Page 71 of Feeding Hope
He reached out and put his hand on her arm. “I like all of your bits and pieces, Avery. I doubt I’ll ever find something about that I won’t like.”
She turned away, dipping her gaze down toward the top of the table. “With enough time... there’s always something to find.”
“We haven’t even started,” he moved his hand on her arm, just an inch or so. It was enough to get her to turn her head back toward him. “I’ve got my share of bad habits that might scare you away.”
She looked up, meeting his gaze with her own.
“I doubt that very much.”
“Wayne.”
She frowned at that. “What?”
“Wayne,” he smiled at her. “It’s my name.”
The frown deepened, making a fairly decent furrow between her brows. “Yeah...”
“I just mean that you can call me Wayne if you like.”
She looked a little uncomfortable at the comment.
“Well, you can call me whatever you like.”
Her brows raised at that and her smile lifted. “Oh?” There was humor in her expression.
“So I could call you ‘sexy’ or ‘hot stuff.’“
Wayne lifted his beer, not because he was really thirsty, but because he was trying to hide his mouth for a moment.
“Then again with that thick beard, I could call you Papa Bear.”
He swallowed and tipped his glass to take a sip of his beer. She leaned in, placing her forearms on the edge of the table letting the front of her dress dip down. The candlelight from the table and the flickering of the faux oil lamps on the wall made for a deep shadow between her breasts. It wasn’t the heat in the room, but the topic and the woman were making him heat up.
“Or,” her voice was deeper now, softer, too. “I could call you Daddy.”
He barely managed to swallow without choking on it.
She shook her head and leaned closer, patting him on the back. “I shouldn’t have said that while you were drinking.”
When he finally had it down, he looked back at her, barely managing to hold back his smile.
“You can call me whatever you want.”
“I feel like I should call you Coach Reynolds. The whole town calls you that.”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t take the whole town out to dinner.”
She smiled and looked like she was absorbing his words. “That would be a huge check.”
They were laughing a minute later as the waitress came over with the dessert menu.
******
As soon as she got back into his truck she groaned and put her hand over her belly. “I should have said no to dessert.”
Wayne climbed into the driver’s seat and looked over at her with a smile. “It was good though, right?”
She groaned and rubbed at her belly. “That would seriously do some damage to my waistline.”
