Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek) (23 page)

“
Really
acquainted.” He nodded over at the colorful
Twister
mat.

She sighed. “That one was Xoey’s idea.” She picked up a few more boxes and handed them over to him. “Here, these too...”

Luke chortled loudly when he saw that Xoey had typed out and taped her own set of adapted, spicier directions and playing cards for
Charades, Taboo,
and
Pictionary
. Seeing no adapted directions on the board game
I Never
, however, he looked over at Dani questioningly.

“That one doesn’t need adapting.” Her crooked grin was laden with firsthand innuendo.

“
Really
?” He made a mental note to get a set for their own personal research.

Luke sifted through the large pile of board games, nodding in approval over the family and friend favorites he’s played over the years. “Great selection for couples to play. You even have
Scattegories
for the more reserved folks. Good thinking.”

“Yeah, I had to pry that one from Xoey’s creative clutches.” Dani rolled her eyes. “You can’t imagine what category prompts she wanted to put in her adapted edition.” She gave a theatric shudder. “The English language is seriously dangerous in Xoey’s brain.”

Luke picked up a game called
Consensus
and studied it with interest. “This one sounds perfect for the whole group to do as an icebreaker activity to kick things off.”

“See, you can always tell who went to business school.” She chuckled her approval. “We already have an icebreaker planned—a quirky beer-based scavenger hunt for them to do while they eat. I was thinking of doing one of those reality solve-the-mystery games but I couldn’t organize something that elaborate in such a short amount of time.”

The deck tour ended in the corner where Rylan usually sang. “The chocolate massacre area, I presume?” Luke shook his head tragically at his chocolates sitting next to blowtorches.

Her shoulders lifted in humor. “Yep, the make-your-own-dessert bar of beer fondue and beer cracker s’mores, along with beer-flavored floats and sundaes.” Pausing for a second, she bit her lip and turned a questioning gaze his way. “Does the game theme seem too juvenile? I just thought it would be fun for couples to work together to annihilate the other couples, but...”

He pulled her into his arms. “I’m sure everyone here is as bloodthirsty as you, my dear.” Kissing away the worry lines on her forehead, he pointed over to folks amusedly discussing the selection of games. “Look, it’s already a hit. I think you’ve got a winner here, sweetie. Really.”

She let out the breath she’d been holding in relief. “You know, even after our little wager is over, I’m thinking of keeping a scaled-down version of all this up here—weekly beer pairings and tastings along with some games or activities.” Her eyebrows hopped up excitedly as she got yet another idea. “Oh, I could hook up one of the popular motion-activated video game systems to the big screen!”

An indulgent grin tilted his lips.

“What? It’ll be great.
Your
parents play those kinds of video games.”

True. Quite competitively, in fact.

Her eyes rounded with inspiration again.

She was just too cute. He smiled in anticipation.

“Dance contests!” she exclaimed.

He arched an eyebrow. “Dance contests?”

“Sure! Nothing intense like
Dancing with the Stars
. Just basic, fun partner dances like the Tango or a spicy Latin number. Xoey could teach them and they could all have a dance-off. Or maybe I’ll just have Xoey choreograph a new, sexy line-dance for them to do in groups.”

“That does actually sound like a fun way to get to know people,” he admitted.

She looked at the couples all around. “I just really want everyone to have a good time.”

Christ, she was a sweetheart.

With a tender gaze, he threaded a hand through her hair and looked in her eyes. “You really do, don’t you? You just want them to enjoy their dates.”

“Of course.”

Huh. If it were Quinn at the reins, customer happiness would be important, sure, but their experience would still be congruent to the bottom line. Not so for Dani though—she simply wasn’t built that way. He pulled her in close. “You’re amazing. Have I told you that lately?”

“Not in the last hour.” Her hand flew up to cover his mouth. “And not again for another few hours, please. Before we end up doing a lot more than what we did that first night in the storage closet.”

The woman was just arguing against herself at this point.

He tried convincing her without words to take a stroll down to that memorable closet now. She inhaled a shuddering breath and covered his heated eyes with her other hand. “Enough of that too. When you look at me like that, my clothes tend to want to fall off.”

Her eyes dilated when his teeth gently scored her palm. “Okay, that’s it,” she muttered. “Out you go. You need to take your sneaky enemy distractions back to your turf.”

He tried his best to look wounded.

“Save that look for after Valentine’s Day when Ocotillos declares victory,” she poked with oodles of sass. “You
have
seen the preliminary online voting tallies, haven’t you?” She blinked prettily with a patronizing pat on his arm.

His gorgeous foe was having the time of her life rubbing it in and egging him on. Yes, according to preliminary feedback online and around town, it did seem Ocotillos had a slight edge in the throwdown voting, but only by a slim margin. “Don’t get too comfortable on top, honey because you just gave me an idea for one last romantic promotion that’ll be our surprise sprint to the finish this week.”

When her competitive curiosity at what had him so confident put a little extra flare in her eyes, Luke grinned, deciding her take on life was right. Competition was the devil’s aphrodisiac.

And boy, was it intoxicating.

He could see the thrill of the new hurdle in their game already hitting Dani as well. Eyes glinting in challenge, she unconsciously touched the tip of her tongue to one of her canine teeth, almost as if testing its sharpness, the way she did whenever he goaded her. So sexy.

“Okay, well you all have fun with this little event of yours. I’m going to get started on this new idea of mine.” He dropped a kiss on her lips and left before she could pry any details out of him. As he headed to the stairs, he could feel Dani’s curious, hot gaze on his back.

