me. “Me laughin’, baby, how could you mistake that for me takin’ offense?”
Again, I was an idiot.
“I can sometimes be an idiot,” I offered as an understatement.
“Don’t know about an idiot. Do know you can more than sometimes be all kinds of cute.”
I bit my lip.
I liked that.
His eyes dropped to my mouth and he rumbled, “Like now.”
I liked that, too.
I let my lip go.
“Girls prefer to be sexy and hot and, maybe, mysterious,” I informed him, and his eyes came back to mine.
“You got the first two down, Hanna. And I don’t know about other men, but I’ve played games, and in the end found out what I won wasn’t worth the trouble of winning. Prefer to be with a woman who’s cute and shy and obviously into me. Means I can save time and get straight to shit that matters.”
What he said was nice, way nice, especially the first part, but still, I felt heat hit my face. My head jerked down and I adjusted my napkin in my lap, murmuring, “This is kind of embarrassing.”
“What?” he asked, and I forced myself to look at him.
“You knowing I’m into you. That’s embarrassing. I suppose it’s obvious, but it’s still embarrassing.”
He reached toward my hand, engulfed it in his big one and brought them up to rest our clasped hands on the table.
“Honey, get me,” he said gently, his eyes moving over my face, my hair, my chest then back to mine when he finished, “I wouldn’t have said it if I thought you’d be embarrassed about it, but bottom line, you got not one thing to be embarrassed about.”
I hoped he was right.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Afghans,” he stated and I blinked.
“Sorry?”
“Those things were gorgeous, I did not lie, but Hanna, how the fuck do you make a living outta knittin’ afghans?”
He was changing the subject.
That was nice.
Yes, he got better and better.
“I sell in two hundred and twenty-three shops all over the US and export to some boutiques in Canada.”
His brows went up before he asked, “No shit?”
I shook my head.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered.
I nodded my head and continued.
“It was less, but earlier this year I stepped things up. Now I have a girl. I think you might know her, Heather. She helps me out, packs them for shipping. I used to do it, but with the new shops I need more time to make them, so she does it for me. I have a kind of warehouse slash kitchen over the gift shop in town. My inventory is there, she does the packing there, and when fruit is in season I make my preserves there. She hasn’t been with me very long, but she says she’s going to help with the preserves when I do them. They’re kind of…” I struggled for a word that wouldn’t make me sound like I was bragging and settled on, “exclusive. I only do them when fruit is in season so they aren’t on the shelves all the time. It ratchets up the prices and they don’t stay in stock for long seeing as most people buy them in bulk so they have them all year.”
His face got a strange funny look when I mentioned Heather, but he quickly rearranged it. He sat back while I kept talking, but did it continuing to hold my hand.
“Impressive,” he remarked when I went quiet.
“It’s preserves and blankets,” I replied.
“You live in a cute house, drive a sweet ride, ride a cute bike and wear great clothes. You do all that outta preserves and blankets, over two hundred shops in two countries. Honey, that’s impressive.”
“Okay,” I decided to agree, and he grinned at me.
The waiter came with bread. Raiden unfortunately let my hand go and reached for the basket.
He offered it to me (totally getting better and better, I mean, hot, cool and a gentleman!).
I took a roll as he asked, “Why did you step things up?”
I shrugged, broke my roll to butter it, and explained evasively (because I certainly wasn’t going to tell him the real reason), “I don’t know. Just one day it hit me. My life was kind of narrow. I enjoyed it, but I wanted more.” I spread butter on my bread and looked at him. “To get more, go on vacation, learn to snowboard, you need money. I was doing okay, but I needed to do better. So I worked harder.” I tipped my head to the side. “Now I do better.”
“So your girl, she does all your shipping for