Love's Little Instruction Book (18 page)

“Drive carefully,” he told her. “And watch out for black ice.”

“Yes, Mom,” she said cheekily, echoing Presley’s words from earlier in the evening.

The corners of his mouth twitched as he stood there, watching her get ready to go.

“Call me when you get home?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It will be too late for that. I’ll call you in the morning instead.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” She stepped forward, closer to him, and rested her hands on his chest. “I had a great time tonight, Dave. And most of that I owe to you. Thank you.”

“Any time,” he promised.

She bent her head to kiss him, her lips carefully touching his. His arms came up automatically to circle her waist. She made a small sound of contentment and she slipped her own arms around his neck. She pulled her head back and then kissed him softly again. And again. Dave gently nipped at her lower lip, testing, teasing, before finally leaning in to kiss her deeply. She pressed herself heavily against him and parted her lips slightly, her tongue gently coaxing his lips open so that she could explore their inner perimeter. His broad hands pulled her into him, tracing determined circles as he firmly massaged her back, questing, exploring, pleasuring. Denise made another sound, a deeply satisfied moan, which Dave answered with one of his own. Hearts pulsed, breaths quickened, and tongues began a slow, sensuous dance, stroking and seeking.

At last, Denise pulled back. She opened her eyes and looked down at Dave. “Denise?” he said softly.

She swallowed and blinked. “Wow … ” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Wow.”

“You sure are some kisser, Dave,” she told him, with a quirk of her lips.

His hand came up and cupped her face. “I think it’s you,” he whispered, leaning his forehead against her chin. “It’s never been like this with anyone else before.”

A faint sound escaped her: a rush of breath, perhaps the ghost of a chuckle, or a sigh. She bent her own head so that their foreheads rested against each other. He slid his hands down the length of her arms and laced his fingers through hers. “Stay with me?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. “I can’t. Not yet.” She pulled her head back and looked into his eyes. She squeezed his hands and stepped back way from him. “All right?” she asked.

He forced a smile. “Whatever you want.” He stepped back. “I wasn’t expecting this. But I’m glad it happened.”

She glanced away from at him. “Me too.”

“Will you be all right to drive home?”

She nodded.

“Call me in the morning?”

She nodded again.

He wanted to say “I love you,” but he stopped himself. She was leaving. And suddenly the words were more than just words. He wouldn’t say them in parting. That would be too casual. He suddenly thought he understood. When you were really in love, the words took on a different significance. When he said them, when she said them, it was going to be a milestone. It was going to be special. Memorable. Like her.

He stepped close and gave her one more embrace. “I’ll walk you downstairs,” he told her, “and see you safe to your car.”

She returned the hug and nodded before releasing him, letting him lead the way downstairs. She stopped in the entryway and turned to him. “Thank you for being my bodyguard tonight.”

“Anytime,” he told her. “Thank you for the afghan. And tell Judy that I love it.”

She smiled. “I will. Goodnight, Dave. I have a really good time.”

“Me too.” He gave her a final kiss — brief, but heartfelt. “Goodnight.”

Dave supposed that now that he and Denise were more or less a couple, he and the guys didn’t need to read romance novels anymore. When they met at Dave’s for the New Year’s Day bowl games, Ghoulie arrived with a selection of books tucked under his arm, and they laid them out during the pre-game show and each picked one without so much as a suggestion that they stop. Thinking about it, Dave realized that they’d each found their own “niche” in the books. Dave found that he really liked Susan Brockton’s series on a company of Navy SEALs, each one finding love while making the world safe from terrorists. Ghoulie had liked cowboy romances from the beginning and seemed to have become hooked on authors named Laurie Keith and Marilyn Cook. And Kirk — ah, Kirkie, never one to do anything predictable — was stuck in a regency rut.

The damnedest thing about it, other than the fact that they were actually finding themselves liking the romance books, was that they were also learning things. Ghoulie, who had never been on a horse in his life, spent all of one halftime show trying to explain to Kirk and Dave the difference between the traditional “breaking” of a horse, rodeo style, and the “whispering” technique, which, Dave, suspected, was not used in the Old West nearly as much as it appeared in Shelby’s novels.

