“You’ll be wowed,” he said. “Get the egg drop soup. When you taste it, you’ll feel like you’ve been transported straight to Beijing.”
“Well, I’ve never been to Beijing, so I’ll have to take your word for it,” I said, and then asked myself if that had sounded snippy or flirty. And then asked myself why I even cared. And then told myself I didn’t want to know the answer to that. Brooks and I weren’t doing much talking yet, but I was having a heck of a conversation with me.
We placed our orders and gave the waitress our menus and then we had nothing but sweating glasses of soda to distract us from each other. I was fairly certain my hands were sweating as much as the glasses were, and I was totally speed-sipping the soda out of nervousness.
“So the Farley case…” I said, breaking the silence.
“Tell me about Hollis Bisbee,” he said at the same time.
I blinked in surprise. “What?”
He shrugged. “Tell me about yourself. I don’t really know you, other than that you’re a very determined reporter.”
I smirked. “You have no idea how determined I can be.” I blushed. Did that sound flirty? It definitely sounded flirty. Daisy would be loving this. I cleared my throat. “I mean, I’ve kind of been holding back because my boss doesn’t want me working on this story.”
“Probably wise of her,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“I haven’t been here very long, but I know that when it comes to crime, you have to be very careful about whose toes you step on. Wrong toes, miserable life.”
I wondered if he was speaking from experience. I wondered if that experience had anything to do with why he left KCPD. Maybe the rumors were true. Maybe he’d stepped on some very wrong toes.
“So…?” He leaned forward, grinning, and I could swear that right in that moment, he grew a dimple that hadn’t been there before. I was a sucker for a good dimple on a man, and this dinner was not going at all like I’d planned it to. It was impossible to be impersonal with a dimple sitting right across the table. “Who is Hollis Bisbee?”
The waitress brought a kettle of hot tea and two tiny round tea crocks. She poured each of us a cup and left. I picked up mine, grateful for the distraction. “Hollis Bisbee likes tea.” He cocked his head to the side and crossed his arms, saying nothing. “Okay, okay. Um, let’s see. I’m a reporter, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“I grew up in Chicago, went to the University of Chicago—which I loved—and until I moved here had never really been outside of Chicago. My two sisters, my mom, and one aunt still live there. My dad died my freshman year of college.” I blew on my tea and took a sip.
“Oh, that’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear that. He probably missed out on a lot.”
I shrugged. The warmth from the tea—or from him, from that darn dimple, whatever—had relaxed me a little. “Yeah, he never got to see my name in the paper. I mean, other than the school newspaper. Never got to see me graduate, or get my first apartment, or get marr—” Oh. My. Word. Was I really about to say the M word on my first date with this man? Did I really just think of this as a date? A first date? Like the there-will-be-more-dates kind of first date? Hollis, save what dignity you have left and stop talking, woman! I tried to quickly shift my words. “Get moved to Parkwood. He never got to see me move.” Get moved. Very eloquent. I sipped my tea, suddenly nervous all over again. I felt a desperate need to redirect the conversation. “Enough about me. What about you? Who is Officer Brooks Hopkins?”
He spread out his hands. “What you see is what you get.”
“Uh-uh. Nope. It doesn’t work that way. I told you about myself, now it’s your turn.”
“Says who?” His eyes were actually sparkling—and did I detect a second dimple? Seriously, did the man just will dimples into existence when he wanted to be adorable? If so, it was working.
“Says me. Start talking.”
“I see. Well, I’ll have you know that I’m a vault, Hollis.” He tapped his temple. “So much information up here that will never come out.”
I laughed and then leaned forward, just as he’d been doing a moment before, and lowered my voice so that I sounded very serious. “Officer Hopkins. You forget who you’re dealing with. I am a seasoned reporter. I can get you to talk.”
He chuckled. “Okay, what is it you want to know?”
“Where are you from?”
“A small town in Southern Missouri. Trust me, you haven’t heard of it.”
“Siblings?”
“I have a brother. He still lives there. He works for my parents’ business.” I raised my eyebrows and waved my hand in a go-on motion. He rolled his eyes playfully and sighed. “Family farm.”
“You grew up on a farm?” I asked, losing my hardboiled reporter decorum. There was something about this little factoid that delighted me. Something about the mental image of Brooks in jeans and a flannel shirt, sweating under a harvest sun, his muscles rippling while he baled hay or built a fence or did whatever they did on his farm. He nodded. “You were a farmer?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Have you ever milked a cow?”
“Yes.”
“Planted a vegetable?” He nodded. “Harvested anything?” He nodded again. I crossed my arms. “Farmer.”
“Okay, I guess technically I farmed, but I was a kid. Being a farmer is a lot more than just planting things and
