by Emme Rollins
“I don’t know if I believe in anything.” He eyed me over his beer. “Belief has too much doubt and thought for me. You either do or you don’t, right? I guess what I have is… faith.”
“Faith?” I dropped my battered cauliflower in next to his beef.
“Yeah.” He smiled, putting down his beer and skewering a mushroom. “I have a basic sort of faith in the universe, in… this.”
He waved his hand in the air and then reached for a butter knife so he could stuff his mushroom with the cream cheese and chives mixture Brian had left on the table.
“You have faith in fondue restaurants?” I smirked as Brian returned, leaving Rob another beer on the table.
“Smart ass.” He rolled his eyes as Brian left, pulling his beef skewer part way out to check on it. “I just mean, you know, all of this. The world. Everything beyond it. Whatever that might be. I don’t pretend to know what that is. I think religion gets it wrong because they’re too literal. And I think science gets it wrong for the same reason. I think there’s a natural order to things but most of the time I think what we’re trying to do with both religion or scientific explanation is to mitigate our own fear of the unknown.”
“That’s very profound.” I pulled my cauliflower out of the pot, putting it on my plate.
“I just accept what is. Right here. Right now. And I trust what I feel. So I don’t really believe in anything. But I have faith in all of it.”
I nodded, skewering and battering my own piece of steak before dropping it into the hot oil.
“How about you?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Me?” I dipped my cauliflower into a sweet dipping sauce, taking a bite. I loved fondue—little fried bits with all sorts of sauces—it was the perfect grazer’s meal. “I was raised Methodist. My dad’s mom went to church every week and took me. My mother was Christian Scientist.”
“Now that’s interesting.” Rob dipped his beef and took a bite. “But I meant, do you believe in love at first sight?”
“Oh.” I flushed, turning a piece of broccoli in the batter, not looking at him. “I don’t know. It’s never happened to me, but I can’t discount it. It’s like ghosts. Or aliens. Or God—I can’t prove they don’t exist, so how can I say no?”
“That’s very practical of you.” He smirked. Even his smirks were sexy.
“I told you I was raised by practical parents.”
“But practical girls don’t wear fishnets and miniskirts.” He wagged his eyebrows and grinned. .
“Well…” I flushed at the memory. I wasn’t a party girl, never had been. But I wasn’t going to tell him that I’d worn that particular outfit to attract the attention of a certain someone, who was now miraculously sitting across from me by some strange twist of fate. How had we gotten here? I still didn’t quite know.
“Or get up on stage at a moment’s notice to sing in a blues bar,” Rob went on.
“Um…” I had to blame the alcohol. That was my only good rationalization for that one.
“Or sleep with rock stars they just met.”
“Hey!” I protested but I didn’t regret that, not one bit.
“I’m just saying.” He shrugged, popping another stuffed mushroom into his mouth and chewing. He was cooking things far faster than me. “I think Sabrina Taylor has a wild side.”
“I think you bring it out in me.” I checked my second piece of steak—done, a nice crispy brown—and pulled that skewer out of the pot.
“Maybe I should stick around then, because I like that side of you.” Rob skewered a scallop—we’d ordered the big platter and it included all sorts of meats, including seafood.
“I do too.” I smiled, meeting his eyes. He really did bring it out in me, whatever “it” was. My wild side. My spontaneous, crazy, very unpractical side.
“How are we doing here?” Brian asked, appearing out of nowhere. I’d been too busy watching Rob skewer and cook fish.
“Great,” Rob replied. “Can we get another drink for the lady?”
“Sure, be right back.” Brian disappeared again. The place was so dark it was hard to see him coming or going.
“You’re just trying to get me drunk,” I said, making my own stuffed mushroom, battering it and dipping it into the hot oil.
“Nah.” He denied it but his grin said something else. “Just like your inhibitions lowered a little bit.”
“Why, what are you planning?” I raised my eyebrows.
