Chapter 23
While Our Little Italian Place wasn’t exactly Zagat-worthy, still, Mark found himself looking forward to their cozy corner booth.
“Ah, my favorite couple. Zee one who is so much in love.” Sal, their aging waiter, bowed, bringing a smile to Meri’s face. Mark would have to tip even more generously than usual.
While they waited for their food, Mark asked about her plans for her jewelry going forward.
“I’m going to follow through with what we talked about before. Keep polishing my collection so it’s better than ever, ready to show in the spring.”
Mark took a drink from his water glass and nodded his approval. “Even though it didn’t work out this year, you have to stay positive. You never know what will happen later.”
“I hope so.” The shadow of self-doubt in her eyes made his gut twist. He’d wanted so badly to be the one to give her her first big break.
But who could blame her for being insecure? She still thought he was just a Harrington’s buyer. Good thing he hadn’t ordered wine with lunch, because the temptation to tell her about his vision for the future of the stores—and her line—might’ve been too much. DeVon had given him a stern warning not to discuss his pie-in-the-sky plans with anyone until all the particulars were ironed out.
By the time Sal had cleared their plates and attempted to seduce Meri with a decadent-looking chocolate éclair, she seemed to be herself again except for the dark circles still under her eyes.
“I’ll try one of those,” Mark said with a nod at the dessert tray.
Meri watched with amusement as he devoured half the pastry in one bite.
“What’s the verdict?” she laughed.
He considered, chewing. “I give it a B for flakiness, the chocolate an A-minus, and the filling—well, here—you tell me.” He brought the éclair to her lips. She only hesitated a second before her pretty pink tongue darted out to scoop up a gob of creamy filling.
Mark couldn’t take his eyes off her mouth as she took her time licking the sweet excess from her lips. As he watched, all his blood drained from his head to the center of his body. It took all the strength he had not to clear the plates from the table with one sweep and lay her down, right there in the restaurant.
Instead, he reached across the tablecloth, grasping her unpolished fingertips.
She cringed apologetically. “Rough as ever, aren’t they?”
With her free hand, she patted her lips with her napkin, leaving him struck again by her unique blend of raw artistic talent, ladylike table manners, and sensuality.
“You’re perfect.” He brought said knuckles to his lips. “Besides, if I want soft, the rest of you more than makes up for it.”
Glowing again, she leaned in. “Let’s take another day off,” she said, lowering her voice. “Play hooky, but this time, just stay home together.” Her eyes were full of meaning. “Lucky for me, my schedule’s pretty flexible, given I work weekends.”
It was a wonder the napkin in his lap didn’t resemble a tepee. “I like the way you think.”
Sal was back to ask if they were ready for the check. There went his fat tip.
“Aaauugh! Damn it, Meri, I can’t.” Reluctantly, Mark released her hand. “I’ve got a ton of things to do this afternoon.”
Rejection fell across her features like a curtain. She averted her eyes and retrieved her bag from where it hung across her chair. “Sure. What was I thinking? It’s the middle of the week, and Lord knows, I have a lot to do, too. Hey, thanks for your input. I’ve got more than enough to keep me busy for—heck—a long time. A very long time. Ages, in fact.”
She pushed back her chair to get up, but he caught her wrist.
“There’s an away game this weekend. James and DeVon are talking about watching it at Kezar. It’s a sports pub in Cole Valley. You got along with Hannah and Jasmine, didn’t you? They made a point of asking about you.”
He watched the curtains part again.
“That sounds nice. Meet you at the co-op again? It’s best if I keep my doors open on the weekends as long as possible.”
“The game won’t start ’til six-thirty. Pick you up an hour before that?”
“Very thoughtful of your ’Niners to play around my work schedule. We close at five. That’ll leave me just enough time to tidy up and change.”
He pulled out her chair for her, relieved, if still randy.
“Are you driving right back to the city?”
“Ah, no.”
She turned wide, questioning eyes to him.
He felt his face contort into a conciliatory grimace as he guided her to the door, his fingertips discreetly brushing against the strap of her bra in the center of her back. He knew it had dawned on her when her shoulders stiffened to his touch and she stopped short in the middle of the restaurant and whirled around.
“Was Rainn the reason you came up here today?”
“No. I wanted to have lunch with you. But Rainn and I still have to get together in person to discuss business sometimes. You know that.”
