Page 81 of Fierce: Sawyer

“This is a nice restaurant,” Sawyer said on Saturday. “I’m shocked you didn’t want to go to Fierce. Even if we went to the pub.”

“Are you kidding me?” she said. “You know Brody. It’d get back to my aunt. No way. I don’t go there with any dates.”

He frowned. “How many dates have you gone on there?”

“None,” she said. “I just told you. Why did you look like that? You have to know I’ve dated. I wasn’t a virgin by any means.”

He smiled at her from across the table they were at. He’d put a nice shirt and pants on for this. Not even work pants and a shirt. Something fancier. Faith was wearing a navy blue dress that he’d been shocked to see on her.

Her hair was pulled back from her face, and she had a light coating of makeup on making her hazel eyes stand out more with the black liner and a bit of shimmer on the lids. No lipstick. He wasn’t a fan of that anyway.

“No,” he said. “You weren’t. Have you been here before?” He’d looked the place up, as he’d never heard of the name before.

“No,” she said. “But a few women I work with have talked about it. I’m not one for following along like that, but they said the food was good and this is a first date and all.”

He grinned. Considering she cooked for him all the time and gave him leftovers, the least he could do was take her to a nice fancy restaurant. More so when he got to see her looking this stunning.

“I’m glad you picked it,” he said. “And that you made me wait to see you like this and had to pick you up.”

He found it funny that he didn’t go over there earlier but that he picked her up for the date first. She’d joked and said that they had to follow the protocol of the first date. This way they couldn’t get tripped up in anything.

He knew how her organized mind worked at this point and it was fun to go along.

“Maybe I had to go shopping today.”

“Seriously?” he asked. “All for me?”

“Could be,” she said. “I don’t wear dresses and skirts often. I’ve got a ton of dresses from weddings I’ve gone to. In my family, there are a lot.”

“So you could have had any one to choose from?” he asked. “But you bought a new one?”

“I didn’t say I bought a new dress today,” she said. “I just said I went shopping and you asked if it was for you. I said it could be.”

He gulped. He wouldn’t ask if there was anything special under the dress. He didn’t want to know when he was in a restaurant full of people and couldn’t do anything about it.

“Now you’re only teasing me,” he said.

She grinned at him, then picked up her wine glass and took a sip. They’d already placed their orders and he got a filet mignon. Fred would be in heaven with some leftovers. Faith got some seafood dish.

“Tell me about work,” she said. “We haven’t seen each other this week. You’ve been busy.”

“Sorry about that,” he said.

He’d felt bad that he did cancel on her Friday night. That was two and he was thankful it was a joke at this point and she’d given him that third time anyway. Just in case it wasn’t a joke because it was still smarting at times he did this with other women and they hated it.

“I’ve been dealing with two break-ins in the past two days. Seems to be the same person in the neighborhood.”

“That’s scary,” she said. “Bet those houses don’t have dogs.”

“No,” he said. “Nor any security cameras. Though lots of houses in the neighborhood did. So we’ve been combing through footage too.”

He and James were just leaving work yesterday when the call came in for another break-in. The homeowners had come home from work to find the house tossed and a lot of electronics and jewelry missing.

Since James and he had the case from the day before, they were called in on this one too. They’d spent hours interviewing people on the street, finding out who had cameras close to this house, if anyone saw anything and gathering notes and evidence.

They’d be spending time combing video footage close enough for the same vehicle that might have been on the other street at the time of the break-in.

“And now you’ll have more,” she said.