Give Us a Chance (5 page)

I make my way over to Jake. His eyes are on his phone so I touch his arm to get his attention. "Hey."

He smiles. "Hey. I didn't see you here. Did you just walk in?" He puts his phone away.

"No. I was standing by the hostess stand. You ready?" I motion him to follow me.

He glances around at all the people. "Don't we have to wait?"

"No. I got us a table. Just follow me." I walk up to Amy, the hostess. She's a tiny blonde who has a tanning addiction and wears way too much makeup, but guys love her. They're always asking her out. Amy and Liza are good friends. Amy is one of those super nice people who's friendly to everyone and always remembers people's birthdays. I'm not even friends with her and she still gives me a card every year.

"You ready?" She smiles as I come up to her. She smiles even wider when she sees Jake behind me. "Jake Wheeler. Haven't seen you for a while." Amy looks back at me. "So Jake is your date?"

"It's not a—"

"That's right," Jake says, slinging his arm around my shoulder. "It's our first date. Ivy picked the restaurant."

I try to elbow him but we're standing so close I can't move my elbow. And I can't move over because this fat guy is blocking me in on the other side, so I either have to stand close to Jake or be wedged against Fat Guy, and I'm choosing Jake. From our close proximity I can smell Jake's cologne, and damn, it smells good.

"Right this way." Amy takes off and we follow her. I assume Jake is checking out Amy's perfect ass in her barely-there short shorts, but when I glance over at him, he's looking at me, not Amy.

"How's it going?" He smiles at me.

"Good." I smile back.

I'm not one of those people who smiles all the time but Jake is. He's almost always smiling. Combine that with his confidence and good looks and I understand why his dad has Jake working on getting new business deals and negotiating prices with vendors. He's very persuasive, which could be dangerous in this little experiment of mine. I'm trying to prove he only wants me for sex, without actually having sex with him, but he might end up talking me into it.
 

We stop at a booth and Jake helps me with my coat, then takes off his own. Amy waits for us to get in the booth, then hands us the menus. "Shayla will be taking care of you tonight." She turns to me. "Unless you want Liza. I could see if Shayla will switch tables."

"No, Shayla is fine." I didn't tell Liza I was coming tonight and bringing Jake. If I had, she would've tried to tell me what to wear and how to do my hair and makeup. I'm barely wearing any makeup and my hair is in ponytail like it is when I'm at work.

"You look nice tonight," Jake says. "I like the sweater."

"Thanks. You look nice too. But I see you wore the leather."

He looks down at his jacket. "Shit. Sorry, I forgot about that."

He really does seem sorry, but the truth is, I don't care about the jacket. I'm not a vegan. I just told him that.

"It's fine," I say. "I'll let it slide."

He's still smiling. I love that smile. It's sexy. Confident. And he has great lips, and really white teeth. I'm trying really hard to keep control of my body but it's already betraying me, burning up at the sight of him. I've never spent this much time actually looking at him. I've always tried to keep my distance. Even when he was my boss, I didn't talk to him much, and when he'd talk to me about work, I'd keep my eyes on whatever I was working on instead of looking at him. But now that I'm sitting here, seeing him across from me, I can see why women drool over him.

"Hi, Jake." It's Lacey, a backstabbing bitch who tried to get my sister fired last year because she thought Liza was flirting with her boyfriend, when in reality, Liza told me
he
was the one doing the flirting. Liza tried repeatedly to convince Lacey she wasn't flirting or trying to take her boyfriend, but Lacey didn't believe her, so to get back at her, she made up a story about Liza stealing from the petty cash drawer. She couldn't prove it, so Liza kept her job, but she avoids Lacey and won't wait on her boyfriend anymore when he comes in to eat.

"So where have you been?" Lacey places her palms on the table and leans over toward Jake, showing off her breasts. "I haven't seen you in months."

"I've been busy with work." He keeps his eyes on her face instead of her breasts.

"We should get together again," she says. "It's been too long."

"What happened to Mike?" I ask.

She finally notices me. She'd ignored me up until now.

"Mike's working tonight," she snaps.

