Acquiring Hearts (5 page)

“I believe she’s the only one.”

Dear God I hope so.

“Then let’s leave before any more previous lovers try to ruin our evening.”

She handled the situation so cool. Any other woman would have fought with Sheila or just took it out on him and left. He actually wanted to kiss her, but after the Sheila fiasco, he didn’t think it was appropriate.

It was a warm night. They walked across the street to sit by the river. There was a section that had a couple of benches, so they sat down on the one facing the river. The Ben Franklin Bridge looked amazing lit up at night. The setting was so romantic. Brad spoke first, Gia was being a little too quiet which made him think he had misjudged her thoughts on the disagreement with Sheila.

“
Thanks for what you did back there. I usually just blow her off when she calls or shows up where I’m at. I guess I should have dealt with the situation before it got this far. I hope this doesn’t change your mind about me.” He reached over and put his hand on her knee. He could feel her shiver, even though the temperature was soaring.

“Brad, I’m just getting to know you and from what I see you’re a really nice guy. A crazy ex showing up on our date is not going to change that. Nothing is perfect. We just have to see where this will go.”

He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face to look into his. “Thanks for being you. I can promise you this is not the last time we will be seeing each other.”

With that, he kissed her with a passion that he had never felt for anyone else. His arms were wrapped around her waist. He pulled her closer to him. She was caressing his neck with her hands as their mouths were intertwined.

Brad didn’t want this to go too far tonight. He wanted to show Gia that he respected her. His mind was telling him to break the kiss but his body was telling him to keep going. His groin was about to explode. He couldn’t believe he was about to do this.

“Wow, Gia. You’re so amazing. I could kiss you all night. If we go any longer, I may not be able to control myself.”

Gia felt the same way. Brad’s kisses were out of this world. She knew she wanted more of what he had to offer. “We better get back any way. I turn into the hired help at midnight,” she said jokingly. They both laughed their way back to the car holding hands. All in all, minus the interruption, it was a nice first date.

He walked Gia to her door. She invited him in for coffee and he told her he would come in for a little while. Gia offered Brad a seat and told him to make himself comfortable. Gia handed him the television remote and went into the kitchen to make two cups of coffee. She couldn’t believe the events that occurred tonight, especially the kiss. Could he get any more romantic than that?

She brought the two mugs into the living room and placed them on the coasters she had bought on one of her trips to Mexico. She sat on one end of the sectional, while Brad was sitting on the opposite end. It was so awkward.

“Do you want to watch a movie? I have plenty of them in the DVD case.”

“
Whatever you want to do is fine by me.”

Bradley, Bradley, wrong answer because you may like what I want to do, too much.

“I’m just going to run upstairs and get changed. I’ll be quick.”

“Ok” Brad answered with an amused look on his face. He was hoping Gia didn’t come down in anything sexy because he didn’t know if he could conduct himself in a respectable manner. He was relieved to see her in a t-shirt and sweatpants.

“I’ll just pick out a movie and put it in the DVD player,” Gia said.

She chose
Moonstruck,
since that was her all-time favorite movie. She’d seen it a billion times and could recite the movie word for word, but she wouldn’t do that tonight. He’d think she had no life.

As Gia was walking back to the couch, Brad sarcastically said, “I don’t bite.”

Hmm… I was hoping he did.

She made her way over to where he was sitting and plopped down on the couch. He picked up one of the pillows and laid it across his lap. He patted it for her to lay her head down. She did just that as she was so tired.

These long hours at the firm were killing her social life. They watched the movie but weren’t actually paying attention to it. They were too busy thinking about each other. Brad was continuously running his fingers through her long flowing hair. Gia was dozing off as he repeatedly worked his magic on her. “Brad, that feels so good.”

He smirked because he was having thoughts that he wanted to keep to himself. “Just relax, honey. You look so tired.” He kissed her forehead.

Gia drifted off into a comfortable sleep with Brad’s hands caressing her so gently. Not realizing it, Brad fell asleep as well. This was clearly not in tonight’s plan, but he could not help but feel this was the way it was supposed to be. He felt so at ease and serene with her.

Brad popped up, not remembering where he was. He looked at his watch and saw it was four A.M. He looked down and Gia was still asleep with her head on his lap. He didn’t want to walk out on her in the middle of the night, even though nothing sexual happened between them. He also didn’t want to frighten her by still being there when she woke up. He gently lifted her head without waking her and rose up off of the couch. He pulled the throw blanket that she had over the back of the couch onto her. He plugged her phone in so it would be fully charged when she woke up. He then sent her a text so she would know it was sent when he left.