Of course they do. Meri remembered how it had been just last week, when Gilty Artisanal Jewelry, not Día de los Muertos, was Harrington’s hot new acquisition. The excitement of narrowing down her collection, signing contracts. Soaking up Mark’s suggestions during their little tête-à-tête . . . which had turned into a candlelit pizza dinner, which had turned into way more than a business meeting.
She hated herself for her silence on the walk back to the co-op. Hated that he would take it for jealousy. That was definitely part of it. But there was something else: a sickening dread that someday, sooner or later, Rainn would tell Mark about the secret she wanted desperately to stay in the past.
When they got to her studio, Mark pulled the door closed behind them.
“Come ’ere,” he said softly, pulling her into his arms. And then his warm mouth was on hers, his tongue, tasting of chocolate, tangling with hers, and she was disintegrating, forgiving and forgetting about everything but Mark’s hard body, of which she could never quite seem to get enough.
“You know you’re all I think about, night and day, don’t you?” he breathed, an inch from her ear.
If she’d been melting before, now she was practically liquid.
“Honest?” Could she really trust Mark Newman? Since she was eight years old, she’d been unable to let her guard down with anyone but her sisters. Mark was her first real test.
She’d worn her high pink wedges again today. Maybe, if she stared into those clover-green eyes hard enough, she could convince herself his male ego was strong enough to resist any bad stuff that might threaten the magic they’d found together.
“I mean it,” he said into her eyes.
She kissed him this time, relief blending into the heady mix of emotions unleashed in her every time she was in his presence.
She was breathless and swollen-lipped when he finally broke away with a glance downward.
“Those shoes kill me,” he moaned. He slid his arm around her waist and marshalled her into him with a possessive tug. “I’ll never be able to look at them without thinking about—”
She grinned knowingly. Their first time, right here in this ramshackle studio that she laughably called an atelier. “So, you’re a shoe man,” she teased, wrapping one ankle around his.
“I am now.”
And then, he raised that cursed watch of his to eye level.
“I’m sorry. . . .”
She couldn’t help giving him a pleading look.
“I’m already ten minutes late.”
Reluctantly, she set him free.
“I’ll see you in four days. But I’ll call you soon.” And he was gone.
Meri thought it best not to watch him go down the hall. Instead, she went back to her bench hook. She wasn’t used to men turning down her advances. She couldn’t help but be confused.
If they couldn’t come together over her work, and she couldn’t tempt him with her body, what else was there?
Sunday afternoon at Kezar, Meri found herself hooked on the sports bar before she even walked through its front doors. Parked outside the wildly popular pub was a long-haired, white-bearded man astride a crimson and gold chopper, and on the back was a gaudy mannequin decked out in every piece of ’Niners gear ever conceived. Inside, at the bar, a row of beer taps stretched out forever. Flat-screen TVs hung side by side across an expanse of brick walls. Everywhere she looked it was sports, sports, and more sports.
“Whaddaya think?” yelled Mark, his hand on her back, guiding her through the narrow space.
“Very—sporty,” she yelled back, wondering how on earth they’d find the others in the body-to-body mash-up.
“They say during the big European matches, it starts filling up at five a.m.”
Through strings of brightly colored international flags fluttering from the ceiling, she caught a glimpse of James’s long arm waving from a far-flung table. “Back here!”
Jasmine and Hannah scooted over to wedge Meri between them.
“You look like one of the gang now,” said DeVon, admiring Meri’s new team jersey.
“You gotta try one of these babies,” James demanded, thrusting a gooey blob at her the moment she sat down. “Voted best in the city.”
She knew what it was, but she’d never partaken. Abalone soaked in champagne? Check. White truffles? Check. Chicken wings? Not so much. To demonstrate, Mark grabbed one from the top of the pile in the middle of the table and devoured it in five seconds flat. She looked back at the sticky morsel in James’s sauce-coated thumb and forefinger and gulped. How many calories were in these things? Tentatively, she took it from him to take that first nibble. “Mmmm!”
“Help yourself,” said Hannah. There was a smear of sauce at the corner of her mouth. “We ordered enough for everybody.”
Everyone acted as though the Jumbotron incident at the stadium had never happened, but they couldn’t fool Meri. That out-of-the-way table they’d secured early . . . the way Jasmine and Hannah had insisted on squeezing her between them . . . none of it was lost on her. The unspoken objective was to protect her, and her heart filled with gratitude and a comforting feeling of inclusion such as she’d never known outside the circle of her sisters. The warmth in Mark’s eyes from over the rim of his beer mug clinched it. Here, in this sports bar, with Mark’s craft-beer-drinking, wing-eating friends, was where this wine heiress belonged.