felt a little dizzy just thinking about it.
“Hey, now. What kind of girl do you think I am?” I picked up my menu, hoping I didn’t look too damn flustered. “If you think I’m putting out twice before dinner on a first date, you’re wrong. I’m fucking hungry.”
He gave me a slow smirk.
We perused the menu, put in our orders when the server came by, and when our drinks arrived, I raised my Crantini to his draft beer.
“You’re drinking with me,” I observed, delighted, as he tapped his glass to mine.
“I am,” he said, and sipped.
“So, you do actually drink.”
“I do.”
“This is so exciting,” I purred.
He just smiled.
“What?” I prompted.
“I like that about you,” he admitted. “Your unbridled excitement about things. You say exactly how you feel, and you don’t apologize for it. You don’t apologize for anything. You dance, you eat, you flirt, and you fuck like you don’t care who’s looking.”
“Ronan, if you’re gonna start this date by flirting with me like that, you better believe you’re getting laid again.”
“I fucking hope so.” He took a lazy sip of his beer. The chemistry crackled between us, but it was warm and comfortable, temporarily sated by the pre-dinner sex, so I felt like I could relax and just luxuriate in his attention.
There was no hurry. Time to enjoy dinner and drinks, then get to all the delicious sex later.
“What should we talk about?” I asked him. “You know I’ll talk about pretty much anything. You’re the quiet one. So you go first.”
“Okay,” he said. “When are you planning on telling your parents that we’re fucking?”
I sipped my drink, considering. “Uh… would ‘never’ be an inappropriate answer?”
“Yes.”
“When are you planning on telling Andre, and the rest of the world?” I asked him.
“Soon.”
“See?”
“See what? I’m keeping things tight, for now, for your protection. There’s no harm in telling your parents about us.”
“Okay. Well, how about I tell them… sometime at a future date to be determined?”
He shook his head. “This is the part I don’t get. You’re unapologetic in the way you live your life. Except you’re also a thirty-year-old daddy’s girl who won’t tell her parents who she’s seeing?”
I pretended to consider that assessment. “Yup. That’s about right.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why won’t you tell them about our relationship?”
“Because… I don’t want my dad to worry that your ability to protect me is somehow… compromised… by our personal relationship?”
He frowned at me. He heard the question in my voice. He knew I was pulling that answer out of my ass because I thought it might satisfy him.
“If that were the truth, I might understand,” he said. “But since it’s bullshit, maybe you want to take a stab at telling me the truth?”
“Fine. It’s not that I don’t want Dad to know about our relationship, exactly,” I began, as diplomatically as I could. “It’s just… a touchy subject. My parents have liked some of my boyfriends over the years. But sometime around the coke-snorting mortgage broker, they lost faith. I guess they assumed since I was twenty-seven it was about time I found Prince Charming and rode off into the sunset. They were disappointed that wasn’t happening, and when I made the mistake of confiding in them about all the dirty details of that ugly breakup… they kinda flipped out. I learned not to tell them so much.” I shrugged. “They have a different life. They come from a different time.”
“They’re not that old,” Ronan pointed out.
“I know. But they met so young. They were barely twenty. My dad was nineteen when I was born. He went through that first breakup and then met Joanne and it was love at first sight. They hooked up so fast and never looked back. They’re old school. Marry young, make babies, family is everything… etcetera.”
“Wait…” Ronan was
