Way better than the four-course meal I’d picked out.
All right.
What . . .
In the fuck . . .
Was going on?
I didn’t run. I couldn’t run. And not because I was in a fancy restaurant and wearing high heels (and I was thanking God I’d chosen the black body-con, midi dress with the bateau neck and art deco pattern that, yes, even I could say I rocked).
Because Moses Richardson was watching me walk his way, looking fine, looking alert (which was also fine) and looking like he might chase me if I ran.
“Your dinner partner for this evening,” the hostess murmured when we stopped at his table. “Enjoy,” she finished, then she wasted no further time and took off.
She didn’t even motion to one of the chairs or hand me the menu that was sitting on one of the two plates.
I stared at Moses.
He watched me.
I kept staring at Moses thinking Indy had phoned me her damned self to set this up.
But I’d talked with Daisy, Jules and Ava about that night and what we were all wearing.
I’d been played.
By the Rock Chicks and the Hot Bunch.
Those boys had such big mouths.
I should have known this was not a Rock Chick night. Barolo Grill was Indy and Lee’s place (though I didn’t know how, I’d made fifteen reservations for them here, and for one reason or another in the life of an RCHB, one of them was always cancelling).
“You’re not running away,” Moses observed.
“I’m too busy plotting multiple murders.”
He smiled.
Lordy.
He moved to pull a chair out.
“Are you going to sit?” he asked.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I answered.
He settled in while standing there. “I’ve got all night.”
And he looked like he did. He looked like he didn’t give a shit we were both standing, staring at each other at a table at the swanky-ass Barolo Grill.
“If I ran, would you chase me?” I asked curiously.
“Yes,” he answered.
Hmm.
“Please sit down, Shirleen,” he said in that honey voice.
It was the “please” that got me.
I shifted his way, turned, aimed my ass at the chair and sat.
He helped me bring my chair under the table.
Right.
Did I just do that?
Why did I just do that?
I should not have done that.
I set my clutch to the table only because it was in my hand and I was going to push up on it to get out of my chair.
“I should—” I began.
Honey poured into my ear because his lips were right there.
Which meant it felt like it poured down my neck.
And south.
“Just relax. It’s a man and a woman having dinner. Enjoying each other’s company. In this moment, what goes from here doesn’t matter. Just be in the now . . . with me.”
I drew in a deep breath.
A man and a woman having dinner.
A juvenile corrections officer and an ex-drug dealer having dinner.
I couldn’t do it.
My whole body tensed to bolt.
The honey came back.
“In the now, Shirleen.”
I turned my head and looked into his eyes.
“You’re not in the now,” he told me when his gaze caught mine. “You’re in the past. Or you’re in the future. The now is just this table. Food. Wine. Conversation. And then it’s done.”
“What are we gonna talk about?” I asked.
“Whatever you want.” He kept hold on my gaze. “And nothing that you don’t want.”
“You’re being very accommodating,” I noted.
“I want to have dinner with you.”
He wanted to have dinner with me.
This beautiful man wanted to have dinner with me.
Could I be in the now?
Not in the past?
(I didn’t care about the future.)
I stared into those eyes.
Then I looked away and left my clutch on the table as I grabbed my napkin to put it in my lap.
Moses walked around the table and sat across from me.
I tried to deep breathe without appearing to breathe deep.
The waiter arrived.
Thank the Lord.
“Would we like to start with a cocktail?” he asked.
“Bellini, please,” I ordered, leaving off the “and keep them coming.”
“Peroni,” Moses ordered.
The waiter nodded. “I’ll leave you with your menus and be right back.”
Moses didn’t watch him walk away.
He looked at me.
“So which one do I kill first?” I asked.
“Pardon?” he asked back.
I lifted a hand and whirled it in the air, indicating the table. “Who was the ringleader that arranged this? Indy? Daisy?”
“Lee.”
My hand dropped to my lap. “Say what?”
“Lee. He made the approach and he made the reservation. He also made it clear he would not get his wife or your friends involved if he didn’t have to. But apparently he had to.”
I could not believe this.
“Liam ‘Badass isn’t my middle name, it’s my way of life’ Nightingale is playing matchmaker?”
Moses grinned at me and my heart died a little.
“Yep,” he answered.
I was shocked.
Okay, freaked.
And that was the entirety of my dinner conversation.
Which made me even more freaked.
I stared at my clutch on the table.
It was a hot clutch.
I still didn’t think I could stare at it for an hour over dinner with a hot guy.
“You might want to read your menu,” Moses suggested. “It’ll give you something to do while you try to think of something to say.”
My gaze snapped to him. “So you got practice with this, do you?”
He shot me another smile. “Been divorced for eleven years, Shirleen, and in that time did not enter the priesthood.”
