Dee reaches out and grabs my phone off the table before pressing the home button and holding the screen up to my face to unlock it. She enters her contact details into my phone—even going as far as to take a photo of herself blowing a kiss and adding it to her info—before reaching around and sliding said phone into my back pocket. The blood in my body diverts south, and central, other parts of me threaten to get their hopes up.
Then she puts a hand on my shoulder, lifting on her toes and brushing her lips against my cheek. “Call me, Rhodes, and we can arrange our winning ax-throwing strategy in person.” After shooting me a smile so dazzling it reaches inside and rocks my world, Dee turns and walks into the house, leaving me standing there, eyes on her ass in those tight jeans..
You’d like her, Lily, I think, closing my eyes and imagining her watching with a smirk from heaven.
And in my head, I hear her replying, . I already do, Ro. I already do.
Chapter 6
Dee
I’m sitting in my office at the restaurant, buried under a mountain of supplier invoices on Wednesday afternoon, when my cell rings. “Hello, this is Dee.”
“Hey, it’s Rhodes.” Just the sound of his deep, raspy voice in my ear provides an instant cure to my mid-week monotony.
“Well, you certainly took your time, mister,” I muse, earning an even more arousing chuckle.
“A man can’t seem too eager. Apparently there’s a specified timeframe in which a man must wait before calling a woman. Well, according to Firehouse 101’s self-appointed love guru. Supposedly, I’m his new pet project.”
I lean back in my chair and lift my ankles to rest on my desk. “Is that so?”
“So I’m told. In fact, didn’t your video today ask the same question of your subscribers?”
I giggle at that. At the end of my vlog about best first-date foods, I asked people to comment on the current dating rules surrounding time to wait before calling. Or if the girl is allowed to call if she doesn’t want to wait for the guy. I thought for sure I would get trolled for having non-food related content but was pleasantly surprised at the varied and mostly positive responses I received. “And is the person sharing this wisdom with you single or attached?”
“He’s very single . . . No, Scotty, you can’t talk to her. Yes, I’m dating her. No, you can’t talk me up. Goodbye,” he says, and I bite my lip, trying not to laugh. “Sorry. That man is like a dog with a bone.”
“So tell me, how did you decide on the right moment then?”
He huffs out a laugh. “To be honest, I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“Right. Well, you just scraped in there before the deadline.”
The phone falls silent. “Wait . . . there’s a deadline?” He sounds genuinely surprised.
I take pity on him. “Nah. Although, Harvey does keep asking if the firefighter has called me.”
“Funny that. Jake has been hounding me to call as well.”
“Smart boy, that son of yours.”
“Too much so sometimes.”
“I don’t know. He seems to have a good head on his shoulders.”
“Yeah, he does,” Rhodes’s voice softens with obvious pride. “I can’t take all the credit. His mom was the intelligent one. He got it from her.” Then there’s rustling down the line before there’s a faint “shit” in my ear. “Sorry, I guess it’s not good dating practice to mention my late wife when calling to ask another woman out.”
By god that thoughtfulness makes me swoon. “Hey. I won’t hold it against you as long as you don’t hold Flynn against me.”
“Flynn?”
“Ex-husband, baby daddy, best friend . . .”
“Oh right. I’m messing this up, aren’t I?”
“What could you mess up when you haven’t even asked the question yet?” I tease.
“I’m a bit out of practice with this stuff.”
“That makes two of us then.”
Rhodes’s relieved sigh makes me smile.
“Let’s make a deal. You don’t censor yourself around me, and I’ll do the same. Then, neither of us has to mull over what is right or wrong to say. We haven’t had a date yet, and I’m really looking forward to doing that, so how about we wait to agonize over mentioning important people in our past, or better still, don’t agonize over it at all.”
“You’re a smart woman.”
“I like to think so. Now, if you’ve called to compliment me, I’m not going to stop you, but I’m hoping you’re calling to organize the much-anticipated double date.”
He chuckles, and that’s just as endearing as his admission he’s rusty at dating. “Anticipated?”
“Of course. You see, there’s this hot firefighter I want to get to know better, and I’m up for a bit of ax-throwing in order to achieve that.”
“Is that right?” he replies, sounding amused. “What a coincidence. There’s this gorgeous chef I’ve met that I want to get to know too.”
“That is a coincidence. Maybe we should do something about that?” I cannot wipe the smile off my face. One might almost say I’m a little giddy at the prospect of spending more time with Rhodes. There’s those butterflies again.
“Marco and Renee were thinking Sunday afternoon since our next twenty-four starts Monday morning.”
“Twenty-four? As in, twenty-four-hour shift?”
“That’s the one.”
“Damn. You need an early night then.”
He laughs, and I vow to keep him laughing whenever we’re together.
“Hopefully not too early.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to say it, but I was thinking the same thing.”
“Aww, are you going to play hard to get for me?”
“A woman has to keep a couple of tricks up her sleeve.”
“I wouldn’t know. That’s not to say I don’t want to see what you’re hiding.”
A surprised laugh escapes me and a few moments later Rhodes joins me.
“Damn, sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“So you don’t want to see me naked? That’s disappointing, because I’ve definitely been thinking about you that way.”
“What?” he says
