Learning to Fall (7 page)

“The problem,” I began, choosing my words very carefully, “is that I am not interested in casual sex.”

To my surprise, Daniel threw back his head and laughed. “You’re something else, you know that? It’s just pancakes, Imogen. No one said anything about sex, casual or otherwise.” His grin turned wolfish. “Unless you’re offering.”

My mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

“Certainly not,” I managed.

“I didn’t think so. Oh, and Imogen?”

“Yes?” I squeaked, feeling beyond mortified.

His expression sobered. “I may have hit on more than my fair share of women at bars, but I’ve never invited a woman out to breakfast before.” The color of a brewing tempest unfolding across a clear, cold sky, his eyes seemed to pierce straight down to my very soul. “I just wanted you to know that.”

* * * * *

As it turned out, Poppy’s was only two blocks down from The Pier. I’d walked past it before, but never thought to stop in. An old brick building with wrought iron patio tables set for two lined up out front, it sat on a quiet, tree lined corner, tucked in between Camden’s one and only general store and a t-shirt shop that had already closed down for the season. An oversized picture window revealed more tables inside, nearly all of them filled. The front door was painted a bold, cheerful yellow and guarded on either side by matching terra cotta pots filled to the brim with colorful chrysanthemums.

“Do you mind if we eat outside?” Daniel nodded towards a hanging sign in the window that read:
No shoes, no shirt, no service
. “Gracie can be pretty strict.”  

“Gracie?” I queried.

“The owner’s wife and best pancake maker in all of New England. She and her husband bought this place in the late nineties. It used to be a deli.” Bells jingled cheerfully as he opened the door and gestured for me to go in first. I stepped past him, careful not to brush up against his chest.

A woman with warm hazel eyes and shoulder-length brown hair threaded through with grey greeted us almost immediately. She wore a white apron over blue jeans and a flowery top. Even without the plastic name tag pinned to her shirt I would have guessed she was Gracie by the familiar way she greeted Daniel.

“You!” she exclaimed in delight, throwing her arms wide. “I haven’t seen you in ages. Come give me a hug and then get out of here. You know the rules.” She jabbed a finger at the sign in the window. “No shirt, no service. You’ll give all the old ladies heart attacks, this one included.”

“You’re not old,” Daniel protested as he easily picked Gracie up and swung her in a half circle.

“How many times have I told you not to do that?” she scolded once he’d set her back down.

“Not enough. Gracie, I have someone I want you to meet. Imogen, this is Gracie. Gracie, Imogen.”

I’d been lurking by the door, uncertain what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go, but when Daniel said my name I stepped forward and extended my right hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said politely.

Gracie’s eyes narrowed to thoughtful slits of caramel as she gave me a careful onceover. I held perfectly still, waiting for her judgement with bated breath. It was clear by the way she and Daniel interacted they were very close and her opinion obviously mattered to him, or else why bring me here to meet her? I stole a glance at him out of the corner of my eye. As usual, he seemed completely at ease and relaxed despite the whispers and stares he was garnering from the nearby tables. At least I wasn’t the
only
one tongue-tied by the the sight of him without a shirt on. 

When Gracie was finished with her very thorough appraisal her mouth curved in a smile and she squeezed my hand tight before releasing it. “The pleasure is all mine, sweetie. Can’t say I remember the last time Danny brought in a lady friend.”

“Oh.” Not wanting to Gracie to get the wrong impression, I rushed to correct her, but before I could say another word Daniel looped his arm around my shoulders and cut me off.

“We’ll eat outside if that’s okay.”

Gracie snorted. “If you thought you were eating anywhere else
but
outside you would have been sorely mistaken.” She winked at me. “Thinks he’s too handsome to follow the rules. You’ve got your hands full with this one, sweetie.”

“Actually, we’re not really-”

“Blueberry pancakes or plain?” Daniel asked, interrupting me a second time.

“Blueberry,” I said automatically. “But I think we should make it clear-”

“Two orders of blueberry pancakes,” he told Gracie. “Extra syrup on mine.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said with a sniff. “You two go make yourselves comfortable. I’ll have Tanya bring out some coffee.”

We walked out to the furthest patio table. Warmed by the sun, my seat was hot against the back of my thighs, but I didn’t complain. In a few weeks - a month at most - it would be too cold to eat outside and I intended to soak up all the sunshine and warmth I could before Maine’s infamous winter arrived.

“This is nice,” I said, looking across the street. Between a bookstore and an art gallery I could just catch a glimpse of boats bobbing in the harbor and the sparkle of sunlight bouncing off the ocean waves. “It’s a wonderful location. I can see why it’s so popular.”

Daniel nodded in agreement. “Wait until you try the maple syrup. It’s homemade. None of that artificial crap.”

“Speaking of artificial…” I folded my arms on the table and attempted to summon my very best stern face, which of course wasn’t very stern at all. “You shouldn’t have led Gracie to believe you and I are…well…that we’re possibly…um…that is to say that we’re…”  

Clearly enjoying my stammering, Daniel sat back in his chair and lifted a brow. “Having casual sex?” he suggested innocently.

“Yes!” I hissed, gaze darting left and right as I looked to see if anyone around us had overhead.

“Relax.” Linking his fingers, he stretched both arms above his head. “I know for a fact she doesn’t think that and so what if she did? We’re both adults. This isn’t the eighteen hundreds.” His mouth twisted into a smirk. “Your reputation isn’t going to be ruined if people discover you’re having premarital sex.”

I shot him a look. “You know what I meant.”

“Yeah, I do.” He lowered his arms. “But it’s fun to get you riled up. I like it when you blush. Yep,” he said with a nod, “just like that.”

“Is that why you brought me here? To ‘rile me up’?”

