Page 76 of Her Noble Protector

“Yes, Raiden, I laid it out for you.”

He continued to smile. “I can’t say where this will end up. But we’ve both laid it out. We know what we’re thinking, what we’re feeling. So, let’s just sit back, you order some eggplant parmesan, and tell me why you took a shit job in Mexico, okay?”

She hissed out a deep breath and nodded.

“Words?”

“Yes, Raiden. That sounds like a plan.”

He nodded.

21

Lisa hadn’t had a drink in forever, and instead of having one, she’d had two glasses of Chianti. Raiden had stopped her when she’d requested a third.

“Are you watching how much I’m drinking?” she asked.

“Absolutely.”

She had no follow-up question for that. Instead, she ordered dessert. Chocolate cake.

They’d laughed a lot during dinner. Turns out that Carys’ husband was a nut.

“Are you telling me that he actually dressed up as a woman and sang karaoke? That did not really happen.”

“It did. He’d lost a bet,” Raiden confirmed. “He has really hairy legs; it was not a pretty sight.”

“Was this before or after he married Carys?”

“Definitely before.” Raiden’s eyes were twinkling.

“Is that something you would do?” Lisa asked as she bit into her cake.

“What do you think?”

“Uhm, no.”

“You think correctly.”

“I’m having a hard time imagining Carys married to a nut,” Lisa admitted. “She’s a doctor and pretty serious.”

“They’re good together. They balance one another out. Plus, he’s not a nut when it comes to her well-being.”

Lisa frowned and thought back to something she’d heard in Arizona. “Somebody said something about him stopping her double shifts at the hospital.”

“He makes sure nobody is taking advantage of her,” Raiden said as he stole a bite of her cake. “He knows the difference between when she needs to be working and when they’re using her, and a lot of times Carys can’t see it. She’s too giving. He doesn’t put his foot down, he just helps her open her eyes.”

The idea of somebody taking care of Carys like that made her heart melt. “So not a nut. He’s smart.”

Raiden nodded. “You’re done with your cake.”

She looked down and saw the empty plate and grinned up at him. “You’re the one who ate it all,” she accused.

“We’ll order another slice to take home.”

“We will not!”

Raiden called the waiter over for the check and put in an order for a slice of cake to go. She kicked him under the table and he laughed. Her cheeks heated. She couldn’t believe she had just done that. It had to have been the wine.