Heaven.
Then Raiden Miller fell asleep under the warmth of Hanna’s cashmere, and for the first time in a long time he didn’t have a nightmare.
Not even one.
Chapter Eight
Double Feature
The next evening…
“Leave it to you, when I’m lookin’ forward to my plans for after the f**kin’ movie, you find a double feature,” Raiden grumbled.
I threw a nervous smile over my shoulder at Raiden, who was carrying a big bucket of popcorn in the crook of his arm and two huge sodas in his hands. He was following me down the aisle of the Willow Deluxe, our theater in town that, against the odds of competition from the huge cineplexes only forty-five minutes away in Denver, stayed in business.
This was mostly because the town liked it. Then again, the citizens of Willow just liked Willow.
Our town was one of those strange exceptions to every rule. We had not gone the way of one-stop convenience and bulk buying economy.
We had a butcher. We had a fruit and veggie shop. We had a non-chain hardware store. We had a grocery store that everyone went to that was family owned and had been for over fifty years. We had a florist, a craft shop, three gift shops, a coffee house, Rachelle’s Café, a pizza joint that did great Italian on the whole, a biker bar, a cowboy bar, a Broncos fans only bar and more.
Including the Deluxe, which was a not-for-profit and stayed in business as well as continued renovations due to the generosity of a town that wanted to keep its old-fashioned, hometown feel.
I loved the Deluxe.
I loved my town.
But my smile was nervous because of what I suspected Raiden’s plans were for after the movie, not because I was still worried and wondering if he was really into me.
No, even if last night, or more accurately, super-early this morning he had not made that very clear, earlier that evening he’d made it even clearer.
Needless to say, Raiden’s idea of “slowing this down” clashed with mine.
In other words, before the movie he took me to Rachelle’s for dinner, and even before that, he’d told me to call his sister to get his number, which, of course, I did not.
He had to know, since Rachelle was at the café a lot even in the evenings, that she might be there and see us together.
And she’d been there.
I’d been at that café a lot and never seen Raiden there with a woman.
Making out with one outside, yes.
Inside, never.
And neither had anyone else, like KC or my other friends, all of whom followed Raiden’s actions like, well, what we were: crazy, creepy Raiden Ulysses Miller stalkers.
So it was not lost on Rachelle (or me) what Raiden taking me to her café meant.
However, this was the least of my worries, when, after she saw us together and her eyes bugged right out of her head, she came rushing to us, exclaiming, “Ohmigod! Hanna! I haven’t seen you in forever! Look at your hair! I love those highlights! They look great! And it’s so long! I barely recognized you.”
Raiden gave me a brows raised look as he pulled out my seat, and I belatedly avoided his eyes as I sat.
“And you’re so tan!” Rachelle went on, stopping at our table. She put two fingers to her cheek, tilted her head and gave me a once over before enquiring, “Have you lost weight?” Then she answered her own question, “No. But definitely toned up. I am so getting my own Schwinn if that’s what it can do.”
I tucked my hair behind my ear and chanced a glance at Raiden to see his lips quirking and his eyes on me.
Rachelle seemed not to notice the looks Raiden and I were giving each other or the fact that neither of us spoke.
Instead, she cried, “Don’t order! You’re both getting the special. Tonight’s special kicks ass, if I do say so myself.” She turned to her brother. “Beer for you, bro.” She turned to me. “Hanna, white wine or diet root beer?”
“Root beer,” I answered.
“On its way,” she replied.
She then bounced off, Raiden’s burnished highlights shining in her long, swinging, brunette hair.
Unfortunately, albeit a gentleman (at times, when he wasn’t cursing or angry and backing me up against walls), Raiden didn’t let this pass.
“So I didn’t notice you or I didn’t recognize you?”
“Whatever,” I mumbled to my knife and fork, which were rolled in a pink paper napkin and rounded with a sticky tabbed slip of paper in robin’s egg blue; one of Rachelle’s Café’s many signatures.
Raiden roared with laughter.
I quit avoiding him, lifted my head to watch and my discomfiture fled because I enjoyed the show. So much I ended up grinning at him.
He ended his laughter with his face getting soft when he saw my grin, his lips ordering, “Come here,” but his body not giving me the chance to comply (or not).
He stretched a long arm across the table and hooked me at the back of the neck. He pulled me across, met me halfway and touched his lips to mine before he let me go.
This was not lost on the many patrons or Raiden’s sister. I felt it and saw it.
So much for going slow.
That was the only thing uncomfortable about dinner, except Raiden told me he’d share about the “job” he was working in town “later”, and he did this in a way I didn’t question at the time, but made me slightly troubled.
Mostly we talked about what went down with Bodhi and Heather. Or more to the point, Raiden quizzed me about my less-than-stress-free day after the police arrested my friends and raided my kitchen warehouse, a large part of that day being taken up with the police escorting me through my warehouse and asking me questions then taking me to the station to ask more and giving me updates in return.
“They found ice?” Raiden asked, his mouth still full of Rachelle’s delicious (she was not wrong) grilled turkey and swiss sandwich with a thin coating of French dressing and chili oil infused cream cheese.
I nodded. “Apparently lots of it. Though, they didn’t share how much.”
“And Joe was cool with you?”
Joe was Sherriff Joe who had been Sherriff Joe since I was about twelve.
I nodded again. “He asked me not to leave town, but he told me he knows I’m not involved.”
“Did he explain the operation?” Raiden went on.
Another nod from me.
“He said the dogs found little baggies of crystal meth at both the bike shop and my place, most of it at my place hidden under the floorboards, but apparently they bagged the drugs at the bike shop. Evidently, Heather packed it with my afghans and shipped it to drug people that were around my boutiques. They got their drugs and hand delivered my shipments to the local shops so no one would be the wiser. Though if the USPS sniffed it out, which thank God they didn’t, they’d trace it back to me and I’d have uncomfortable questions to answer, but Heather and Bodhi would be long gone. Sherriff Joe said Bodhi told the police all this when they interrogated him. They shipped it everywhere, all over the country. Some of my shipments were drug free because they didn’t have a dealer to ship to in that area, but a lot of them were tainted. ”