I wished he wouldn’t smile. It was annoying because it wasn’t annoying.
It was amazing.
I took up my menu even though I already knew what I was going to order.
“Get what you want,” he stated like it was a command. “And if you even consider suggesting we go dutch, rethink. There’ll be consequences you try to pull something like that.”
I looked to him again. “Do you threaten all your dates at the beginning of the date?”
“Only ones I think might be difficult, that being only you.”
I made a noise that sounded like a humph and then wished I hadn’t humphed.
I decided to check out my menu again.
I was pretending to consider my options when Moses asked, “What are the boys doing tonight?”
I didn’t repeat my mistake of looking at him again.
I answered my menu.
“Roam, probably his latest girlfriend. Sniff, probably a two-fer, one already down, one on the go, and if he’s got time, he’ll find a third one and get that action in before he has to be home for curfew.”
“Seriously?”
At his tone, I looked to him.
Yep.
His face matched his tone.
I decided I should try to make him think I was at least a decent foster carer.
“My friend Hank keeps them in condoms,” I shared.
His brows went high. “And you’re okay with this?”
“Hell no,” I replied. “I don’t even want to be talking about this. Though I am because I can’t quit thinking about it since I ride the razor’s edge of one of them getting a girl in trouble. Or getting a girl in so deep she becomes a stalker, something not only they’ll have to deal with, but I’ll have to deal with her cra
zy ass too. Or getting a girl whose parents aren’t all that big on young love, so their father comes to my house with a shotgun.”
“These are all valid concerns,” he decreed.
“No shit?” I said by way of agreement. “And they’re the only ones I’ll let myself think about. What really scares the snot outta me is that the first part of their lives hasn’t been sunshine and rainbows. I want the next part to be what they want it to be. I don’t want them forced into a situation they have to cope with. I want them free and clear to make the decisions about who they’re gonna be and the kind of lives they want to lead.”
That bakery-oven goodness wafted over me across the table.
Lord.
I’d always wanted to live somewhere where there was no snow.
That just proved I could bask in warmth the rest of my days.
Especially that kind.
“Do you know for a fact they’re having sex?” Moses asked.
I tried a trick that Ally often tried.
“La la la,” I chanted, looking back down to my menu. “I’m sorry I started it but now this conversation isn’t happening.”
“Shirleen,” he called, and I was forced out of politeness (okay, the proximity of his hotness) to look at him again. “You need to tell them to abstain.”
I stared at him.
Then I threw back my head and burst out laughing.
When I was done laughing, I saw he didn’t share in the joke.
Still, he said, “First, you’re gorgeous when you laugh.”
I was?
“Second,” he went on, “I neglected to tell you I really like that dress.”
Every inch of skin under said dress got hot.
“And last,” he continued, “I wasn’t being funny.”
“When did you lose your virginity?” I asked.
That shut him up.
“Mm-hmm,” I murmured, turning my attention back to the menu I had no intention of reading since I’d memorized it that afternoon when I should (probably) have been sending invoices.
“I wasn’t a father with two teenage daughters back then.”
Oh my God.
My eyes again went to his. “I should tell them that.”
“Sorry?”
“I should tell them to catapult themselves into the future thirty years and give themselves teenage daughters,” I explained and nearly clapped my hands, but considering the Ritz factor around me, decided against it. “Hot damn, that’s perfect. They might listen to that.”
They might not.
But they also might.
Well, Sniff probably wouldn’t.
But Roam might.
(Maybe.)
“Glad I could give you a new strategy,” Moses said.
“I’m glad you could too, though I don’t hold high hopes.”
He shot me another grin. “I wouldn’t be able to see past my hormones at eighteen either.”
I thought back to when I was eighteen.
I was dating Leon when I was eighteen.
I quit thinking about when I was eighteen.
“Why don’t you just tell them that part about wanting them to be in the position to make the decisions about what’s next in their lives?” he asked.
I gave up on the menu and set it aside before I answered, “Because I don’t like to remind them that they were forced into the position to do something about the early part of their lives, that bein’ becoming runaways.”
“Are their parents in the picture at all?”
“No. They. Are. Not.”
At my words, more I suspected at how I spoke them, fire lit in his eyes. The same fire that I felt burning inside me anytime I thought of Roam’s and Sniff’s parents.
It took time for the stories to come out. They both told Jules before they told me.
But then they told me.
And that was that.
I never made them speak of it again.
And that was when I retired my switchblade.
Too much of a temptation.
For certain.
But it was not good that with four words, Moses understood and shared that emotion with me for two boys he didn’t know. It was not good he was that kind of man. It was not good that kind of man was sitting across the table, having dinner with me.