“No plans.” He shrugged. “Whatever happens, happens.”
“Did you always want to be a rock star?” I asked, changing the subject.
“No. I wanted to be a pirate. Or a ninja. Or something involving big swords.” He watched as I checked my mushroom—not done yet—before putting it back into the pot. “I settled for a guitar. How about you?”
“I never wanted to be a pirate.”
He laughed. “A princess?”
“No, not that either.”
“Let me guess,” he mused, leaning forward. “You wanted to be a rock star.”
“No, not me.” I scoffed. “I don’t like being the center of attention.”
“You’re the center of mine.”
That made my heart skip and my face burn. Just being noticed by Rob Burns would have been enough for me—that brief encounter outside the venue, the rose he’d handed me at the show. I’d put it in water in the morning, but it had wilted completely. I would probably have to press it to preserve it. But I would keep it, a memento to remind me of that one moment when Rob Burns noticed me. I could have lived on that my whole life long. But this? I didn’t know what to do with this. The man disarmed me completely. He’d left me speechless, breathless and stunned more times than I could count in the brief time we’d had together.
“I just mean…” I tried to get back on topic, tried not to think of those dark eyes watching me. And he was. All the time. I really was the center of his attention. “I guess I thought about being in a group. You know, playing acoustic guitar, singing harmony.”
“You sing amazing harmony,” he agreed. He was eating his scallop and cooking another one.
“Thank you.” I blushed, grateful for the darkness.
“So I was right—you did dream about being a musician.”
“Of sorts, I guess.” I finished my first fuzzy navel—it was now very watered down with ice. Brian wasn’t anywhere in sight. “It just wasn’t meant to be.”
“Practical parents.”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
“I got a question for you.” He leaned forward, eyes on mine. “Would you rather be smart and ugly or dumb and beautiful?”
“Ummm…” I blinked, frowning. “I guess… I don’t know. That’s hard.”
“If you could have your choice, wouldn’t you pick smart and beautiful?” he asked.
“Well yes, but you said…”
He shook his head, smiling. “See how our choices are limited by the questions we’re asked?”
“So what are you saying?”
He shrugged. “No one ever asked you the right questions.”
“Like… what?”
“Like… what do you want?” he asked, lowering his voice. “What do you really want?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but I couldn’t. Nothing came to my mind. I was a complete blank.
“…I don’t know.”
“Close your eyes,” Rob urged.
“Here?” I glanced over at the couple across from us. “Now?”
“Where’s my wild Sabrina?” he teased.
I closed my eyes.
“Now I’m going to ask you…” His hand found mine, fingers stroking, urging mine to open. “And I don’t want you to open your eyes until I tell you to. Okay?”
“Okay.” I nodded.
“What do you want?”
This time I was ready for the question.
“Um… I guess… I want to be loved…”
“What else?”
I frowned, hesitati
ng. What did I want? I wanted… something. I wanted…
“I want sweetness.”
“Stuffed French toast?”
“Yes…” I smiled, my fingers opening completely to him. He stroked my palm, sending shivers up my arm. “No. Real sweetness. Like this, like us together. Laughing and kissing and loving.”
“Mmm. Sweetness. What else?” Rob’s voice stayed low, almost hypnotizing. I hesitated again, my eyelids fluttering. “No, don’t open your eyes.”
“I want to swim in the ocean and go scuba diving in Aruba,” I said.
“What else?”
“I want to… live near the water and swim every morning. I want a dog—a great big dog. And a baby. Some day.”
“What else?” He sounded surprised. I didn’t blame him. My own answers were surprising me.
“I want to wake up next to someone I love every single day.” I felt tears behind my eyes and bit my lip, trying to hold them back. I didn’t want to turn into some blubbering idiot in the middle of the restaurant. Sitting in the booth with my eyes closed was bad enough.
“What do you really want, Sabrina?” His hand was in mine now.
“I want… to give myself,” I whispered.
