And I agreed. He looked damn fine in jeans.
Back on the packed train afterward, we stood front to back with the other Saturday shoppers, our bags and bodies jostled about with everyone else. I spied someone with a Brannigan’s bag, and I realized now was as good a time as any to give him my good news.
Turning to face him in the tiny space I’d created, I beamed up at him, tucking into the spot below his arm, where he was holding tight to the bar above. “I have news for you, mister.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?” he asked as he looked down at me.
“Ever hear of Brannigan’s?”
“Sure. Gourmet food store, expensive food for fussy people. They just opened a new store in San Francisco.”
Stifling an eye roll, I leaned up on tiptoe to press a kiss on his chin. “I wouldn’t call Bailey Falls Creamery fussy, would you?”
“I don’t get it,” he said, confusion on his face.
“I know the woman that heads up their marketing, and I touched base with her a few days ago. I might have mentioned a certain creamery in the Hudson Valley that was making some pretty great cheese.”
“Oh?”
“I also might have sent over a sampling of my favorites to their offices.”
“Oh.”
“And she might have sent me an email this morning telling me how batshit crazy everyone went over your cheese, especially the Brie.” I smoothed out his jacket, patting his chest as I went. “And you know how I feel about your Brie.”
He was silent.
“So anyway, she asked me who was in charge of your marketing, and I told her that there was a very good-looking farmer who handled most of that, and if she was interested I could put her in touch with you, and—”
“Wait, hold up. What did you do exactly?” he asked, his face not angry but not happy, either.
“I didn’t do anything, other than put someone with the fastest-growing gourmet foods franchise in the country in touch with one of the best local cheese makers I know.”
He was silent again, his eyes distant.
“The best, but not the most chatty,” I mumbled.
I didn’t get it—why wasn’t he excited? Before I could say anything else, tell him more about what an incredible opportunity this was, how people would slaughter a Camembert for the chance to get their product in front of a company like Brannigan’s, he caught my chin, tilting my face up to look at him.
“I appreciate what you tried to do here, and I know why you did it. But no thanks.”
I gaped up at him. No thanks? No thanks? Who said no thanks to something like this? I must not have explained it well enough; he must not know what—
“And I know what a big deal this is, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“How’d you know I was thinking that?” I asked, amazed.
He smiled, a little sadly. “I’ve gotten to know you pretty well, Pinup. I can see when you’re working something over in that pretty head of yours.”
“But if you know what a big deal this is, then why don’t you—”
“I just don’t,” he said, his jaw clenching. “I just don’t,” he repeated, as if there wasn’t any more to say about it.
I had more to say about it—lots more. But before I could launch into my pitch, the train slowed. “This is our stop, right?” he asked.
As we exited the train, he shuffled his bags all into one hand so he could hold mine. Our fingers fit together the same, he traced the same design on the inside of my palm with his thumb—but I couldn’t help but think something had changed.
And it continued to change as the night went on. Things seemed relatively okay when we were back at my place. He wolf-whistled at me when he saw my dress for the evening, a heather-gray wrap dress that clung in all his favorite places. And he ran his hands across those places. “Tits and ass, baby—that’s what makes me a caveman,” he quipped, his hands full. I chuckled and swatted at his hands, begging off to finish my hair.
“Your ass could make me go caveman,” I quipped back as he got dressed for the evening. Oscar in country clothes was always a sight, but Oscar in city clothes? Mercy. Hair slicked back a bit, loose of its usual tie, it just dusted the tops of his shoulders. His powerful build was even more dramatic in the tucked-in button-down and the “fancy schmancy” jacket, as he called it.
He was beautiful.
But somewhere between the laughing over the tits and ass, and the walk down to the town car when it pulled up, he was withdrawing. There was a tension between us that had never been there before.