or make me feel like I had to wait in line, not for any reason at all. Seeing how her priorities were stacked up made me want her even more.
I found myself thinking about her all day, from the time I left the office until I realized I had spent most of the day on the couch in front of the TV, wondering if our sex was on her mind all day. When I checked my watch for the millionth time, I realized I’d been checking it pretty regularly all day.
I couldn’t get her off my mind, and I wasn’t sure why. Normally, sex signaled the end of the road for me. It was usually the only reason I kept someone around, and once it happened, it was time to move on. With Brooke, it had felt right, like it was supposed to happen. It didn’t feel new. It felt like we were just sliding back into old habits, back into a comfortable routine we had abandoned too early.
I supposed one of the reasons I was making so much out of our arrangement was because she was the one who got away. Brooke Scott was the one I had always wondered about. I had wondered what would have happened if we had stuck together, or if one of us had chosen a different school to stay closer so we could continue to grow.
I laughed at myself. I was being melodramatic and overly analytical about the whole thing. It was just a business arrangement. I needed a steady girl on my arm for a positive image, and she needed a husband so she could inherit her father’s company. The fact that we had a history should have been making this easier, but it only seemed to be complicating things.
I decided to take a different approach, though. I wasn’t going to continue trying to woo her into bed. We might have moved too quickly with sex, for her taste anyway. I needed to be subtler with her if I wanted to make our arrangement and budding relationship actually work. I figured instead of forcing her into an awkward confrontation when she got home from work, I would whisk her away to a nice dinner.
I called ahead and made reservations at a nice, cozy restaurant in the heart of the city. I got up from the couch and started getting ready. The doctors had recommended staying off my feet unless absolutely necessary for the next few weeks, and standing to get myself ready for the evening was definitely painful, but I figured Brooke counted as a necessity.
I heard the door around the time I expected her to come home.
“I’m home. What do you want to talk about?” she snapped.
“Nothing. We’re going to dinner,” I said, greeting her dressed for our surprise date.
“What?” Anger and confusion ran across her face.
“Dinner first. Let me do this,” I urged her as a way of countering any protests. I gently guided her back to the door with a hand on her arm.
“Wait a minute, what’s going on?” she asked, and pulled her arm away from my grip.
I took a deep breath. “Look, I feel bad for last night. The way you left this morning told me you weren’t ready for things to move forward so fast. I want to make it up to you with dinner. I want to show you I’m not just trying to take advantage of our arrangement to get you into bed. So, let me treat you to dinner.”
“That’s better,” she said in a gentler tone, but she still kept her distance from me.
We definitely had some work to do to repair the damage that had been done by our actions the night before. I felt like we needed to go ahead and fully define the nature of our relationship before everything blew up in our faces. If we kept going the way we were right then, that was the fate we were looking at.
My driver waited for us in front of the house with the back door open. Brooke slid into the car and across the backseat first. I slid in beside her. She sat across from me, an arm on the other door, her face turned towards the window. She rode like that into town and all the way to the restaurant. She only backed off the door as the driver pulled up to the
I found myself thinking about her all day, from the time I left the office until I realized I had spent most of the day on the couch in front of the TV, wondering if our sex was on her mind all day. When I checked my watch for the millionth time, I realized I’d been checking it pretty regularly all day.
I couldn’t get her off my mind, and I wasn’t sure why. Normally, sex signaled the end of the road for me. It was usually the only reason I kept someone around, and once it happened, it was time to move on. With Brooke, it had felt right, like it was supposed to happen. It didn’t feel new. It felt like we were just sliding back into old habits, back into a comfortable routine we had abandoned too early.
I supposed one of the reasons I was making so much out of our arrangement was because she was the one who got away. Brooke Scott was the one I had always wondered about. I had wondered what would have happened if we had stuck together, or if one of us had chosen a different school to stay closer so we could continue to grow.
I laughed at myself. I was being melodramatic and overly analytical about the whole thing. It was just a business arrangement. I needed a steady girl on my arm for a positive image, and she needed a husband so she could inherit her father’s company. The fact that we had a history should have been making this easier, but it only seemed to be complicating things.
I decided to take a different approach, though. I wasn’t going to continue trying to woo her into bed. We might have moved too quickly with sex, for her taste anyway. I needed to be subtler with her if I wanted to make our arrangement and budding relationship actually work. I figured instead of forcing her into an awkward confrontation when she got home from work, I would whisk her away to a nice dinner.
I called ahead and made reservations at a nice, cozy restaurant in the heart of the city. I got up from the couch and started getting ready. The doctors had recommended staying off my feet unless absolutely necessary for the next few weeks, and standing to get myself ready for the evening was definitely painful, but I figured Brooke counted as a necessity.
I heard the door around the time I expected her to come home.
“I’m home. What do you want to talk about?” she snapped.
“Nothing. We’re going to dinner,” I said, greeting her dressed for our surprise date.
“What?” Anger and confusion ran across her face.
“Dinner first. Let me do this,” I urged her as a way of countering any protests. I gently guided her back to the door with a hand on her arm.
“Wait a minute, what’s going on?” she asked, and pulled her arm away from my grip.
I took a deep breath. “Look, I feel bad for last night. The way you left this morning told me you weren’t ready for things to move forward so fast. I want to make it up to you with dinner. I want to show you I’m not just trying to take advantage of our arrangement to get you into bed. So, let me treat you to dinner.”
“That’s better,” she said in a gentler tone, but she still kept her distance from me.
We definitely had some work to do to repair the damage that had been done by our actions the night before. I felt like we needed to go ahead and fully define the nature of our relationship before everything blew up in our faces. If we kept going the way we were right then, that was the fate we were looking at.
My driver waited for us in front of the house with the back door open. Brooke slid into the car and across the backseat first. I slid in beside her. She sat across from me, an arm on the other door, her face turned towards the window. She rode like that into town and all the way to the restaurant. She only backed off the door as the driver pulled up to the
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