“More.”
I struggled, trying to express it.
“I want to give myself. I just want to give everything I have, everything I am.”
“Who do you want to give it to?” he urged, squeezing my hand gently.
“To my kids to school… to…”
“Say it,” he insisted.
“To you.” I flushed, swallowing hard. It was true, I wanted to give everything to him. He’d asked me to close my eyes in the middle of a crowded restaurant and I had. He could have asked me to strip naked in front of him and kneel and I would have done that for him too. I wasn’t in control anymore, not with him. And I think he knew it.
“Not just me,” Rob went on.
I shook my head.
“Say it,” he urged again.
“To… everyone,” I whispered, squirming at the revelation. “The whole world.”
“Open your eyes.” Rob was there when I did, a soft, bemused smile on his face. “There it is. That’s the truth I saw in your eyes from the moment I met you.”
“Um… your fuzzy navel…” Brian put it on the table, looking at me strangely. Had he been waiting to bring it over until I’d opened my eyes?
“You should have stopped me!” I hissed when Brian left.
“Why?” Rob had resumed cooking. He had my skewers too and they all had something on the end of them, sizzling away in the hot oil.
“I’m… embarrassed,” I admitted, taking a long drink of my new fuzzy navel.
“To be embarrassed you have to care what other people think about you,” he said. “Do you care what Brian thinks about you?”
“Yes…” Did I really care what the waiter thought? “No. I don’t know.”
“Stop paying so much attention to what other people think and want.” Rob checked the little bits on the ends of the skewers for doneness. “And start paying more attention to what Sabrina wants.”
“I want you.” The words were out before I could think. The truth sank into me, into the hot, pulsing race of my blood, into the ache of my bones. I wanted him so much it hurt, so deeply it was in my marrow.
“That’s a good start. Here.” He reached over with something fried and dipped, holding it in front of my mouth. “Bite.”
“What is it?” I couldn’t tell if it was meat or vegetable or what.
“Live dangerously.”
It was a stuffed mushroom dipped in the sweet and sour sauce. I licked the sauce of my lips, seeing his gaze lingering there, watching.
“Sweet?” he asked.
I nodded. “And we haven’t even had dessert.”
“I can hardly wait.”
The way he watched me lick my fingers, I had a feeling he wasn’t talking about the melted chocolate of the next course.
We finished our entree course, thanks to Rob’s assembly line cooking technique, fighting over the last of the mushrooms stuffed with cream cheese.
“Sword fight you for it!” Rob held up his skewer. “En garde!”
“You really think I’m going to sword fight with a guy who wanted to be a pirate?” I laughed, skewering the last mushroom and rolling it quickly in batter before dropping it into the hot oil.
“Hey!” he protested, mouth agape.
Of course, when it came out, I split it with him. How could I not? I couldn’t say no to the man. I bit it and handed him the other half, laughing and wiping at his face with a napkin as juice ran down his chin.
“Are you ready for dessert?” Brian asked, stopping to check our table on the way by. He was carrying a tray with all the fixings for a cheese appetizer for the new table in the corner.
“Hell yeah,” Rob agreed, looking at me. “Bring it on!”
Brian took the hot oil away and brought back a pot full of chocolate, setting it over the heat and stirring, waiting for it to melt. Me, I was already melting from the hot look in Rob’s eyes. Dinner was almost over and we were just a half hour or so from heading back to my place where we could completely forget about time and lose ourselves in each other.
“There are marshmallows, strawberries, bananas and pineapple.” Brian put down two small plates. “And over here we have angel food cake, pound cake, and little bits of brownies and Rice Krispie treats.”
“Does it get any better than this?” I laughed, eyes widening with delight. I was already full but I could always make room for chocolate.
“I can only think of one thing sweeter.” Rob smiled, picking up one of the new skewers Brian put down next to the plates.
