Page 103 of The Difference Between

“No fighting,” he reminds me.

Between his suit and the incorrigible ladies, I relent. Also, he smells good.

His hold on me loosens—slightly—and in a low voice he says, “Good girl.”

I gasp and elbow his chest. I will not be good girl’d by this man—I won’t be good girl’d by any man.

“Just seeing how far you’d let me go,” he says with a chuckle. He reaches his arms around either side of me to grab a handful of the scattered tiles from the middle of the table.

Once I accept that my body is going to be tortured by this situation, I remember that I’m playing a game I’ve never played, and I hate losing. I turn my head slightly and his face is at my face, that sharp jaw of his nearly slicing my skin.

“I don’t know how to play mahjong.” Even my whisper sounds panicked. I glance around at the ladies, all sipping their wine and settling into chairs at other tables. Dawn, Carol, and Jan have all gone to top off their drinks. They’re probably experts. “You play and I’ll watch.” I move to stand. “Standing.”

He grabs my hips and pulls me back to his lap. “Not so fast.” He returns both hands to the table. “I’ll teach you.” He shows me the tiles he’s collected, the designs so crazy and intricate it’s hard to differentiate between them. “This is a bam,” he explains. “A crack. Flower.” He grabs a few more, showing me the designs. “These are all dragons, but the black empty one is soap.” Oh, God. “These are dots. Winds.” He sorts through the pile. “And a joker.”

Next comes a card filled with a million different patterns of numbers and letters that he briefly explains. Something about pungs and kongs. Calling and discarding.

I will never in a million years remember any of it.

Gavin chuckles. “Relax, this is fun.” He taps on the plastic stand in front of me. “This is your rack. This part is the pusher.” He opens and closes a long arm that sweeps tiles across the table. “You’ll get the tiles, and I’ll tell you what to do with them.”

“This is the date?”

He grins. “This is it.”

It is the least romantic environment I could have imagined, yet somehow, it suits him. It feels right. And truth be told, other than the games I’ve played with Addie over the last few weeks, I don’t know the last time I played one.

Gavin fiddles with the pusher. Still close. His warm breath still on my neck and making chills race down my spine.

In his ear, I say, “Stop touching my rack.”

A laugh sticks in the back of his throat as the three ladies rejoin our table. He whispers, “It’s a nice rack.”

He keeps one hand on the table at the tiles and drops the other to my leg, just above my knee. It’s either too high or not high enough.

So only he can hear, I say, “Too bad you’ll never know how nice.”

“Mm,” he hums, close enough his jaw brushes my neck. “We’ll see about that.”

This sabbatical has ruined me, because it’s a challenge I might love to lose.

Ready or not, the game begins, and I force myself to forget I’m lap sitting in public.

Walls of tiles are built then deconstructed by an exchange called the Charleston.

The ladies are shouting words and numbers between sips of wine and flips of tiles. All the while, Gavin tells me what to do, every whisper of bam, crack, dot pulling my body closer to his.

“My hand is crying,” Jan groans.

“I think Reese is cheating,” Carol jokes.

I laugh. “Blame the guy in the suit.”

Gavin takes this as an invitation to slide his hand farther up my leg. “It’s not cheating if you go after winds and dragons every time, Ms. Carol.”

She laughs at this.

And with me in a sexy lace top and Gavin all cleaned up in a suit, this is our date. In the back room of a barbecue restaurant with racks of tiles and ladies who love Gavin and pastel, we play mahjong.