Dave had never thought of any sort of military training much beyond the boot camp experiences he’d seen in movies, but he now knew about the training and selection process to become one of the military’s top elite.

And Kirk, swaggering, ultra cool Kirk. The two of them were hanging out watching
Jeopardy!
one night when Kirk started firing off one answer after another in the category “Handbags in History.” He knew that the purse a Victorian lady carried was called a “reticule” and that the furry bag a Scotsman carried on the front of his kilt was called a “sporran.” Dave had no way of checking to see if what he’d read about military training was true, but Kirk was absolutely correct on his knowledge of old fashioned fashion accessories. Thinking about it, Dave now knew about the major battles in the Napoleonic War (hell, he now knew when the Napoleonic War was and who fought in it), that the Regency Period was in the early 1800s when George IV (irreverently known as “Prinny”) ruled as something called a regent rather than a full-fledged king until his father finally topped his cork in 1820, and that the English soldiers had kicked the Scots’ butts on a field called Culloden in 1745.

For the most part, though, they still told no one about their unusual new reading habits. Shelby knew that Ghoulie had been reading her romances, although the reasons he gave her did not include their original purpose. And Dave looked on in amazement one night as Kirk used a line from
A Knight in Silver Armor
to pick up a girl in a bar. These books were not the vapid mind-candy that he had first assumed.

As far as Dave was concerned, things were going better than he ever believed possible between himself and Denise. It wasn’t quite a conventional dating arrangement — how could it be with her working during the prime dating hours? But he would bring back something to eat after his shift and they’d sit in the studio, eating take out chicken cacciatore and cheesecake during the songs and ads, with him silently watching her work in between. He loved to just sit and watch her, especially when she’d glance up from the control panel with a smile that was just for him. She was smart and easy going, elegant and beautiful. And most wondrous and unbelievably of all, she seemed to enjoy being with him.

As January weather turned what the locals called “blah” with long periods of steely white clouds and pregnant moist air but no snow actually reaching the ground, Dave began to want to do something for Denise. Something special that was just for her. He thought about it long and hard. Thought about what she liked and what he was good at. He wanted to find a way to spoil her, just a little. To give her some token that would be his special gift for her. He mulled over the problem for days, until he hit upon the perfect idea while picking up an order of Greek salad and baklava one night to bring back to her at the station. He was a DiSciullo, and that meant that he had come from a long line of chefs and cooks. His grandfather was fond of telling how it was work as cooks and chefs that had brought the DiSciullos from Italy to America in the first place. Dave was no slouch in the kitchen himself. It suddenly occurred to him that this was something he could do to impress Denise. He would cook a special meal, just for her.

Dave wasn’t quite sure what Denise’s favorites foods were. She seemed to be all over the board when she ordered take-out with him, sending him wherever her mood would demand. He decided to make something elegant. Something special. Something she wouldn’t ordinarily be able to make at home. With the memory of her former life in the back of his mind, he decided that he wanted to go with a gourmet theme; preferably something opulent. He consulted with a couple of his professional chef uncles and even his grandfather. He planned his menu, rethought, revised, and planned it again. Finally, he made his choices and committed. He asked her to come over for dinner on the third Saturday in January.

Denise arrived wearing a black leather coat over slacks and a bulky red sweater. Dave smiled when he let her in. “Wow,” she exclaimed. “Where’s your couch?”

“I, um, pushed it into the bedroom. I wanted to make it kind of like a little Italian restaurant. Do you like it?” He had gone all out. He’d pushed most of the furniture out of the room, dragged his little kitchen table in and covered it with a red tablecloth topped by a red and white runner. He’d borrowed his mother’s china set and two place settings of her good silverware. An artful supply of wax drizzled down the sides of an old Chianti bottle-turned-candlestick holder. Two lead crystal champagne glasses stood empty at each place, with a corked bottle resting in a nest of ice in a silver ice bucket. He had turned off the lights of the room, but had borrowed some artificial ficus trees from God-knew-where and strung them with hundreds of Christmas lights, crisscrossing them up the trunks and interweaving them through the branches so that they shone welcomingly.

