“I promise.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Hey, did you just sit up a little taller?”
Asher grinned broadly. “Well, I am a man, after all.”
“Don’t let it go to your head. What about you, do you ever have fun on these missions, or is it all scary adrenaline?”
Asher rubbed the bridge of his nose. “There was this one mission where for a week I was on thong patrol. That was both embarrassing and fun.”
“You’re going to have to give me a little more than that.”
“There was an amateur singing contest in Europe that we had to babysit. They were worried about a terrorist attack. In order to fit in, we helped out the producer of the show, A.J. There was this one act that had a tendency not to wear their panties. Anything to win votes, I guess. I’ll tell you, A.J. was pissed. But she had her hands full trying to herd those cats, so we helped.”
“Poor you,” Eden mocked.
“Yeah, it was a hard job, but somebody had to do it.” Ash grinned.
“Okay, that was your best day, what about your worst?”
“I’ve got a better idea; tell me about your best and worst date. But you can’t use this as your worst date, this is a gimme.”
“Oh no, having dinner with you is one of the best dates I’ve ever had. You speak French, you’re smart, you have a good sense of humor. The food sucks, and I’m not real thrilled with the ambiance, but the company? The company is outstanding.”
“In that case, I really want to hear what your worst date was.”
Eden pulled her hand from his grip and settled back in the chair. She crossed her legs and wiggled her back against the plush velvet backing to get really comfortable
“It was five years ago, when I was twenty-three. I really was a dumb bunny, just out of college—sure I knew everything, but oh-so-dumb.”
“You went to college in Idaho, right? Were you still there, or had you moved back home?”
Of course, he knew about her. Probably had her resume memorized, along with everybody else’s in the finance contingent.
“I moved to Boise to intern at the State Capital. My double major was Political Science as well as Animal Sciences. The Animal Sciences degree was to help out at the family ranch, but I wasn’t eager to go home right after graduating, so I took the intern job.”
“I like it. So, you knew how to deal with political animals.”
“Sure, like I’ve never heard that joke before.”
Asher threw up his hands and grinned. Yep, she made out a dimple. “Sorry, didn’t mean to be redundant. But seriously, that’s quite a dichotomy, what made you get into it?”
“I saw how the mismanagement of our land resources hurt the regular ranchers and farmers. I figured that if I could understand how the government was thinking and maybe play a small role in state politics, I could change things.”
“Okay, how’d you come to be a translator?”
“Languages came easy to me. Mom was German, with a capital ‘G’. Her maiden name was Minnewit, and when Grandma and Grandpa Minnewit came to visit from Iowa, they only spoke German. Then we had ranch hands from all over the place. Our foreman was from China, so I learned Mandarin. This was all before I was six years old. I even had Ernie Lai teach me the Mandarin alphabet.”
“That’s impressive,” he tipped his head in her direction, but he kept his eyes on her face. “But back to the bad date.”
“His name was Edwin. Not Eddie, not Ed, nope, Edwin. The third. I tried calling him Trey, that didn’t go over either.”
“You did that to get on his nerves.”
“Well, when he comes out of the gate with all the rules about his name, hell yeah I had to poke the tiger,” she grinned.
“So, this was a blind date, you hadn’t met him before?”
“No,” she sighed. “I told you I was a dumb bunny. This was the son of the senator I was interning for. The senator had set it up.”
Ash put his hand over his face. “And you didn’t find a way to get out of it?”
“Nope,” she said succinctly. “I just blithely went ahead with it. I was rooming with another girl who’d gone to UI, so I wasn’t too freaked when the senator had given my address for his son to pick me up.”
Eden could tell from Asher’s expression he was not happy with that little tidbit. “Yes, it felt a little weird, but it was the senator, and he was nice, so I figured it was okay.”
“Not,” Asher rumbled.
“Yeah, not,” she agreed. “Now, I’m a farm girl, right? So, I don’t have a lot to wear, but luckily my roommate had fixed me up with a nice blue cocktail dress. Good thing too, because he takes me out to the country club for drinks and dinner. But before dinner, there’s cocktail hour with all the hoity-toity Boise. Not to say some of them aren’t really nice, because they were. But Edwin wasn’t. He referred to me as his father’s typist. When I tried to object, he looked me dead in the eye and said, don’t you get him coffee, Sweetie?”
“What could I say, I had. Everybody in the office had gotten his father coffee at some point in time. Whenever somebody tried to draw me into the conversation, he would
