They met at Neptune, the restaurant where Jackson worked as head chef, on a Friday night. Gen wondered whether the fact that they were doing this on a Friday night would tip off Ryan that this was a date-date, and not a thank-you date. It might, but then again, they’d met at the restaurant rather than someone picking someone up, and that said friendly rather than romantic. Given all of the conflicting input, she was left uncertain about what, exactly, the impression was that she was giving him.
As they sat in the crowded dining room perusing their menus, it occurred to her that the soup course might be a little early for the thigh-groping move Kate had suggested, especially if Ryan didn’t know this was a date-date. And timing was only one concern. If she ran her hand up his thigh, an event she now couldn’t stop herself from imagining in vivid detail, it was entirely possible she’d burst into flames of desire. And that wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted to do in public.
Ryan looked handsome—but then, he always did. He was wearing a light blue button-down shirt open at the neck, with a dark blazer, his dark hair neatly combed. As she tried to focus on the wine list, she couldn’t decide what was more distracting—his eyes, or his voice. Listening to Ryan’s voice was like wrapping yourself in a soft, warm blanket while eating dark chocolate. At the moment, he was talking about the wine, but he could have been talking about anything. He could have been reciting a dishwasher repair manual, and it still would have made her hot as hell.
“… the cabernet?” he said. She hadn’t heard the rest because she’d been fixating on the timbre of that voice rather than the content of what he’d been saying.
“Uh … sure,” she said. It must have been the right answer, because he nodded as though his thoughts had been validated.
They ordered their wine, and when it came, she lifted her glass in a toast. “Seriously, Ryan, thank you for the skylight. That was above and beyond. I’m glad you didn’t break your neck trying to install it.”
“I almost did,” he said mildly.
“You did?”
“I did.” Amusement made the corners of his eyes crinkle, and she wondered if he looked like that in the morning when he first woke up, all sleepy and warm. “At one point, I lost my balance and started plunging headlong toward the edge of the roof. I wouldn’t say my life flashed before my eyes, but I was thankful my insurance is paid up.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh crap. What happened? Why did you slip?”
“I was distracted.” He took a sip of his dark red wine and peered at her over the rim of the glass.
“By what?”
That look of amusement deepened, and he hesitated. Then he said, “Well, let’s just say it’s not a good idea to talk to a pretty girl when you’re thirty feet off the ground.”
Gen’s first thought was that Lacy must have been visiting the ranch while Ryan was on the roof. How had that happened? Then it hit: He was talking about her. A shot of adrenaline made her pulse spike. She let out a gasp and pressed her fingertips to her mouth to suppress a giggle. “Oh, jeez. Are you saying that I almost killed you?”
“Almost.” He grinned at her. “Will wouldn’t stop ribbing me about it.”
She could feel the blush rise to her cheeks, and she busied herself straightening the napkin in her lap and lining up her flatware in neat parallel lines so she could avoid his gaze.
“Well. It’s good that you’re not dead,” she said.
“My mother thinks so,” Ryan agreed.
The waitress, a pretty blond woman Gen knew from the book club she attended at Kate’s shop, came and took their order. Gen ordered the bacon-wrapped filet mignon, and Ryan chose the gnocchi with wild mushrooms. When the food came, Gen offered him a taste of her steak.
“This is fabulous,” she said. “Here, try it.”
“Nah, thanks.” He waved her off. “I don’t eat meat.”
At first, that seemed like a normal enough thing for someone to say. Then she remembered what he did for a living, and her eyebrows shot skyward. “You don’t eat meat?”
“Nope.”
“You’re a vegetarian,” she stated again, just to be sure.
“Six years now.”
“But …”
He lowered his fork, and the look he gave her told her he’d had this conversation many times, with many people, and his explanation remained the same.
He pointed at Gen’s steak. “That fillet you’re eating?”
“Yeah?”
“I probably knew her.”
“Oh.” She looked at her plate, feeling uneasy. “I never thought of that.”
“My parents think I’m nuts,” he went on. “Especially my mom. She thinks every time I eat a bite of tofu I’m passing moral judgment on her.”
“But you’re not?” Gen ventured.
He waved a hand to dismiss the notion. “Ah, hell no. I mean, where would my family be if people stopped eating meat? But for me …” He shook his head. “I raised ‘em. I probably was there when they were born.”
When she hesitated to resume her meal, he laughed. “I don’t mind if you eat that,” he reassured her. “If I were bothered by other people eating meat, I’d have to get a new line of work.”
“I guess you would,” she said. She considered that for a moment. “But it bothers you enough that you don’t do it. So how is it that you can do what you do when you feel that way?”
He paused long enough that she believed he was trying to give her a real answer, one that wasn’t easy or glib. Finally, he said, “We—my family—have been ranchers for generations. It’s what we do. More than that, it’s who we are. It’s a connection to my grandfather, and his father, and his father before that. It’s what makes me a Delaney.”
She wondered what it would be like to feel that kind of connection to family, that kind of meaning, that sense of belonging.
“My mother and father are divorced,” she said. “My father is an accountant. My mother is a professional bride. She’s on her fifth husband. I haven’t even met the most recent one. They live in Palm Springs.” She wasn’t sure why she’d blurted all of that out. She felt the quick sting of tears in her eyes and blinked them away.
“You know …” He tilted his head to look at her. “There’s more than one way to form a family. You can have your own. You can join somebody else’s. Or you can make one out of spare parts. That’s what you’ve done with your friends. The four of you—you’re family.”
How could he understand that so fully when he was looking in from the outside? How could he know? But he did know. Somehow, he did.
“Yeah. They’re my family. Kate, and Rose, and Lacy … and even Jackson now, too. I’m lucky to have them.”
He reached out and put a hand over hers on the table, and a gentle flurry of wings fluttered in her belly. Right then, there was no longer any doubt about what kind of date this was.
They talked about Ryan’s family, and their childhoods—his on the Delaney Ranch, hers in a series of different schools as her mother moved from one husband to another—and his nephews, and the things he wanted to do to improve the operation of the ranch. By the time they finished dessert, it felt at once as though they’d been talking forever, and that no time had passed.