Page 23 of Easy On Me

“Hey, sugar.” Jase’s deep voice filled my ear, and I smiled. We didn’t talk much during the day – he worked hard and he knew I wasn’t supposed to be on my cell at work. I leaned on my elbows, examining my nails. I’d gone with a new enamel, a pale lavender-blue, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not.

I lowered my voice so the idle salespeople in their cubicles wouldn’t hear me. “What do you want?”

“Well, you, but we’re both at work.”

An irresistible smile curved my lips. He thought he was funny, but he wasn’t. He was so damn . . . oh, I didn’t know the word for what he was.

I liked him, though.

“Listen, I gotta meet my grandparents at Country Crossings for supper.”

I snorted. He ignored me.

“Come with me.” He cleared his throat. “I want you to meet them.”

My brows rose. I hadn’t even met his parents, who’d just left for Arkansas, and he hadn’t met Mama Nancy. But he wanted to introduce me to his grandparents?

“You want me to meet your grandparents.” I straightened, turning my back on the sales floor. “At supper. At Country Crossings.”

“Yeah.”

“Country Crossings.” The restaurant was appended to a gas station out in the middle of nowhere.

“Yeah. I get it, but the biscuits are lit.” A hint of a growly laugh lurked in his voice. “Be a good girl, and I’ll buy you a bag of strawberry licorice ropes in the store afterward.”

Good girl in that deep rasp of his had achy coils clenching in my lower belly. Oh, I needed him whispering that in my ear while he–

“Tyler?” Now that chuckle held a touch of amused exasperation. “Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, er, no.” I tapped my nails on the edge of the desk. “I got distracted.”

“I’ll pick you up at 5:30.”

“Okay.” Cringing over my breathlessness, I hung up and buried my face in my palms. He talked about us becoming something, and I was dangerously in with him.

The rest of the afternoon dragged, slower-than-slow. At home, I swapped my chinos and dealer-logo polo for jeans and a white blouse. Five-thirty didn’t give me much time, a good thing since I wanted to agonize over my clothes, which really meant I wanted to agonize over what his grandparents would think of me.

Dangerously in.

When I heard his truck in the drive, I hurried out, not waiting for him to come to the door. He lifted his hands, skirting the front of the truck so he could open my door. “You mean you’re not letting me come get you, don’t you?”

“Not now, Jase.” I caught a whiff of his fresh-showered smell, soap and antiperspirant and maybe a hint of aftershave. I tossed my bag in and settled in the seat, trying to catch my breath.

“Don’t get bent out of shape over this.” He leaned in for a quick kiss and stepped back, arm propped on the door. “It’s just dinner.”

Easy for him to say. Breathing through my nose, I rested a hand on my abdomen and focused on the rise and fall of each breath instead of the nerves flitting about in my stomach. As he climbed behind the wheel, he shot a speculative look over me, zeroing in on my hand.

Let him. Not like I hadn’t warned him I could be a mess.

I waited until we were out of the neighborhood and I had some of the anxiety squelched to speak. “Tell me about them?”

“My grandparents?” He flicked a glance at the rearview mirror. “Grandma is the best. Smart, kinda dramatic. Grandaddy is a codger.”

“A codger.” Where did he get these old-fashioned words? Half the time, you’d think he couldn’t conjugate a verb or use an adverb, then he dropped a string of SAT-level vocabulary into ordinary conversation.

“Yeah.” A wide grin lit his face, making him look younger. “He’s a grumpy old bastard.”

I laughed. Families – real families, with aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents – fascinated me.