It was not good because it was beautiful and I knew I wanted more, more of that, more of coming to know how much better he could get.
“That bad?” Moses asked quietly, taking me out of my thoughts.
“Worse,” I said sharply.
At this point, fortunately, the cocktails arrived. The waiter then ran down the specials, through which I chanted “la la la” again (but only in my head) because I didn’t want him to take me off target.
We ordered and I was pleased Moses ordered all different food from me.
What could I say? It was a thing. If he ordered the same as me, I’d have to change mine and I’d been looking forward to my choices since I made them at two o’clock that afternoon.
And no, this was not so I could taste all he got (even though it was, or it would be with anyone else), just that I couldn’t even begin to think of eating off Moses Richardson’s plate. The room would get too hot for me to breathe.
“So what are the boys really doing tonight?” Moses asked when the waiter moved away.
I was sipping my Bellini.
Yes, I needed those to keep coming, and not just so I could get through this date.
It was delicious.
I put it down and answered, “They’re manning the control room at the office tonight while doing their homework.”
“The control room?”
“Where the men do surveillance at Nightingale Investigations. They’re kind of interns.”
“That seems . . . unusual for high school boys,” he stated carefully.
“They need good male role models. And there they have a lot of them.”
“I see,” he murmured. “Is that going to be what’s next in their lives?”
I shrugged. “I hope so.”
Another grin from Moses. “You like herding badasses.”
And so he obviously had his answer about what I’d shared during the grocery store incident.
He was also right. I liked herding badasses.
What I liked more was the fact that, if Lee took them on permanent-like, I’d see my boys every day. Even when they moved out, I’d see them at work and thus could keep tabs on them (and ride their asses) for the foreseeable future.
“Yes,” I replied.
The look on Moses’s face said he’d read my thoughts but he was smart enough not to comment on them.
I grabbed my Bellini again and took a sip.
When I put it down, I realized I didn’t have anything else to say.
I mean, I did.
I could ask about his daughters. I could ask about his job. I could ask if he’d seen Tarzan or 300 or The Accountant and assess his taste. I could ask why his wife was stupid enough to lose him, or learn he wasn’t as perfect as he seemed, had done something stupid and he’d lost her.
But I didn’t want to know any of that. I didn’t want to know if he was even more fabulous. I didn’t want to know if he could be less fabulous, but it would confirm he was human.
I didn’t want anything that might make this hurt more when it was over.
“You do know, I know who you are.”
My attention went from my Bellini to his face, and I felt my lips had parted.
“I know you’re Shirleen Jackson,” he carried on. “I know who your husband was. I know what you and your nephew did before you stopped doing it.”
I continued to stare at him with my mouth open, but now my throat was burning and there was so much pressure in my head, I thought it would explode.
I should have run.
But since I didn’t, I should do it now.
I just couldn’t move.
He leaned into the table, staring right back at me.
>
“So let’s get this out there and get past it right now,” he kept going. “I don’t care, Shirleen. That was who you were. I’m sitting across the table with the woman you are now.”
“You . . . you know that I—?”
Moses cut me off. “I know about the drugs. I know about the poker games. I know about the bar you no longer own and what ran through there. And I know that’s all done.”
I pressed my lips together.
“We clear on that?” he asked.
I swept up my drink again, looking away.
I took a sip.
It didn’t help the burn in my throat.
I should have ordered three all up front.
“Shirleen—”
I turned back to him and put my drink down. “You know that doesn’t change the fact that this is it, and then we’re never seeing each other again.”
His brows drew together. “Why not?”
“Because that will always be there.”
“It isn’t here now.”
I blinked at him.
“If it’s not here now, why would it ever be here?” he asked.
Was he crazy?
“I . . .” I shook my head. “It never goes away,” I explained.
He nodded once and sat back. “So you got out of that shit so you could continue to let it control your life and inform who you are?”
That sounded stupid.
“Of course not.”
“So why are you letting it control your life and inform who you are?” he pushed.
“It isn’t that easy,” I told him.
“It wouldn’t be that easy if you got out of the game you were in to run guns or peddle flesh or hire yourself out as a hitman, or sorry, hitwoman. Or if you wallowed in the mistakes you made and spent your life drinking yourself to death while watching shows about serial killers on TV. You didn’t do any of that. You did it the hard way. You scraped all the shit off and got yourself a decent job with decent people and became a foster mother.”
I snatched up my drink at that last.
This was because I was a foster carer.
Unofficially.
Officially, I was an ex-drug dealer, current office manager who’d had two runaways placed with her by means that were a little bit shady (okay, totally shady as in, probably illegal and definitively not through any valid channels).
Luckily, Roam and Sniff both were eighteen now so they were of age and could be anywhere they wanted to be . . .