So, she seriously needed to get her brain on a track that made any lick of sense.
It was only as the woman grabbed two menus and slipped something into her pocket that Mel realized Dan hadn’t just charmed his way into the too-nice restaurant.
He’d paid her.
“You gave her money!” she hissed, hopefully quietly enough that the hostess a few strides in front of them didn’t hear.
“I did indeed. Is that against some cowgirl code of yours?”
“Here we are. Your server will be with you shortly.” The hostess seemed to be waiting for something, hovering over the table, but Mel didn’t have a clue as to what. Finally, she plopped the menus on the table and left.
“You’re supposed to sit down so they can place the menu in front of you,” Dan explained to her as she might have explained fence-building to him. He slid into his seat, picked up the discarded menus, and began to read.
“You bribed her to give us a table.” She didn’t know why she was stuck on that, maybe because this place gave her the creeps. All white linens and dark woods and people in suits.
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, this has been established.”
“Why?” Mel demanded. She didn’t want to eat here. People were staring. Everything was weird, and she already felt weird enough with all the almost-breaking-down she kept doing around Dan.
“I’m hungry.”
“We passed a diner, a café, a—”
He looked up from the menu, fixing her with a glare—which was surprisingly effective, since he rarely glared. “Shut up and sit down, Cowgirl. And hurry up and decide what you want to order. I’m starved.”
She wanted to argue, but she had nothing in her left to argue. No strength, no fortitude. Maybe she was breaking. So she sat and poked through the menu. “I… Everything on here is over twenty bucks.”
Dan laughed, the jackass. “It’s on me.”
“That doesn’t excuse overpriced food. I could buy, like, three steaks at Felicity’s store for the price of that prime rib.”
“Go for the filet. I insist.”
“Sharpe—”
But the waiter approached, went into some spiel about specials and wine lists, and Jesus H., this was an alternate reality.
Dan asked a few questions, and it took the waiter disappearing into the kitchen for her to realize— “Hey! You ordered for me.”
“You were sitting there staring at me like I’d grown another head. Besides, payer’s prerogative.”
“You can’t keep…buying my meals.”
“Why not? You wouldn’t eat here if I hadn’t pushed you inside. I should pay. Besides, you had no problem with me paying at Georgia’s.”
“It cost twenty total. Not per person.”
“It’s all the same to me.” He watched her carefully when he said it, as if he expected her to have another almost-meltdown.
So she swallowed all the words down. Because she was tired of him seeing through her—or more accurately, tired of being so transparent.
Helping him pick out a truck had seemed fine, good even, no different than telling him what to do at his ranch. But the way he’d put it: “if you were me.” That had shaken her, because for a second there, she’d allowed herself to think about what it might feel like. If she had all the money in the world, what would she do?
She wasn’t one for being materialistic, but this wasn’t about buying a fancy car or a new house. She just wanted to feel…safe. Like she had enough to take care of everyone she needed to take care of.
And disappear. You want to disappear.
She blinked at the stinging in her eyes, and Dan pried her hands off the menu she hadn’t realized she was still clutching. Then, even worse, he enclosed her hands in his.
“If you’re thinking I expect you, with all you have to deal with, to be perfect, to always be in control, then you’re wrong. I would not think less of you if you cracked every once in a while. Trust me. I’m the king of cracking.”
“I don’t care what you think,” she said, precisely, carefully, so she didn’t give any emotion away. Why would she care about what he thought? He was little more than a stranger. Just an employer.
Except for the part where you threw yourself at him this morning. And he rejected you.
She didn’t dare look at him, didn’t dare look at his hands over hers. So she looked at the table, the dark wood in contrast to the blinding white of the napkin underneath the gleaming silverware.
He removed his hands, slowly, the tips of his fingers all but trailing along the length of hers.
“Look, if acting like you’ve got it all together gets you through the day, by all means, keep pretending. But I do see through it, and if it’s a bit much, for what it’s worth, you don’t have to pretend with me.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat and straightened her shoulders. It wasn’t pretending—it was surviving. He wouldn’t have a clue about that.
Not a damn clue.