I eyed her suspiciously as I drove us to the B and B. “Eva, babe, you got somethin’ to say, say it. You had my phone, and I’m a dude. A perpetually single dude with a high-rev libido, I might add. I ain’t ashamed of anything on there. It is what it is.”
She just laughed. “Baxter, relax. Trust me a little, okay?”
I let out a breath, because whatever she was up to, she didn’t seem pissed, so…fine, whatever. Let her have her fun.
We reached the Kingsley’s in a matter of minutes, and I helped her carry all the bags into her room. When all of her shopping was on her bed, she turned on me. “Okay, buster. Out. I need to try things on and change. I won’t taketoolong.”
I shrugged. “Like I said, I’m in no hurry. I can wait in the truck.”
“Okay. I’ll be out soon…ish.”
I paused halfway out the door. “You still need my phone?”
She nodded. “Yep.”
I shook my head and chuckled. “Okay then, little miss secretive.” I told her my passcode, because like I said, I got nothin’ to hide, and then I headed out to the truck and started it up, immediately switching the radio back to heavy metal.
Apparently to Eva, “soon…ish” and “won’t taketoolong” meant upward of thirty minutes. Which, without my phone as a distraction, seemed a lot longer than it might have otherwise.
When she did emerge, she was dressed to fuckin’ kill. A knee-length maroon skirt slit up the sides and a tight, V-neck, short sleeve, silver shirt in some shimmery material that hugged and emphasized her tits, which were lifted high by a bra with just enough cleavage showing to make my dick sit up and take notice, a pair of strappy silver gladiator sandals, and a small silver clutch purse.
She slid into the truck, smiling shyly at me.
“Damn, girl. We goin’ somewhere fancy I don’t know about?” I asked. “Because for real, you look…fuckin’ incredible.”
She ducked her head, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Thank you. This is just how I dress. I’m not really a jeans and T-shirt sort of girl.”
I shook my head. “Well you sure as hell won’t hear me complaining, because I meandamn…you lookfine.”
“It’s just a skirt and blouse. Nothing special.”
I touched her chin and then brushed my thumb over her cheek, something I couldn’t seem to resist doing, especially because when I did it, she tended to subtly nuzzle into the touch, which made something in my chest flutter and something in my stomach flip-flop. “Sweetheart, you’re missing my point. It ain’t the clothes, it’s the womaninthe clothes, and the way you look wearing them. You’ve got a way of making even just a skirt and blouse look like a million bucks.”
She grinned at me. “Only a million? Don’t short change me, now, Baxter.”
I laughed. “Fine. A billion. A trillion.” More seriously, then. “How about…you look absolutely priceless. Without peer.”
“Thank you, Baxter,” she said, primly. “Now…food?”
I laughed yet again, something I seemed to do a lot around her. “I love that you think with your stomach as much as I do.”
And so we found ourselves sitting on the same side of a booth at my favorite burger joint, waiting for our burgers. Mine, of course, was a triple-patty number, no bun, with cheese, bacon, avocado, and a fried egg on top, sweet potato fries on the side. When it came, Evangeline eyed me, and then the burger, with incredulity.
“Wow, that’s…alotof food,” she noted.
I nodded, digging in. “Yeah, well, you have noticed I ain’t exactly Tiny Tim, here. I work out a lot, and need a lot of food to sustain my caloric output.”
She tapped the fried egg and bacon topping the monster burger. “Isn’t that a lot of cholesterol?”
I laughed. “Nutrition is actually a vastly misunderstood thing. Forget about BMI, forget about cholesterol, forget everything everybody told you about fat being bad. Eat good, nutritious, whole foods. Burn all that fuckin’ processed, fake, chemical-laced, bleached white flour bullshit carb garbage, and get rid of any kind of sugar or sugar-substitute or sugar-derivative. That’s the shit that’ll kill ya.”
She was staring at me. “Wow. You sound…passionate about this.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’ve been an athlete my whole life. My body is my art, my profession, and my weapon. I want it to be in tip-top shape at all times, so I gotta put the right fuel into it. So yeah, I’m passionate about it. I don’t see how everyone isn’t, honestly. It’s your fuckin’body, the thing you fuckin’live in, the only one you’re gonna get,ever. How can younottake care of it? Yeah, donuts and bear claws and slushies and Twinkies, all that shit tastes good, but that shit is fuckin’ killin’ you, bro. Candy bars, soda, all that shit? It’s fuckin’ poison. Legit, poison. Might as well just mainline fuckin’ drain cleaner as ingest that nasty-ass chemical bullshit.”
“You use the F-word more than anyone I’ve ever met, you know that?” she asked, laughing. “But I take your point.” She nudged the glass of diet cola in front of her. “So I shouldn’t drink this?”
“Fuck is the most versatile word in the English language, and my favorite curse word.” I lifted a shoulder. “And I mean, I sure as shit wouldn’t drink that, even if it was the last beverage on earth. But you do you, babe. Ain’t my place to tell you or anyone else what do with their bodies or their lives.”