"So you're still dating him?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but yeah."

"And he doesn't care that you flirt with other guys?"

I glance at Jake, whose eyes are on me, a slight grin on his face.

"Wait." She points between Jake and me. "Are you two on a date?"

"We are," Jake says, reaching across the table and taking my hand. "And I don't believe you're our waitress, so if you don't mind, we'd like to get back to our date."

She opens her mouth, then snaps it shut.

"Lacey," I hear the manager yell. "Order up for table five."

"Call me sometime," she says to Jake, then walks off.

"Did you go out with her?" I ask Jake. Liza said Jake went out with several girls who worked here but all of them have since left for other jobs. She didn't say he went out with Lacey.

"I went out with her once. A long time ago."

That means he had sex with her. He had sex with Lacey. The bitch who lies and cheats and tried to get my sister fired. So he'll basically sleep with anyone.

I pull my hand back from his, but he holds onto it.

"Hey." His face is serious now. "I told you it was a long time ago. And you shouldn't have asked. The rule is you're never supposed to ask about past relationships on a first date."

"This isn't a date."

His smile returns. "I'm making it one."

"I didn't agree to it. This is just two people having dinner."

"Call it whatever you want, but to me, it's a date. I'm having dinner with a beautiful woman who I'm extremely attracted to and want to get to know better. I'd call that a date."

Extremely attracted to?
So he just wants me for sex. But he also said he wants to get to know me. But maybe he just said that.

Shayla appears. "Can I get you two a drink?"

"Go ahead," Jake says to me.

"I'll take a whiskey sour," I say.

She turns to Jake. "And what would you like?"

"I'll take a Coke."

She writes it down. "Liza didn't tell me you were going out with Jake," she says to me.

"It's a first date," he says. "Took months of asking her before she'd agree to it."

Shayla's eyes widen. "You said no to Jake Wheeler? Are you crazy?"

He chuckles to himself.

"He didn't actually ask me out until just the other day," I say to her.

"That's not true," he says.

"All the other times you asked if I wanted to hang out. That's not how you ask a girl on a date. Isn't that right, Shayla?"

She grins at him. "I'd go out with him no matter how he asked."

I roll my eyes. "Well, I prefer a more traditional approach."

She spots the manager walking by. "I better go get your drinks."

When she's gone, Jake asks, "Do you come here a lot?"

"Not really."

"And yet you know everyone here."

"Seems that way," I say, choosing to be vague.

"Did you used to work here?"

I laugh. "God, no. I wouldn't be caught dead wearing one of those outfits."

"You'd look fucking hot in that outfit. Hotter than any of the girls here." His comment, and the way he said it, his voice low and deep, his eyes locked on mine, has my stomach doing flip flops. "You'd make a shitload of tips." He glances at the table next to us, where four guys are sitting. "But don't do it. I don't want guys staring at you."

"We've been out on one date and you're already being possessive of me? I don't put up with that, so that needs to end right now."

He's smiling at me.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because you just admitted we're on a date."

"Damn," I mutter, shutting my eyes to avoid seeing him gloat.

He laughs. "Why are you so against going out with me?"

I don't know how to answer that, but I don't have to because Liza shows up at our table.

"You didn't tell me you were coming here." She grins at me, then at Jake. "Hi, Jake."

He smiles back. "Hi, Liza. I was just asking Ivy to explain how she knows everyone here. She wouldn't answer me. Since you seem to know her, maybe you could explain."

"You didn't tell him?" she asks me. "All these months, you've never even mentioned me?"

"It didn't come up." I look at Jake. "Jake, this is my sister, Liza."

"Your sister?" He glances at her, seeming confused. It's because we look nothing alike. She has fair skin and bright blond hair and blue eyes. I have olive skin and dark brown hair and brown eyes.

"I'm her younger sister," Liza says. "The sister she apparently forgot she had." She pretends to be mad but she's really not. She's just kidding around. She looks from Jake back to me. "Did you tell
anyone
at work about me?"

"No," I say. "Because the guys at work are a bunch of perverts and I didn't want them asking you out. You get exposed to enough perverts working here."

