Dosia stiffened. “Not everything’s about money,Bart. There’s such a thing as a love of reading.”
“Bartley,” he emphasized.
Dosia chugged back the remainder of her wine. They hadn’t even ordered yet because Bartleyhad insisted the server give them time to look at the menu. Dosia had read it. In its entirety.Twice. Frankly, Dosia was a bit surprised Bartleywould be caught dead in a place like this. It didn’t seem fancy enough for his country-club standards.
“Look, Bartley, let’s just have a nice meal and call it a night. I thinkwe both made a mistake agreeing to this date. I honestly don’t know what Calliope was thinking.”
His manicured eyebrows drew downward. “I don’t understand.”
Really? Did he think this was goingwell? “I just…” Dosia stumbled over the nicest way to say this. “I don’t think we’re compatible. Look, we can just eat and I’ll pay for my meal, you pay for yours, and we call it a night. Okay?”
He leaned across the table. “Are you fucking serious?Youare dumpingme? I easily make five times as much as you. You’ll never do better than me. I was doing you afavorby taking you out tonight.”
By the end of his spiel, his voice had started to rise. Dosia’s eyes flitted about as she realized patrons around them were starting to turn and stare.
She straightened. She was not about to sit here and be ridiculed like being on a date with her was some sort of charity case. She pulled out her phone to call for an Uber. At least she had enough cash on her to cover the glass of wine she’d already had. Thankfully the waiter hadn’t been back, so she hadn’t ordered anything else yet. Like the rest of the bottle.
Dosia went to walk around the table, but Bartleygrabbed her upper arm. “Where do you think you’re going?” he sneered, his grip tightening. “You wanted steak, I brought you to a fucking steakhouse. It’s not my fault it was over an hour away with traffic!”
Dosia had no idea what he was talking about. “Why would you think I wanted steak— Ow, you’re hurting me! Let go!”
“I will not be humiliated like this!”
Dosia opened her mouth to tell him that he was humiliating himself, not her, when suddenly his grip on her arm was gone. Dosia jumped as Bartley’s upper body was slammed down onto the table, spilling his water glass and tonic water, knocking his utensils to the floor, and making her empty wine glass fall into the salt and pepper shakers. Thankfully it didn’t break.
“Not so tough, now, are you?” the man holding Bartleydown asked. He had his arm bent up behind his back, and though Bartleyfought, the man didn’t even appear to be straining to incapacitate him.
But Dosia wasn’t looking at Bartleyall that closely anymore. Her eyes widened and her breath hitched as she stood within merefeetof her daughter’s father for the first time in six years.
“Oh shit,” escaped her mouth.
At her voice, the man looked up and his brown eyes widened. She knew the moment he recognized her as his eyes traveled slowly up and down her body.
And then he gasped out, “You!I fucking knew it! You are real!”
CHAPTER 5
The man under Pumpkin tried to jerk himself up, but the hold Pumpkin had him in required little effort from him because it was all shoulder pressure. The more the man struggled, the more he’d hurt himself. Which was good, because Pumpkin’s legs were not happy with his decision to bolt across the restaurant and rescue a woman, whom he thought was a stranger.
Except she wasn’t.
Before this moment, any time Pumpkin tried to remember his drunken one-night stand from his patch-in party, he got a blurry haze. He knew she had blonde hair, was gorgeous, and was shorter than his six-two. He couldn’t rememberwhyhe thought she was gorgeous, only that he recalled thinking it that night.
It was like putting a pair of glasses on. As he stared at her, as she stared back at him, he took in all her features in perfect clarity.Thiswas his mystery woman. The woman who’d essentially done a fuck and dump, leaving him curled up naked outside with a goddamn pumpkin.
He’d been right that she had blonde hair. He didn’t recall her having purple ends that night, but he liked it. Made her look spunky. And so fucking hot. She had big caramel eyes, long eyelashes, androunded cheeks. He estimated her height to be around five-seven, though he couldn’t see her shoes so it might be shorter.
Dressed in a slim, black number with a flared skirt… Fucking hell, the things he wanted to do to those long legs. He had the oddest recollection of a sweet, floral scent. It was intoxicating. He had no idea if the sudden vision of him on his knees while she sat on the top of a picnic table as he ate her out was a real memory or a prophetic vision, but either way, his dick got hard.
“I, uh,” she stuttered, her eyes looking anywhere but at him. “I should go.”
Go?What the fuck? He’d finally found her again, and she was going. She recognized him. He knew she did. That flush? Yeah, she knew who he was and what she’d done to him.
“No,” he said, short and clipped.
She paused. Jesus Christ, he could remember eating her out but not her fucking name? Why weren’t name tags a common thing? It’d be so fucking helpful in situations like this. “No?” she questioned him, blonde eyebrows raised in disbelief.
“He,” Pumpkin said, lifting her date off the table, “is leaving.Youare staying.”
