Both Margot and Dave turned speculative eyes to Johnny.
Unfortunately, Margot got over her speculation way too quickly and looked back at me.
And when she did, she declared, “No girl as cute as a button as you are wearing a dress that pretty eats alone. You’re joining us for dinner.”
Oh God.
No!
“I’ve already ordered,” I told her.
She turned directly to the tall man behind her. “David. Find someone and tell them to hold this pretty girl’s dinner and serve it with ours.” She turned back to me. “If you’re hungry, darlin’, we’ll order you an appetizer.”
“I—” I started.
But Margot now had her attention on the hostess who was hovering with them, holding their menus. “You can take us to our booth now.” Her attention came back to me. “We always get a booth. They’re roomy.”
“You can also ask the chef to hold making this lady’s dinner, if you would,” David said under his breath to the hostess as Margot spoke.
“Of course,” the hostess muttered.
Was this happening?
“Help Eliza out of her seat, Johnathon,” Margot ordered, turned her head, tipped up her nose and flounced after the hostess.
This was happening.
I had a feeling Margot got what she wanted, but it was a definite it would be tremendously rude if I didn’t join them even if the very last thing on earth I wanted was to join them for dinner.
More aptly, to sit at dinner with a Johnny with gentle eyes wearing that shirt and those trousers.
Seeing as I had no choice, I closed my journal, dropped my pens in my clutch and slid out of my chair only to run right into Johnny.
“You don’t have to do this, Izzy,” he whispered, his lips at my ear sending that damnable tingle down my spine.
And it got worse.
He was wearing cologne, and it was amazing cologne so he even smelled fantastic.
I turned my head and caught his gaze.
“It’s okay, honey.”
His eyes melted with warmth and regret and compassion and all that looked good on him before he reached out and grabbed my journal off the table.
He handed it to me, reached again and nabbed my wine, then put his free hand to my elbow and guided me after Margot and David.
“She seems like she’s a firebrand,” I muttered to Johnny.
“David and Margot, my dad’s best friends. Dave started working for my granddad when he was about seventeen. That’s how him and Dad met. Dave’s about a decade older than Dad and he took him under his wing back then. And whatever grew between them meant they were inseparable until they had no choice but not to be. Dad was fifteen when he was best man at Dave’s wedding. Dave said the eulogy at Dad’s funeral.”
How beautiful.
And how sad.
“Right,” I said softly.
“Margot’s a pistol and I don’t remember a time when she wasn’t. She’s the only mom I ever really knew. She was a tough one but the best a kid could have.”
My head turned, and I stared at his profile in shock at getting this news about Margot and his apparent lack of his own mother as he guided me the rest of the way.
He stopped me and I turned to see Margot scooting into a booth. She barely got settled before she was sweeping her hand imperiously across the table.
“Get in. Get in. Johnathan knows better than to seat a lady on the outside of a booth to be brushed by waiters and busboys and patrons as they pass,” she announced.
So Margot was the reason I got the seat with the view at Johnny’s house.
I scooted in and tucked my purse and journal against the wall beside me as Johnny followed me in.
“You journal?” Margot asked in a way that made it more like a demand I offer up this information she already had to know since she’d seen me doing it.
“Yes,” I told her. “I never did until my mother died. She did, journaling, I mean, and after she died, I took it up. I don’t know why but it makes me feel closer to her.”
Margot’s piercing regard completely disintegrated and her commanding voice was nothing of the sort when she queried, “You lost your momma?”
I nodded. “To cancer.”
“I’m sorry, darlin’,” Margot murmured.
“Me too,” Dave put in quietly.
I nodded to him and gave him a little smile.
Margot’s head jerked up and turned left and she then hit David’s arm lightly but repeatedly with the back of her hand. “Get that boy. We need bread. Izzy needs something to snack on since we’re delaying her meal.”
David’s eyes searched for “that boy” as Margot looked back at me.
“We’ll order some of their stuffed mushrooms. They’re divine. Have you been to The Star before?”
I looked around at the interior that didn’t fit the unfinished clapboard exterior. It was mostly decorated in rich reds and golds, the décor unobtrusive, just classy and warm, and then I looked back to Margot.
“This is my first time,” I shared.
Her pretty face split into a smile. “How wonderful we get to share it with you.”
I felt Johnny’s fingers drift down my thigh, there and gone, sharing he was sorry and he knew it wasn’t so wonderful for me.
“So, are you a lawyer?”
This question, which I’d heard before, coming to me from David startled me.
“No. I work for a data management and security firm,” I told him.
“How exciting!” Margot declared as she clapped her hands elegantly in front of her.
I grinned at her. “I think you and I are probably the only ones who think data is exciting.”
“You get to wear that dress to work, and those shoes, darlin’, are fabulous. Any job you get to dress like that has to be exciting,” she returned.
“Gotta say, it’s a knockout of a dress,” Dave muttered.
Johnny made a noise in his throat that was muted and low, but it was the kind I’d only heard when he was in bed with me.
This so surprised me, my head floated around to look at him but I was arrested in this endeavor when Margot asked, “Now you said you were new to town. Where did you come to us from?”
“The city,” I shared.
“So not far,” she replied.
I shook my head. “No.”
“I bet you like it out here better than there. All that dirt and noise and graffiti, and all those people,” she stated, like people meant muddy, stinky livestock and she might eat beef, but she had no interest in how it came to be on her plate.
“I do.” I nodded. “I have some land, and I can have my horses close and my dogs love it and it’s calm and quiet. So yes. I very much like it here.”
Her eyes slid toward Johnny when I mentioned my horses and dogs but came back to me before I finished.
“You got kin close?” Dave asked and I looked to him. “Said you lost your momma, child, but hope you got blood around.”
“I have a sister but she got married and moved south. She’s about a five-hour drive away so not too far but a lot farther than I like it. We’re close but now it’s more, after she had my nephew.”
“Ooo, a nephew, lovely. How old is he?” Margot queried.