"So now I'm a pervert?" Jake asks. "And my entire crew is?"

That sounded bad. I need to explain.

"Liza, can you give us a minute?"

"Yeah, I've got an order up anyway. I'll stop by later."

I wait for her to leave, then say, "Sorry about the pervert comment. I didn't mean you. I meant the other guys. Not all of them are perverts but some of them are."

Jake watches as Liza walks by with a tray of food. "So she's really your sister?"

"Yeah. I was adopted. It was one of those things where my parents didn't think they could have kids, so after trying forever, they decided to adopt, and right after they did, my mom got pregnant. I've heard that happens sometimes after people adopt a kid. They end up getting pregnant."

"Have you ever tried to find your real parents?"

"No. And I don't want to. As far as I'm concerned, the parents who raised me
are
my real parents. I don't even think about my biological parents. They gave me up. They obviously didn't want me."

"You don't know that." He's still holding my hand and he holds it a little tighter. "Sometimes people give up a baby because they know they can't give him or her a good life."

"It doesn't matter what the reason was. I still don't want to meet them."

"So why didn't you tell me about Liza? I'm sure she's told you I used to come here. She's waited on my table at least a dozen times."

"I just didn't think about it."

"That's a lie." He's serious now, his smile gone. "What are you up to, Ivy?"

"What do you mean?"

He lets go of my hand and leans back in the booth. "After months of ignoring me, you suddenly agree to go out with me? And of all the places we could've gone, you wanted to go to Hoedowns? I know we're not here because your sister works here."

He waits for me to explain but I don't know what to say.

"Were you thinking I'd stare at the waitresses all night and ignore you? And then you'd have proof that I'm nothing more than some shallow jackass who sleeps around?"

I don't answer him, but the truth is, that's exactly why I took him here.

"Have I proved your point yet?" he asks, sounding angry.

"No," I say quietly, feeling bad for making assumptions about him when I shouldn't have. I know Jake sleeps around, but I also know he's a nice guy. He's always been supportive of me, praising my carpentry skills, not just to me but to other people in the industry. He's the reason I've had a job since last summer. It's nearly impossible to get carpentry jobs when you're a woman. Construction is a male industry, led by men who think women aren't capable of doing the job, or think the job should go to a man because men should be the breadwinner in the family. It's bullshit, and yet I chose this field and trained in it and love it, so I have to find a way to make a living doing it. And Jake has helped me do that by giving me that job on the Victorian. That project was a big deal and got a lot of press and he chose me over a carpenter with more experience. After that job ended, Nash hired me for this one, so I've now had steady work for seven months and have made more money than I ever made on my previous jobs. Unfortunately, it's still not enough because I have to help pay my dad's bills. But if it weren't for Jake's help, I'd be back living at home instead of in my own apartment.

"Maybe we should just leave," he says. "If I'd known this was a test, I wouldn't have come here tonight."

"Jake, I'm sorry." I draw my eyes back to his. "You're right. Given your reputation, I assumed you'd have your eyes on the waitresses all night." I pause. "But I shouldn't have assumed that."

He sighs. "Ivy. I just want you to give me a chance. I'm not saying I won't screw up. Fuck, I screw up all the time. But I don't want to when it comes to you. I like you, and I want to get to know you. So will you just give me a chance?"

I nod. "Yeah. Okay."

He smiles. "So, can we start this date over?"

"You're still calling it a date?"

"It's just one date. Will you agree to one date? If you decide you don't like it, or don't like
me
, then we don't have to go out again."

"All right. But if this is a date, then can we go somewhere else? I don't want our first date to be at Hoedowns."

He laughs. "I agree. Let's go."

"Sorry it took so long," Shayla says, setting my drink down in front of me. "I have this huge bachelor party in the other room and it took forever to take their order." She sets Jake's drink in front of him. "Did you decide what you want to eat?"

"Actually, I think we're going to head out after the drinks," Jake says.

She frowns. "Oh. Okay. I hope it wasn't because of the slow service."

"No. Not at all. We just changed our mind about dinner. We'll take the check whenever it's ready."