Tastes Like Candy

Fourteen

Fourteen

Candy

He hadn't been on a date since he was in his twenties. The club had guaranteed female companionship of all varieties, and he hadn't put much stock in conversation and getting to know one another. For years, he'd worried only about his MC; women had been afterthoughts, a means to an end. He'd never entertained the idea of sitting down with a girl, and really talking with her.

But for some reason, seeing Michelle in his big leather chair, so much more real and responsible than the groupies he'd been around, he'd wanted to work for it a little. The mental comparison he'd made – Michelle with his mother – had startled him, but he hadn't rejected it. It had seemed more than appealing, all of a sudden, to sit down, eat, take his time, talk, and forget all the shit that was bothering him.

She held tight to him during the ride. Looped her arm through his when he offered it out of long-buried chivalry.

He was finding more and more that he liked their height disparity. The way that, though she was self-possessed and sure of herself, she still had that sweetness of youth. He was excited to spend time with her, he realized, and he couldn't remember the last time that had happened. Feeling lighthearted and boyish, he decided to take her somewhere nice.

"This isn't the place with the seventy-two ounce steak, is it?" she asked in the parking lot.

"You did your Amarillo research. But no, this isn't it."

Instead, it was a quiet, dimly-lit place. Not fancy, but not tourist-cheesy either. The hostess had one of those blank expressions he valued in restaurant staff; she didn't look too closely at his cut, or at Michelle's youth, just flashed a professional smile and showed them to a secluded booth with high, wooden backs, and a single overhead lamp.

"This is nice," Michelle said when they were settled across from one another. She glanced around their shadowy corner, the black and white old west prints on the wall above their table, smile plucking at the corners of her mouth. "Feels a little like home."

"I haven't been inside Baskerville Hall since it was fixed up." His last trip to London, it had still been a sad, closed-up pub with a bunch of dusty, empty rooms above it; it had smelled suspiciously of rats and mold.

"It's splendid," she said, a sudden wide smile lighting up her face. She was beautiful when she did that, all pink cheeks and half-moon eyes. "It looks a hundred years old, and smells like hops, and there's heaps of old photos all over the walls."

"Am I in any of them?" he asked, mostly teasing.

But she was still smiling, looking at him across the table, leaning to rest her chin on her hand like she found him terribly interesting. "Yes, actually. We've got some old shots from Sturgis."

"No shit?"

"No shit."

The waitress appeared at the end of their table, dressed in sensible black, not hot pants, no cleavage. She jotted down their drinks and then melted back into the gloom of the restaurant, leaving them alone together again.

"I thought this might be more to your liking than the Armadillo," he said.

"It is. You're not missing your Barbies, though?" Her brows lifted.

Little shit, he thought, affectionately. She wasn't going to leave that alone, was she? "I can promise you, I don't ever spare them a thought. That's just a way to pass the time."

"And what am I, then?"

Their drinks arrived, discreetly placed on cocktail napkins.

"Give us a minute," Candy told the waitress before she could ask about their dinner, and she nodded, withdrew.