He also slid his arm along the back of my seat as he asked, “More coffee or the check?”
“Naptime for biddies, son, so the check. And I’m old, I’m a grandmother, so that means I pay and I don’t care how much of a man you are. When you’re old and a grandfather you’ll know what I mean and you’ll be glad you let me do it.”
He pulled me into his side and grinned at Grams.
I felt how great we seemed to fit together and frowned at Grams because I loved that feeling and she’d made me terrified of it.
She ignored my frown, lifted her hand and called, “Darla! Child, bring us the check, would you?”
Darla, our waitress, like she did every Sunday when Grams called for the check, scurried to do the matriarch of Willow’s bidding.
An hour and fifteen minutes later…
“You wanna tell me what’s on your mind?”
We’d just dropped off Grams. After a glass of sweet tea (well, Raiden and Grams had one, I had diet root beer), Raiden was taking me home.
I turned to look at him and asked, “Sorry?”
“You’ve been weird since the Pancake House.”
“I’m tired,” I replied.
Not exactly a lie, just not the whole truth.
“I get you home, you rest. I gotta go out and do something and when I get back I’ll bring a pizza. But after pizza, babe, you gotta have energy.”
I felt my nether regions quiver as I looked to the windshield.
I forced down that feeling and asked, “Does this something you have to do have to do with your crew and drug dealers?”
“No, it has to do with another job, but that has to do with my crew. Just not drug dealers.”
This was an answer, but it still wasn’t.
I didn’t call him on that.
I just mumbled, “Oh.”
“Change of plans tonight,” he stated. “Pizza, me sharin’ about what I do, then I’ll test the recuperative powers of the nap you’re about to take.”
I turned to him, “Raiden—”
He cut me off, “I tell you, it’ll be honest. It’ll freak you out, but you’ll deal.”
Holy Moses.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means I got out, assessed my talents, made decisions about what I wanted to do, I’m doin’ it. What I do might come as a shock to you, but then you’ll get over it,” he declared.
There were more words there, just no explanation.
“Uh, just FYI, this discussion is not conducive to me getting a nap,” I shared.
He gave me a quick glance and grinned.
“Right then. I’ll tell you I did all the work last night. I’m in the mood to test you to see what you can do, and just a guess, honey, but I ‘spect you’ll wanna pass.”
He would guess correctly.
But that comment also wasn’t conducive to me getting a nap.
We were pulling up to the front of my house so I turned fully toward him.
“Raiden, I—”
His belt zipped back and he undid mine. His hand wrapped around the back of my neck and he pulled me to him. My hand came up automatically and crashed into his chest, then I did, scrunching my hand between us.
“What I do isn’t bad,” he said quietly. “It isn’t conventional but it isn’t bad.”
“Okay, so now I’m not totally freaking out, I’m only kinda freaking out,” I replied.
“Babe, a day ago, you found out two of your friends played you. You freaked out, felt the pain, sucked it up, hung up on that fucker when he tried to phone and moved on. You take care of your grandmother, not like it’s a burden like everybody else would treat it, but a boon. That translates to her so she doesn’t feel the burden of being a burden and she can just enjoy the life God’s seen fit to grant her. What I do is what I do. It’s part of who I am. It came from what life threw at me and you’re gonna suck it up and deal with that too.”
This was a cool speech, but it was also a scary one.
So I asked a pertinent question.
“What’s happening here?”
“I’m about to kiss you good-bye, you’re about to take a nap, and in a few hours I’ll be back with pizza.”
“I mean with you and me.”
His eyes held mine, his hand slid up into hair and his other hand lifted to wrap around the side of my neck as he replied gently, “You know the answer to that.”
I had a feeling I did, and it exhilarated and terrified me.
“Raiden, maybe we should—”
“If you’re gonna say slow things down, baby, enjoy this because this is as slow as it’s gonna get.”
I felt my eyes get wide.
“Yeah,” he confirmed to my unspoken cry of shock. “If you can take it tonight, I’ll explain that too.”
“Now there’s no way I’m getting a nap,” I mumbled.
“You wake up happy?” Raiden asked and I blinked at him.
Then I whispered, “Yeah.”
“I did too. When was the last time for you?”
“The last time, what?”
“The last time you woke up happy.”
Oh God.
Before him, I wasn’t unhappy. I also wasn’t exactly happy.
What I knew was this: waking up in Raiden’s bed, I definitely was happy.
“I don’t remember,” I admitted.
“Me either,” he replied.
Oh God.
I liked that and hated it. I understood it just as much as I didn’t. I wanted to know why he wasn’t happy just as much as I was scared to find out.
“Raiden—”
“We’re holding onto that,” he declared, and like it had a mind of its own my hand slid up his chest to curl around the side of his neck like it was answering his statement for me and doing it by agreeing.
He knew it, felt it and understood it.
Therefore, he stated in his rough, commanding voice, “Yeah.”
I dropped my head to his shoulder.
He was right.
Yeah.
I knew what was happening here.
His hand slid out of my hair so he could wrap his arm around me. “What do you like on your pizza?”
“Everything but onions, peppers, sausage, pineapple, ham, anchovies and olives.”
His voice was smiling when he remarked, “So you’re sayin’ you like pepperoni and mushroom only.”
I lifted my head and looked at him. “I like all that stuff, just not on pizza. All that stuff makes it complicated. I’m into simple pleasures.”
His amazing eyes warmed and his amazing lips murmured, “I’ll remember that.”
I could get lost in those eyes. I wanted to get lost in those eyes.
But I needed to stay on target.
“Can you tell me something?” I asked suddenly.
His eyes got warmer and his smile hit his lips when he replied, “I can tell you that you asking me if I can tell me something is the same as you askin’ me if you can ask me somethin’. In other words, you don’t have to ask.”
“Noted,” I muttered.
“So ask, I’ll tell,” he prompted.
“Whatever you’re going off to do, are you safe?”
His smile faded and I stared in horrified fascination as it did.
Holy Moses!
I’d been guessing!
“It isn’t safe?” This came out as a squeak.
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“Holy Moses!” I cried, no longer semi-freaked. I was gone.
“Hanna, we’ll talk about it later.”
“Will you be back later?” I asked, borderline hysterically.
His smile came back. “Yeah.”
“Just pointing out, Raiden, you’re about to drop me off, telling me to take a nap but you’ve got some things to share with me later that you told me straight up I have to deal with. Then you intimate strongly that whatever it is you do is unsafe, and you’re off to do whatever it is you do right now. So I’m not in the mood to smile nor am I in the mood to watch you do it, no matter how hot you are when you do.”