A few steps down the stairwell, he chuckled when he overheard Xoey’s comment to Dani: “You two have the most bizarre form of foreplay.”

* * * * *

LUKE HOPPED ON HIS
office computer to check the shop’s blog page to see if there had been any activity since he’d launched his little challenge yesterday.

Thirty-one replies.
Not bad. He skimmed through the response threads to peruse what people had posted so far. A smile hit his lips when he saw exactly what he’d hoped to see today.

Random acts of romance.

Last night, seeing all that Dani was doing to make magic happen between perfect strangers at Ocotillos had made Luke realize he’d been focusing more on his ‘new’ Valentine’s Day rules and less on the root of the holiday itself,
the
people
Dani had been focusing on all along.

Hence, his little late-in-the-game play.

When he’d first come up with the idea, he’d gotten a little high off the holiday spirit as if it were Christmas, wanting eagerly to spread the holiday cheer of punch-drunk romance far and wide. This intoxicated buzz of his was what had led to the decision that February 13th would see not just this challenge, but every customer getting two free chocolates of their choosing to share with someone special in the spirit of random romance.

A Valentine’s Day fluffer, if you will.

He called it the
Random Act of Romance
challenge. Today, on the day before all the teddy bears, roses, and lace-scalloped gifts, he was challenging folks to take some time to do a simple, random act of romance from the heart. No purchases necessary.

Further, he was encouraging folks to post their stories on the Desert Confections blog in hopes that one random act would inspire another. Of all who posted, five random posters would get a certificate for a couple’s massage at a popular Scottsdale spa that specialized in gender-perfect pampering. That they’d already gotten a few dozen posts overnight was great news.

Feeling like a postman at the North Pole, Luke grinned as he clicked open the first entry.

Interestingly, it was from a woman who’d written in not to enter the contest but rather, to praise it and share why she believed random acts of romance deserved all the recognition in the world. She described how just last week, her stoic, very non-mushy husband of ten years had surprised her by reprogramming all her favorite shows into the blank queue of the DVR box they’d just replaced and taking the extra time to also add a few new shows he thought she might enjoy. Better than the occasional diamond or pearls, his doing this tedious task for her was just one of the many unthinkingly thoughtful ways he always made her feel more loved than any store-bought gift ever had and ever could. That to her was romance in its truest form.

Luke was moved. He immediately posted a reply to thank her for her story and arrange for a box of chocolates to be mailed to them for being such an inspiration.

The stories that followed after it were all just as adorably inspiring, ranging from surprise lunch-hour walks, to cuddled-on-the-couch talks, and carefully laid-out plans of text messages on the hour every hour declaring one special thing about the other person.

Then there was the one that really got Luke choked up. A man posted a photo of his young wife who was on her second year of deployment. For his act of romance, the man emailed friends from his wife’s unit last night to help him set-up an online serenade for her to view out in the desert today. In a real-time video of him standing in the living room in his PJs, with a disclaimer apologizing for his well-known inability to carry a tune, the man began belting out the lyrics to her favorite song by Rascal Flatts with the accompaniment of thirty of her fellow service men and women singing behind her. The performance, along with her teary-eyed reaction to it all was all captured on YouTube so she could replay it whenever she got lonely out there.

That right there was what this was all about. Over the next hour, dozens of other stories got posted, each one as great as the last. Soon, Luke found he couldn’t hold off any longer; he’d been bursting to do a random act of romance for Dani all day. A glance at the clock told him she’d be setting up for tonight’s big concert by now so he reached for his cell phone...and then paused.
No sweeping declarations of love
, he reminded himself.
Keep it casual
. Light and flirty worked for them. He thought hard about what casually romantic message he could send the woman he was falling madly in love with. Did such an oxymoronic thing really exist?

A lot of mulling around later, he finally decided on texting her:

>> I MISS YOU...WHAT ARE YOU WEARING?

Perfect. Honest emotion combined with shameless flirting. Right up their alley.

Not a minute later, Dani texted back:

>> A T-SHIRT THAT READS: CHOCOLATE=GOOD…BEER=BAD WHICH DO YOU WANT ME TO BE?

Chuckling, he had an answer for her right away, but before he could send it, his phone beeped again. A second message from Dani:

>> P.S. I MISS YOU TOO. BE READY FOR A ‘RANDOM’ VISIT LATER TODAY. WE’LL TEST OUT ONE OF YOUR STORAGE CLOSETS THIS TIME.

In chorus with his laughter, his heart rate was rapidly thrumming a deep tattoo against his lungs, past the overflowing of dense emotion. His skin was humming, his mind swaying—yep, he knew the symptoms well. But never this well.

It was clear, he was blatantly, irretrievably head over heels.

More so than he’d ever been with any woman in his entire life.

* * * * *

DANI RE-READ
the text she’d just sent Luke, wondering if right this instant was too soon to make good on her text…

Nope, she decided a second later.

Grinning, she shut her office door and headed out.

Was a part of her wanting to butter him up? Admittedly, yes. Come hell or high water, tonight was the night she was going to tell Luke about the I-tried-to-sabotage-your-shop situation. He deserved to know. She was positive they’d get through this. It was in the past and nothing terrible had come of it. True, he might be upset that she hadn’t told him earlier but no matter. Even if they ended up getting into an argument, she didn’t want this cloud hovering over their relationship anymore. His trust was too important to her.

He
was too important to her.

Yup. Though she’d fought it, she’d gone and gotten attached to Luke, that much was clear.