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He tipped his head to the side. “What are you thinking about?”
“That you’re an enigma. A gentleman when clothed and a beast in bed.”
He blew out a mouthful of air, his face flushing. “Okay then.”
She grinned. “You did ask.”
“I love that movie,” Cassie said, smiling, as Presley pulled out of the drive-in theater. They’d had a prime spot on the parking lot, mostly because his uncle and aunt owned the theater and he’d called ahead to reserve it.
He’d made a picnic for them that they’d eaten on the flatbed of the truck while they waited for the movie to start. And of course half the town had walked over to say hi to them, in an attempt to get all the gossip on her being back in Hartson’s Creek.
She’d half-expected Presley to be annoyed about it, but he’d actually been smiling at people, laughing and joking.
She felt like she’d found yet another side to this man who seemed to have a thousand facets. The friendly, laid-back side. She hadn’t seen it before. But some of the people who’d known him for years hadn’t been fazed at all.
She wondered if he’d hidden that side after Jade died.
Whatever it was, she liked it almost as much as the gentleman and the animal.
Though she’d always have the softest spot for the animal.
The credits were rolling, and Pres leaned forward to switch off the digital radio station they’d tuned to for the movie audio. Her heart did a little clench because only Presley Hartson would have noticed that as part of an eighties revival festival, Flashdance was playing at the drive-in.
He’d never seen it before. And yeah, it was cheesy and so very old-fashioned with the steel mill and the welding, but he’d held her tight while they watched it.
And reminded her that he still wanted to rip a leotard off her.
Next date night, she was going to make that happen.
“Where are we going?” she asked, when he took a left instead of a right out of the theater.
“We’ve got one more hour before curfew,” he told her. “I promised Delilah I’d be home by midnight.”
One of his neighbors’ teenagers was babysitting. It was another first, him being able to trust somebody other than family with his daughter.
Not that he hadn’t been checking his phone every half an hour. But she liked that.
Liked that he’d always put his daughter first.
“We could go back to my place,” she suggested. Because she did have a leotard in mind.
“We could. Or we could go here.” He turned up a dirt path. The Beast’s suspension started to rise and fall with the dips in the dirt, making her lift up and down with it.
“What’s here?”
“Nothing,” he grunted. “That’s the point.”
They’d reached the end of the road. Ahead of them was a gate that led to a forest. She assumed it was an access road.
“Did you just bring me to the local make out spot?” she asked him.
He gave her a wicked grin. “Very possibly.”
“Even though we’re both grown adults and we have our own homes where we could get undressed without half the local wildlife watching?”
“We can’t go to my place, and it’d take too long to get to yours,” he told her.
“It takes ten minutes.”