“Nope. But you have to admit, it’s a nice side benefit.”

For him, maybe. But definitely not for me. I liked to think I was fairly good at reading people, but try as I might I couldn’t get a good read on Daniel. Maybe it was because I hardly knew anything about him. Or perhaps my judgement was clouded by the physical attraction I felt. Either way, he remained a complete and total mystery.

A mystery I didn’t know if I wanted to solve.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said abruptly, as though he could somehow read my thoughts.

I glanced down at the table, studying the intricate grooves of the wrought iron. If there was one thing I hated more than awkward silences and stilted smalltalk, it was talking about myself. Thankfully, I was temporarily saved from boring Daniel with the details of my uneventful life when a waitress - presumably Tanya - arrived with our coffee.

She put a white porcelain cup in front of me and another in front of Daniel before fishing four mini cups of half and half out of her apron pocket and setting them in the middle of the table along with half a dozen packets of sugar. “Here you go,” she said cheerfully. “Your food should be out soon.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, reaching for one cup of half and half.

“Thanks T,” Daniel said. “Don’t forget, extra maple syrup.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The waitress waved a hand over her head as she walked back inside.

“That’s quite a lot of sugar,” I observed as Daniel ripped open four white packets and dumped them simultaneously into his coffee.

He looked up at me, one side of his mouth lifting. “What can I say? I have a sweet tooth.”

I was certain his words weren’t meant as a sexual innuendo, but that didn’t stop my mind from taking them that way. My traitorous, treacherous mind. Where was my logic now? Where was my reasoning? I knew Daniel was trouble. I
knew
it. With his dashing good looks and boyish charm, how could he not be? The smart thing to do (the logical,
reasonable
thing to do) would have been to excuse myself and walk away. Breakfast with a hot stranger wasn’t on my schedule. Developing a crush wasn’t in my plans. And yet that’s exactly what I found myself doing.

“What’s your favorite color?”

Startled out of my thoughts, I looked up to find Daniel studying me over the white curved brim of his coffee cup.

“My favorite color?” I asked blankly.

He took a sip. “If you keep answering every question with a question we’re going to be here a long time, Imogen.”

I loved that he used my full name. Not many people did. They shortened it to Mo or Gen or Imo, as though saying a name with three syllables was too difficult. But not Daniel. He said the whole thing, pronounced to perfection, and every time he did I felt a small rush of excitement.

“I’m not trying to be evasive,” I said before I blew across the top of my coffee and took a small, testing sip. For cafe coffee it was surprisingly good, with subtle undertones of hazelnut and the tiniest hint of cinnamon.

“Is that why you still haven’t answered my question?”

“Yellow,” I said with a tinge of exasperation.  “My favorite color is yellow.”

“Yellow’s good.” Setting his coffee down, Daniel clasped his hands behind his neck and tipped his chair back until it was only balancing on two legs. “But green is better.”

“One color can’t be better than another.”

His eyebrow shot up in silent challenge. “Why not?”

“Because…because it just
can’t
.”
Good answer, Imogen. Very intelligent and scientific.

“I’m going to have to disagree, which means there’s only one way to settle this.” Shifting his weight, he set his chair back down and stretched his right arm across the table, hand clenched in a loose fist. “A thumb war.”

Daniel might as well have been speaking in Greek for all that I understood him. Keeping my hands to myself, I looked down at his with suspicion. “A what?”

Incredulous grey eyes met mine. “A thumb war. Tell me you’ve heard of a thumb war. No?” he said when I slowly shook my head from side to side. “Were you deprived as a child?”

Talk about a complicated question.

“I was not deprived,” I said, more stiffly than I had intended. “I simply did not play a lot of games.”

Between my ballet practice, piano rehearsals, riding lessons, and private tutoring sessions, there hadn’t been much time left over for ‘trivial distractions’ (my mother’s words, not mine). As a result I’d been forced to watch from the sidelines, hiding my envy behind an empty smile as my classmates ran around kicking soccer balls and dribbling basketballs and enjoying themselves far more than I ever had stuck in a music room that smelled like old lady’s perfume practicing piano scales for what felt like hours on end.

I still remembered the one time I had complained. After spending an amazing afternoon playing kickball at my friend’s house with her parents and two brothers, I’d come home and asked my father why he and my mother never played games with me.

“Games?” he’d said, setting aside his newspaper and pulling his reading glasses to the end of his nose. “What sort of games, Imogen?”

Miserably uncomfortable in his vast study, I’d hooked a skinny arm behind my back, bit the inside of my cheek, and mumbled, “You know, like kickball and stuff.”

“Is that why you’re so dirty? Because you were playing kickball?”

I looked down at my grass stained shirt and winced. “Yes,” I admitted. “But Dad it was really fun! It was boys against girls and I was on Candace’s team with her mom and-”

“Did you win?” he interrupted. “The game, Imogen,” he said when I looked at him in confusion. “Did you win the game?”

“Well, no…but we came really close and-”

“This is why your mother and I encourage individual sports.” He shook out his newspaper. “Because they allow you to compete against yourself. If you fail, you know you have done so on your own merit and you take sole responsibility for your failures which builds character. These team sports children your age are playing are nothing more than a waste of time and talent. Do you understand?”

With a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach, I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Pushing his reading glasses back in place, he blinked at me from behind the square lenses, his serious brown eyes magnified to twice their normal size. “If you truly want to play a game, I will teach you how to play chess. It is about time you learned. How old are you? Eleven? Twelve?”

“Nine,” I whispered.

“Excellent. The same age I was when my father taught me to play.” He glanced down at his watch. “If I’m not mistaken, it is time for piano practice. I will see you at dinner, Imogen.”