Truly, Madly, Deeply

Now there was a stupid slip. “Well, no, of course not.” Being around a jock must be awakening her competitive urges.

“Tell you what. Let’s go have lunch and you can think it over.”

“I have thought it over, and I think it’s crazy.”

He stood. “Think some more. In the meantime, I’m starving. All I’ve had to eat since five this morning is one Fig Newman.”

SEATED IN A SECLUDED little West End restaurant booth across from Erica, Dustin ate barbecue and Erica munched on a veggie sandwich. She’d told him that reviewing required her to taste a variety of things, so she’d eaten off his plate, too. She preferred the veggie sandwich.

He and Erica were different. He’d shrivel up and die on a diet of sprouts and tofu, while that was her favorite. She only ate meat because she had to, for the restaurant review. Although he didn’t always understand or agree with her preferences, he admired her convictions. He always had. In fact, he enjoyed playing Texas good ol’ boy, just to get her on a soapbox.

When she’d ordered a local microbrew made from organic grain, he’d deliberately asked for a Bud. At the moment, she was trying to convince him to invest Ramsey money in the microbrewery. He liked the idea of making a profit on beer, but he had his doubts about the organic part, which jacked up the price considerably.

She was persuasive, though, and he loved the passionate way she argued a point. The more time he spent with her, the more he became convinced that he’d done exactly the right thing by seeking her out. When they’d hooked up in chemistry class, she’d been the first girl to treat him as if he had potential to succeed at something besides football. Up until then, his ambitions hadn’t stretched much beyond winning chugalug contests and the state football championship.

But then he’d pushed his luck and taken her for a drive in the country. After that dismal failure he’d avoided Erica, which resulted in a return to his old lazy mental habits. Now his only option was to retrace his steps, get on a better footing with Erica and move forward from there.

She really was good for him. He’d like to believe he could be good for her, too. With her initiative, she could reap benefits from the economic system she liked to criticize. They both could reap benefits of a more personal nature if she’d allow it.

“Just try the beer,” she said, holding out the bottle she’d been drinking from.

He liked the idea of putting his mouth where hers had recently been. His fingers brushed hers as he took the bottle and awareness flashed in her eyes. Good. She was still thinking about his proposition.

Holding her gaze, he lifted the bottle to his lips and drank.

“Well?” She looked at him expectantly.

“I like it. Rich and good.” Exactly the way sex would be with her. He imagined he could taste the flavor of her mouth along with the beer. Handing the bottle back, he watched as she sipped from it again. Drinking from the same bottle was a start.

“So you’ll think about that as a potential investment?”

“Sure. I’ll look into it. But organic beer doesn’t have sex appeal. Your newsletter does. And you know what they say. Sex sells.”

She made a face. “I thought you wanted to educate people, not capitalize on the sexual content of the newsletter.”

“What’s wrong with doing both?”

“Spoken like a true capitalist. I just don’t happen to care about making gobs of money.” She took another sip of her beer. “And I honestly don’t see myself publishing this newsletter for much longer. Some job will open up for me in the next six months, as the economy improves.”

“You’re passing up a golden opportunity.”

She regarded him from across the table, her gray eyes sparkling. “Are we still talking about the franchise?”

He grinned.

“You’re such a flirt. I have to admit you’re arousing my curiosity.”

“And that’s all?”

She didn’t comment, just smiled back at him.

He was sure his sexual longing showed right on his face. Fortunately she couldn’t see under the table, where even more evidence lurked. He took another bite of his barbecue.

“I still wonder exactly how you found me,” she said. “I’ve lost touch with everyone in Midland. If the reunion committee couldn’t locate me, how did you?”

He chewed and swallowed the spicy beef, taking his time while he thought of how to answer. If he told her, she’d know how obsessed he’d been with tracking her down. He’d hoped to keep from mentioning the extent of his search, but now that she’d asked, he had to level with her. “I hired a private investigator.”

“Get outta here! You hired a P.I. to find me? I can’t believe that!”

Sometimes he had a hard time believing it, too. “When I get an idea in my head, I can be…stubborn.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Apparently.”

“I’d hoped you’d be at the reunion, but when you weren’t, I had to figure out something else.”

“You really and truly had a private eye tailing me?” She looked intrigued.

Maybe telling her wasn’t such a bad thing. “I did.”

“This is beginning to sound like a movie.”

“Well, if you’re thinking of a guy wearing a trench coat and a snap-brim fedora, that wasn’t happening. Jennifer Madison operates out of Midland and she found you using the Internet, with her two-month-old baby asleep in the crib next to her.”

Erica frowned in concentration. “Jennifer Madison. I know that name.” Then she snapped her fingers. “She subscribes to Dateline: Dallas. I wondered why she be interested, living in Midland. So Jennifer Madison is a private eye.”

“Yep. And a good one.”

“A private eye with a baby and a computer. That is sort of anticlimactic. I was picturing reruns of Magnum P.I. It wouldn’t be so bad to be watched by the likes of Tom Selleck in his younger days. Actually, he’s still pretty cute.”

“Sorry.” Actually he wasn’t sorry at all. He wouldn’t have hired someone who looked like Tom Selleck in the first place. “It’s the electronic age.”

“Even so, it’s quite a concept, to think that you actually hired a person to dig around until they located me. I’ve never been tailed before.”

“So…you’re not upset?”

Leaning back in the booth, she gazed at him. “I suppose I could look at it as another example of how people with money operate differently from the rest of us. You wanted to find me so you thought nothing of hiring it done.”

“As a last resort.” And he’d considered the expense more carefully than she’d ever know.

“But the truth is, this is very good for my ego. I thought I was nothing more than a notch in your belt, and here you are hiring a P.I. to track me down ten years later.”

He winced at her interpretation of his behavior ten years ago. “I’m not a belt-notch kind of guy. That’s what I’m trying to—”

“You could be a scorekeeper, though.”

“Excuse me?”

“What exactly was wrong with the sex between us?”