“Deal,” he finally agreed.
Pasquale’s was cheap. And frankly, he’d pay just about any price for time alone with Eden.
There was a long, long silence after Eden told Avalon over the phone about why she needed a babysitter for Saturday.
“Avalon? You still there?”
“I’m just sohappy,” Avalon said on a dumbstruck hush. Sounding genuinely overjoyed and more than a little wickedly gleeful.
“Knock it off. Knock off the gloppiness right now. It’s one date.”
“It was the abs that made you cave, right? Those squares?”
Eden gritted her teeth. “He’s nice.”
Avalon was laughing so hard now Eden had to pull the phone a little bit away from her ear. “How did he ask you out?”
“Very nicely,” Eden retorted tersely.
Avalon snorted. “Yeah, you guys have been on simmer for a while, I’m thinking.”
If only she knew.
“Mac and I will take Annelise all night if you want,” Avalon added. “We love having her here. If you want to... you know.”
Oh, the unimaginable luxury of having Gabe all to herself for one entire night. They could be noisy and dirty and use more than three square feet of any given surface to have sex, in every position she could get into.
No. She wanted to take this part of their relationship gradually. She needed to take this gradually. Because the next part would include Annelise.
“We’re just going on a picnic,” she said firmly. “I’ll pick Annelise up around dinnertime.”
“Are you going to that Black & Blue show at the Misty Cat Friday? Do you know who they are? I’ve never heard of them.”
“Isn’t that weird? Once upon a time we would have known every band that came through here. I have no idea who they are and Annelise has another report due and I’m going to get my beauty sleep.”
“Yeah, you’re going to want to rest up for you know.”
Eden sighed and clicked the call to an end to the sound of Avalon laughing.
Chapter 13
Saturday, day of the picnic...
Apart from some slight sleep deprivation—apparently Black & Blue had some pretty ardent fans, and they noisily filled the streets with drunken “Woooos!” as they spilled out of the Misty Cat last night, tempting Eden to slide open a window and dump buckets of water on their heads, but she didn’t. Her mom had picked up Annelise from school yesterday, and Annelise had met one of the guys from Black & Blue at their sound check at the Misty Cat. She said he was really, really nice and had taught her to play another mournful chord. So since the guy from Black & Blue was nice and generous to her daughter, Eden decided she’d be nice to his fans, even if his fans were obnoxious.
All in all, however, Eden feltamazing. As though she were wearing clouds for shoes.
Avalon had already picked up Annelise, who only knew she was going to be spending a delightful day with her aunt and uncle and the goats and the donkey. It was too soon to tell her about Gabe.
Today, for the first time, Eden was going to have hours and hours with Gabe, and hopefully a lot of those hours would be spent at least seminude out in the wild.
She was just getting ready to load the day’s deliveries into the van for Danny to handle, after which she’d hang the “Closed” sign on the door a little earlier than usual, when the door jingled.
And in walked a god.
Not the Michelangelo-Statue-of-David-aquiline-nose sort. Maybe less a god than a faun. The rakish kind that lived in the forest, slept on beds of moss under blankets of leaves, and captured and humped nymphs, not necessarily with their express permission.
He wasn’t classically handsome. His jaw was a little too square, his lips a little too pillowy, his nose too big, his eyes maybe a little too narrow. They were shiny and mischievous as a bird’s. It was all topped by a pile of dark curls, so loose and unruly one would need a compass and a machete to untangle them.