Need You Now (Love in Unknown) Read Online Free PDF Page B

her head, suppressing a frustrated groan. "You do realize that I'm old enough to know how to take care of myself on a date, don't you? You're worse than Micah. Stop worrying. I'll have my cell phone and we're meeting at the restaurant."
    Gage smiled ruefully. "I've been worrying about you since we were kids, Mel-bell. Can't stop it. Just be careful."
    The next day, as she got ready, Mel recalled the last time Gage had warned her to be careful. She hadn't told anyone about her first “date” with Caine, especially not anyone back in Texas, so she'd been surprised to get a call from Gage the afternoon before the date. He’d told her to be careful then, too. Caine was his brother, but the years he'd spent away in prep school worried Gage.
    "He's not the same boy you played with as a kid," he'd warned. Maybe she'd have been better off if she'd listened to him.
    Tonight, she pulled on a simple, chocolate-colored silk dress, one of the few she owned. Stepping into gold high heels, she double-checked her make-up in the mirror and left for the restaurant. Time to take a leap into the deep end of the pool. Hopefully, this time she’d swim instead of treading water.
    #
    Caine would rather be at home, drinking a beer and watching the Rangers game. Instead, he sat at one of Sage Place’s round tables with members of the city council, listening to them congratulate themselves on being the smartest men in town. This monthly dinner always seemed to last forever. Same food, same people, same conversations. Never mind that there were parks that needed improvement or that the senior center was severely understaffed. His father’s friends had sat on the city council for the last three decades and they liked things exactly as they were.
    He took a long sip from his scotch, but the burning alcohol did little to make the evening better. At least the food was good. Bored, he let his gaze wander around the large, open dining room. For a Friday night, the restaurant was fairly quiet. A few married couples sat scattered through cozy booths, on dates while the kids stayed at home with a sitter. A small group of older women occupied a corner table, clucking to each other about whatever it was women over sixty talked about.
    Movement by the door caught his eye. A woman, her dark brown hair pulled up in a simple knot, stood at the hostess stand. Her dark brown dress stood out in lovely contrast to her creamy skin. The deep V gave away just a hint of cleavage, almost as flirtatious as the skirt that floated around her knees. He knew those legs, that skin. That hair.
    Mel.
    What was she doing here? She hated getting dressed up, hated fancy dinners. That was one of his favorite things about her. Unlike so many other girls he’d dated…been with— whatever you wanted to call it — she never demanded he take her out for fancy dinners. His last girlfriend spent so much time in heels and expensive dresses, he’d started to think that they were surgically attached to her skin. Yet here Mel was, looking like a beacon of light in this otherwise dull evening. Damn if she didn’t look sexy. Mel had certainly grown into her looks in the last ten years.
    He glanced around, wondering if anyone would notice if he tried to seduce her into leaving with him for the evening. He’d much rather devote the attention he was wasting on this dinner to earning the privilege of tracing the creamy skin along her neckline, of tasting the sweetness of her lips. To convincing her to let him see her in nothing but those heels that made her legs look like they went on for miles. Caine shifted in his seat, thankful that the long white table cloth hid his reaction to Mel.
    The hostess led her over to one of the darker booths at the edge of the dining room, directly in his line of sight. A small smile tilted her lips as she thanked the girl and accepted a menu. He had to go over and talk to her. They had a lot of unfinished business to discuss and they were ten years