We were almost all the way through clearing both plates—just a single marshmallow left—when my phone buzzed. I pulled it out of the side pocket of my purse, checking the caller I.D., noticing for the first time there were six other missed calls—all from Katie.
“It’s Katie.” I looked up at Rob. “She’s called six times. Should I answer?”
“Up to you.” He shrugged, leaning back in the booth.
It buzzed again and I struggled, debating. Finally, Practical Sabrina won out.
“Hello?”
“Sabrina!” Katie gasped. “Where the hell are you!”
“Right now?” I half-smiled, looking across the table. “Eating dinner with Rob Burns.”
“Oh thank God!” Katie covered the phone and spoke to someone else. “She’s with him!” Then her voice came back full volume again. “They’ve been looking for him everywhere!”
“Well he’s right here.”
“I’ve called you a hundred times. Didn’t you get any of my texts? We even came by your house this afternoon but no one answered and your car was gone.”
We must have still been at the DIA, I realized.
Thank God they hadn’t come by a little bit later!
“Who’s ‘we?’”
“Me and Tyler.”
I heard Tyler in the background, “Give me the phone. Tell her I need to talk to him.”
“Sabrina, Tyler wants—”
Then Tyler was in my ear. “Hand the phone to Rob. Right now.”
“Uh…” I blinked, looking across the table, seeing Rob’s expression darkening. “It’s Tyler. Do you…?”
Rob didn’t say anything. He just held his hand out and I gave him the phone.
I watched his face, wondering what Tyler could be saying for so long as I skewered the last marshmallow, swirling it around in the last of the melted chocolate. I couldn’t hear anything, although I tried.
Finally, Rob spoke. “Tomorrow, Ty.”
Tomorrow. That was the day the tour bus left. When Rob left. The thought turned the sweetness of the marshmallow in my mouth to cardboard mush.
“Yes, I’ll be there… I don’t know… You are?” Rob looked across the aisle, watching the new couple start in on their cheese appetizer. They were older, probabl
y in their forties, maybe celebrating an anniversary or a birthday. They looked happy. I remembered how we’d laughed through our cheese course and wished I could rewind.
Why had I picked up the stupid phone?
“I’m going to try.” Rob sighed, glancing at me. “I said I’d be there… okay, fine… I said, okay!”
He hung up the phone with a tight little smile. It wasn’t his usual smile at all. I didn’t like it.
“Everything okay?” I asked, knowing, of course, that nothing was.
“Mom says I gotta go home.” Rob leaned back, running a hand through his hair.
“Now?” I gulped.
“No, bus still leaves at noon tomorrow.” He slid my phone across the table, meeting my eyes. “We have tonight.”
“So we’re a bad Bob Segar song?” I put my phone back, trying to make light of it.
“We are whatever you want us to be tonight, sweetheart.” His smile was about twenty-five percent back. “What do you want us to be?”
“Just us.”
“I like us.” His smile stretched wider, almost seventy-five percent back.
“Me too.”
“Let’s go,” he said, his smile all the way back. He was Rob again. My Rob. He was mine. For the moment, he was all mine. “Let’s go home, Sabrina.”
Home.
That word had never sounded sweeter.
Chapter Ten
“Well, here we are.” I tossed my purse on a chair along with my jacket, slipping out of my heels and looking over my shoulder at Rob coming in behind me. “Home sweet home.”
He toed off his sneakers and tossed his jacket with mine, sliding his arms around me from behind. It had become such a familiar gesture in so short a time, but it took my breath away anyway. I tilted my head back against him, letting him hold me, feeling his lips pressed briefly to my temple.
“What now?” I wondered out loud, unable to stop thinking about the phone call from Katie-slash-Tyler. I had silenced my phone completely after that, although I’d glanced at the screen when I went to the ladies room before we left the restaurant and saw she’d called back. Three times. Damn Katie. Damn Tyler too. And damn me. Why had I answered the stupid phone?
“So no work for you tomorrow?” Rob asked.