Denise was amazed. “Yes!” she told him. “It’s beautiful.” She turned to stare at him, still agape at his obvious effort. “You didn’t have to do all this … ”

“I wanted to,” he told her. “I’m a good cook and … well … I’ve never cooked a whole meal for you before and I wanted to make this dinner special for you. You know … kind of memorable.”

She looked at him and smiled, searching his face as he looked into her eyes a little shyly. She caught his hands in hers and bent her head to kiss his cheek. “It’s wonderful,” she told him.

Dave beamed. “The only problem with my cooking you dinner is that I have to actually cook it while you’re here,” he told her as he came back into the room. “I know it’s not cool to hang out with the cook, but would you like to come into the kitchen with me? I’ll pour you a glass of wine and we can talk while I work.”

“Sounds great,” she agreed. “What’s for dinner?”

• • •

He led her into the small kitchen. “I thought about being really fancy and presenting you with a handwritten menu, but my handwriting is really lousy and doing it on the computer at work seemed kind of tacky. I thought we could start with some raw oysters, fresh this morning from a place down on Atlantic Avenue, then I’m going to make lobster in a champagne-truffle sauce — I suppose that that would sound classier in French, but I don’t know how to say it, do you?”

“
L’homard avec la sauce des champagne et truffe
,” she answered promptly.

He smiled and she loved the way that his eyes crinkled at the sides. “Yup. Classier. For a vegetable I have artichokes in lemon butter and cannolis for dessert.”

She eyed the refrigerator for just a moment, hoping that he was planning to use canned or frozen lobster. She didn’t really mind the taste of lobster, but she very rarely ate it because she was too soft hearted about the way they were thrown into the pot of boiling water while still alive to ever really be able to enjoy eating them. She looked at Dave, his face earnest and full of hope. “Sounds great.”

He poured her a glass of white wine before going into the refrigerator to get the oysters.

Denise eyed him as he set the bag on the counter. “Are those the oysters?” she asked.

“Uh huh. I’m going to have to open them, but the guy at the fish market told me how to do it.”

“Can I help?” Denise asked.

He smiled at her again. “Sure. There’s a big platter in the cabinet next to the sink. You can get that and there’s a bag of ice that you can spread out on it, then there’s lettuce in the fridge that you can set on top of the ice as a garnish.”

“Garnish? You’re really going kind of fancy tonight, aren’t you, Dave?”

If he smiled before, he positively beamed now. “Only the best for you.”

Denise returned his smile, but she was really thinking of how much she didn’t like oysters. They reminded her of an old
Saturday Night Live
sketch where Gilda Radner, in the person of Roseanne Roseannadanna, had gone on and on about how much raw oysters resembled balls of phlegm. Denise stared at the bag. She could get down one or two of them without gagging if she had to, but she hoped that Dave would eat the majority of them. She really didn’t want to disappoint him, and she could tell how much time, effort, and expense had gone into the planning of this special meal. To admit that she didn’t like his menu choices would be the relationship equivalent of kicking a puppy, and she really couldn’t do that to Dave.

She turned to the cabinet to get the platter. The insides of his cabinets, she noticed, were well stocked, as one would expect for a man who liked to cook. Dave, meanwhile, pulled out a short knife from what she supposed was his whatnot drawer. She turned to the fridge and tried not to look as he reached into the bag for the first oyster.

“I’ve never had raw oysters before,” he told her by way of conversation. “I suppose they’re a little like steamers. We used to have those sometimes when I was a kid. My grampa had a buddy who would go clamming in the summer and bring us back a bunch.” He pulled out the first oyster from the bag. It was gray-white and lumpy. Denise decided not to look and reached into the freezer, finding the bag of crushed ice.

“If you find any pearls in them,” she said, “I get dibs.”

“Pearls would probably look better on you than on me anyway,” he told her.

She grabbed the bag and closed the freezer door, then got the head of lettuce out of the fridge, stepping around him and grabbing the platter to put it on the other side of the L-shaped counter so that she could work with her back to him. “They’re my birthstone,” she told him. “I’m a June baby but a lot of the time jewelers will say that it’s another stone — alexandrite — because that one can be cut to fit into a square setting without losing its shape. I like pearls better, though.”