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Chapter Twelve
Waking the following morning, my mind immediately brought me the image of Sawyer's smiling face. I smiled to myself and shook my head because of how I'd met him and what we'd done felt stranger than fiction.
Throwing the covers back, I stepped out of bed with a belly full of anticipation and prepared to be picked up for breakfast. Punctual and looking hotter than hell, Sawyer turned up at my door on his motorcycle again.
This time I was better prepared for the ride in a pair of skinny jeans, a fitted navy blue top, and a hoodie to keep myself warm. Riding the highway doing eighty miles per hour in the sun was still chilly.
Fifteen minutes later, we were tucking into a hearty breakfast of pancakes, bacon, eggs, and sausage. Sawyer smiled around his glass then took a large gulp of his freshly squeezed orange juice.
"What are you smiling about?"
"This. You. I have a lot to smile about."
"You're smooth, you know that?"
"Yeah, until I get you into bed. Then, not so much. I kind of lost it, didn’t I?"
"Sawyer!" I hissed, my rounded eyes huge as I scanned the diner to see who might have overheard. A devilish grin curved his lips and he shook his head.
"You're way too easy to get a rise out of, darlin'. Best you get used to me because if I want to pay you a compliment or talk honestly about us, I don't care who hears me."
"What if I do?"
"Then you need to learn it's what you and I think, and it's no one else's business."
Leaning across the table he took my fork out of my hand, slid his fingers through mine, and held it firmly. "Are we having our first fight?" he teased, dipping his chin and peering up at me through his thick dark lashes. The innocent expression he wore made me chuckle.
"No, I'm saving that for when there are plenty of empty dishes around."
"Damn, that's hot. I love fiery women throwing dishes. They make me hard."
"Stop it," I hissed again and stole another look around the diner.
"Not a chance in hell. I love the way your cleavage turns red when my comments are affecting you. It's so fucking hot." His hungry eyes focused on my bust, and I looked down to see how scarlet it had gone. "I'm still trying to get used to a woman who was married for that long and still reacts perfectly innocently when I tell her what I think."
As the day went on, I realized Sawyer had started the day the way he meant to continue it: treating me like I was special. He was polite too; he opened doors and wrapped a protective arm around my shoulders while we walked in the sun through the park to the sound of music from the blues festival that filtered through the air.
At first, when people looked at us, I wondered if they were judging us and asking themselves, "What is he doing with her?" The day wore on and I lost myself in the music and the conversations we shared about our lives. His constant interest in the parts of my life he didn't know about made me begin to think he was right; no one else mattered but us.
Holding my hand at every opportunity, Sawyer often leaned toward me and spoke intimately into my ear, murmuring his thoughts aloud as to how certain songs resonated with him, or singing a line he wanted to emphasize to me. I basked in his attention, and my heart swelled in my chest with how happy and fulfilled I felt when I was with him.
When he glanced at his phone and saw it was almost 2:00 p.m., we decided to find some food. We hit a nearby food cart and grabbed some hotdogs, a tray of nachos, and a couple of diet sodas. After this, we scouted around for a place to sit and settled in a secluded spot beneath a shady oak tree.
"All right. Parents, siblings? Give it to me," he demanded.
I sighed when I thought about my situation. "Absent father since I was around six and a half, I think." I paused and recollected my mom's distress when she discovered he'd gone. "He cleaned out their joint bank account and skipped town." I snickered and shook my head. "Left a note saying he realized he wasn't cut out for family life."
"What an asshole! Who leaves a woman to bring up a kid like that?"
"I know, right?" I agreed without thinking and remembered Logan had left Colby and me. It wasn't the same, but still. I shrugged and he shook his head, a look of frustration on his face.
"Fuck," he muttered, dropping his hotdog onto the paper tray to take my hand. Bringing it to his mouth, he licked his lips free of his food and pressed them onto my skin. "If it's any consolation to your mom, she did an amazing job of raising you."
"She did, and I told her this at every opportunity I could. She died a couple of years ago."
"So young?"
"She was seventy-eight. My parents were both in their mid-thirties when they married. My mom was really smart. She was a research scientist but ended up doing menial jobs to be around for me. Anyway, both my parents were only children and after she died, there was only me."
