Page 18 of Hale Yes (Highway to Hale #1)
I stop her movement with my hand on her wrist. Her skin is warm and impossibly soft. “Why? I wasn’t complaining.” For some reason—most likely a perverted one—I don’t want her to tame those wild curls into submission.
“My mother doesn’t like when I wear it down.”
Making a show of looking around the interior of my car, including the non-existent back seat, I lean closer to her and whisper, “Is your mother in the car with us right now?”
She laughs and shakes her head. “No, I just…”
“Leave it down,” I command, and her hands instantly still. The corner of my mouth twitches, and I dirtily wonder what other commands she would follow.
I hear her audible swallow before asking, “Am I dressed okay? I didn’t even ask where we’re going.”
“It’s a tapas bar not far from here, and you look great.” I gesture to the clothes I changed into before going to my mother’s, a pair of pressed khaki shorts and an off-white linen short-sleeved shirt.
Nicolette is quiet for the next few moments as I find the restaurant and park in the small lot. “There’s a side entrance we can go in,” I tell her, guiding her toward the unmarked gray door on the side of the brick structure. “I come here all the time and know the manager.”
“Really?” she asks, seeming surprised and extremely nervous. Hell, I wonder if I freaked her out with my bossy hair comment. Or perhaps she didn’t actually want to go to dinner with me but was too polite to say so.
“Listen, I feel like I may have butted in on your evening. If you want to eat by yourself, I can wait in the car for you and then drive you back home.”
“No!” she practically yells, clutching onto my forearm with a shockingly strong grip. “I’m not going in there by myself.”
I’m so fucking confused by her almost manic behavior, but I just nod and open the door for her. “Okay, sure. Whatever you want.” I can’t say I mind the way she’s holding my arm like she might float away if I don’t anchor her to the ground.
The door we enter is adjacent to a long mahogany bar that’s shined to within an inch of its life. The bartender, Alonso, immediately lifts a hand in greeting. “Dr. Hale! Give us just a second, and we’ll get you a table.”
Before Alonso can even summon him, his father, Vicente, walks swiftly from the front of the restaurant, greeting me warmly with a hearty slap on the back. “Dr. Hale, I haven’t seen you in so long. I was beginning to get offended.”
I chuckle at his mild scolding. “I was just here last week, Vicente.”
“Well, that’s too damn long.” Then he turns to Nicolette, and his accent seems to intensify tenfold as he takes her hand and kisses the back of it. “Ah, bienvenido a The Tapas Table. I am Vicente, the manager. And what may I call you?”
“The Tapas…” Nicolette blinks rapidly about a hundred times, and then her face breaks into a wide grin before she laughs. She seems utterly charmed by the Spaniard.
“Gracias, Vicente,” she responds in perfectly accented Spanish. “Soy Nicolette. Su restaurante es hermoso.”
The man wiggles his eyebrows at her. “El doctor Hale nunca ha traído a una cita aquí.”
I watch with rapt attention as she replies, again in Spanish. “No soy su cita. Somos companeros de trabajo.”
No idea what they just said. I heard my name and picked up a few other words, but my Spanish is rusty. So I ask her as soon as we’re seated at a table notched into the arch of a bay window that overlooks the restaurant’s courtyard.
“What were you and Vicente saying? Trabajo means work, right?”
Nicolette takes a sip of water and eyes me over the rim. “He said you’d never brought a date here before.” She smirks, her tone casual. “And I told him I’m not your date. I’m a prostitute.”
Choking on my own spit, I cover my mouth with my napkin. “Wh-what?”
Her laughter is a rich, warm sound that swirls around the table. “Kidding. I told him we’re coworkers.”
I snag my own water goblet and take a large gulp to clear my throat. “Thank god. I thought for a second there that I’d never be able to show my face in here again.”
Nicolette takes in the space, her eyes roaming from floor to ceiling. “Okay confession time.” She bends forward and lowers her voice, and I find my own posture arcing to mimic her. “In the car, when you said you were taking me to a tapas bar, I thought you said topless bar .”
A burst of hilarity spews from my mouth again. That’s why she was acting so nervous.
“You actually thought I’d take you to a topless bar?”
She grins. “I was so confused. I never thought the straitlaced Dr. Helix Hale would go to a strip club.”
Straitlaced. If she only knew. “I’m not saying I’ve never been to one, but I certainly wouldn’t take you there.”
“I was afraid we’d show up and the sign would read Cooter’s or something with the two O’s being nipples,” she comments. “I was fully prepared to see women dancing in cages, and I’d probably have to suppress the urge to yank open the doors and yell, ‘Free the titties!’ like a lunatic.”
We both crack up until we hear a throat clear beside us. Vicente sets down a carafe of housemade sangria and two wine glasses. “I walk away for two minutes and come back to this discussion,” he says, clicking his tongue in mock disappointment.
Nicolette points at me accusingly. “It’s Dr. Hale’s fault. He’s trying to corrupt me.”
“Exactly as I suspected.” He waggles a stubby finger at me, his voice teasing. “Don’t make me have to come back over here. I’ll not have you insulting my new favorite guest.”
“I thought I was your favorite guest, Vicente,” I tell him, feigning insult.
He waves his hand like he’s shooing me away as he makes goo goo eyes at Nicolette. “Let me know if you need my assistance, madam. I can get rid of this pest if he’s bothering you. Then you can sit at my table, and I’ll treat you like a princess for the rest of the evening.”
“You don’t even have a table,” I scoff at his obvious flirting. “I’ve been coming here for years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sit down.”
“Because I’ve never had the proper motivation.” He turns to Nicolette. “Have you decided what you’d like to eat tonight, Princess Nicolette?” I roll my eyes.
“I haven’t looked at the menu yet,” she says. “Do you mind if we take a few minutes?”
“Of course,” Vicente purrs, practically bowing his way from the table, but not before tossing me a cheeky wink.
“He’s a piece of work,” she chuckles, picking up her menu.
“He’s something,” I mutter, trying to hide the annoyance in my voice.
I know Vicente doesn’t mean anything by his blatant flirting, but it still crawled under my skin a little bit.
Maybe it’s because he’s on a first-name basis with Nicolette while she and I are still using formal titles.
And yes, I’m aware that’s my own damn fault.
“Hmm, might have to try the paella,” she muses, her green eyes cast down toward the list of small plates.
“You can call me Helix,” I blurt out, and her gaze snaps up to mine. “If you want.”
“Okay, Helix,” she replies, and I like the way my name sounds from her pretty lips. “And you may call me Princess Nicolette.”
I snort in amusement. I can’t remember the last time I’ve laughed this much, though it was probably with Phoenix. He’s a lot calmer now that he’s a dad, but he’s still the funniest person I know.
“I refuse to call you princess,” I declare, earning me a quirked eyebrow from my date, er, dinner companion. “You’re too good for that. I rather think of you in the queen category.”
Nicolette sets down her menu and gives me a sarcastic slow clap. “Well done, Helix.” But I don’t miss her blush at the compliment.
Fuck, I like her. Not just her looks, though her wild hair combined with that one-shoulder shirt is sexy as hell and not tempered in the least by the black glasses perched on her tiny nose. No, I also like her bite and her wit.
Picking up the wine carafe, I ask, “You like sangria?” She hesitates but then nods. “Don’t feel like you have to, Nicolette. I can get Vicente to bring you something else.”
“No, it’s fine. I actually love sangria, but wine makes me sleepy. I can drink vodka, whiskey, rum, and even tequila, but give me more than one glass of wine, and I’m off to snoozetown as soon as I get halfway relaxed.”
“Okay, one glass it is,” I agree, pouring some of the stout red wine into her glass.