Love's Not a Competition

Chapter 14

"More wine?" Rick lifts the bottle and tilts it in the direction of my half empty glass. We're drinking red tonight, as we've both chosen steak for our main course, but Rick has already said he's not going to go mad tonight because he's working tomorrow. It'll be a long day, he needs to look good and feel good so we've already agreed it'll be the one bottle between us and maybe a nightcap and that's it.

And getting drunk and sleepy is a waste of an evening together, and I definitely get sleepy when I get drunk. I also get overly talkative and have a tendency to be tearful; I'm a little worried that I might blab to Rick about my illness and I'm not ready to do that yet, certainly not while drunk. A bottle of wine between us is plenty.

"Mmm, please."

The wine is excellent, as is the food and the whole evening. I need not have worried about us being spotted or someone coming up for a photo with Rick or something. We have a lovely secluded table which can sometimes mean the waiting staff ignore you, but we're being treated very well. Our waitress has just taken our empty main course plates and brought dessert menu's to the table, I'm not sure I've got room for one though even though they sound incredible.

I suppose it helps that Rick has stayed here several times before and he's on chatting terms with a couple of the waitresses. It probably doesn't hurt either that he's looking gorgeous this evening in a navy pinstripe waistcoat and matching trousers and a blue shirt that brings out the colour of his eyes. His hair is currently pretty short and slightly quiffed at the front and he has just a hint of beard, barely more than a few days stubble.

I'm glad I bought something nice to change into for this evening; I wondered if I'd chosen correctly in bringing my black floral print dress but it appears to be perfect. Rick has already told me twice how lovely I look. That might be something to do with the fact that my dress is very low cut; when I started getting changed I realised that in my haste to leave this afternoon I'd forgotten to pack the camisole top I normally wear underneath it. It's not indecently low, just lower than I'm normally comfortable with but it seems to be making Rick happy.

He stretches to top up my wineglass, adding more to mine than he does to his own and then sets the empty bottle back down on the table.

"I can't believe you've still got Betty," he says with a slight shake of the head.

"I can't believe you remember her." I love it that he doesn't think I'm weird for naming my car, in fact he's as bad; he's just told me he's got a vintage Mini called Gigi. Calum thinks I'm crazy because my car has a name and I refer to her as "her" and he refuses to call her by it. Calum also thinks I'm mad for keeping her when she's not that reliable and is always telling me I need to get something newer and more dependable. Well, he'll have his wish soon, won't he, although not for the reasons I'd choose.

"How could I forget her? We had some fun times with Betty. We had some fun times IN Betty." He raises one eyebrow and gives me a cheeky grin, obviously remembering those fun times.

We certainly did; we had sex on Betty's black vinyl back seat on quite a number of occasions. It wasn't the most comfortable of places but if there was nowhere else then Betty's back seat accommodated our needs pretty well. Maybe that's why I still love her so much. And aside from that she took us all over the place, sometimes with another couple occupying the back seat and joining us on our adventures, but often on our own.

"D'you remember that weekend we went to Scarborough?" Rick continues, "She broke down on the way there and by the time we got her started again we were too late to check into the B&B and we had to sleep in her? I could hardly move the next day, neither of us could."