Gia, I just want to let you know that I had a really great time on our first date. I could sit and watch you sleep all night, but I wanted to give you privacy. I want to see you again soon. I’ll call you tomorrow to check on you. Sweet dreams, baby. Talk to you tomorrow.

Chapter Five

The sun shined brightly through the living room window casting its rays right on Gia’s face. She opened her eyes groggily, trying to gain her composure. How did she end up sleeping on the couch all night?

Oh shit, Brad. What the hell happened? I fell asleep!!! What kind of date am I?

She turned to get her phone to check the time. It was 10 A.M. Damn. She slept like she had never slept in her life. She didn’t normally get up this late. She was an early bird. She had three text messages. Two were from Rachel and one was from Brad.

The texts from Rachel were from this morning. The first one asked about my date.

Hmm… I’ll let you know when I know.

The second one said to call her ASAP. In Rachel terms that was just an ordinary text. She returned her text and said “I’ll call you later. I just woke up”.

It’s
too early to deal with her.

Then Gia opened the message from Brad and read it. He was such a sweet and caring guy. She wondered what the future held for them. He seemed interested but it was somehow too good to be true. It made her a little nervous since she had not been serious about anyone since Jesse.
It was one date
. She replied:

“
Hey, thanks for charging my phone. I can’t believe I fell asleep. You should have woken me up. I had a great time last night considering I passed out, lol. Did you fall asleep too?”

“
Hey baby... Hope you slept well. I know I did, thinking of you. I did fall asleep and when I woke up, I didn’t want to disturb you. You looked like sleeping beauty.”

“
AWWW Brad, you make me blush.
”


“
It’s true… Oh, I can make you blush if you want me too!!”

“
Haha”

“
What are you doing today? If you’re not busy, do you want to go swimming in my pool? I can cook a mean barbeque, too.

“
Now this I have to see,” Gia quipped.

“
I can send my driver to pick you up.”

“
I have a car. I can drive over.”

“
I’d feel safer if my driver picked you up.”

“
You’re a smooth talker. Lol. If you insist, I’ll take the driver.

“
I’m not a smooth talker. I don’t ever want anything to happen to you.”

“
Hmmmm... What time should I be ready?”

“
He’ll be there at 2 P.M. His name is Gary.”

“
Ok. See you then. By the way, I may need to bring my laptop to do some work while we lay out and catch some rays. Is that ok?”

“
Sure, whatever you want, baby. See you soon.”

Gia couldn’t believe she was going to see Brad again today. She wasn’t expecting him to invite her over to his pool. She needed to get out her hottest bathing suit. Not that she was trying to seduce him or anything.

Yeah right, don’t lie to yourself.

She picked out her black strapless bikini. The bottoms tied on both sides, and the top tied in the back. She threw a black and silver strapless cover-up dress over her bikini and slid on her silver and black thong sandals. Thankfully, she had her hair and nails done yesterday, so she wore her hair down.

She packed her Coach carry-on bag, with a change of clothes. She gathered some toiletries to put into her bag. She was as ready as she was going to get.

She carried her bags downstairs and put them by the front door. It was only one thirty so she decided she had plenty of time to call Rachel.

“
What’s going on? Where have you been? How was the date?” Rachel asked in lieu of hello.

“Hi, to you too,” Gia sarcastically responded. “The date was good. It was crashed by Sheila, but I put that bitch in her place. After dinner, we went and sat by the river. Then we came back to my place. I fell asleep. He left this morning. He invited me to his house to swim in his pool and eat barbeque. That about wraps it up.”

“Back it up. What happened with Sheila?” Rachel was pissed. This woman just wouldn’t stop. She’d been telling Mr. Roberts for weeks that this chick was crazy. Whatever. He could do what he wanted, but if Sheila touched her sister, it was on.

“
Basically she called us hired help. I handed her my card and told her she may need to call me if she didn’t stop stalking Brad.”

“OMG! No you didn’t. Was she mad?” Rachel was laughing but she was also so proud of her baby sister.

She ripped up my card and went stomping off. “Eventually you will come back to me,” Gia said in an irritating Sheila-esque shrill response.

“HAHA, said Rachel laughing. She better not call the office again.”

Gia didn’t want to put her sister in a bad mood but she wanted to give her time for her issues. “What’s going on with Vinnie? Are the boy’s home?”

“He is at his mom’s house. He keeps begging me to let him come back home, but I can’t forgive him. I finally stopped crying.”

“Well that’s a good thing.”

“Yeah. Now, I’m just angry and bitter. The boys are still with Mommy and Daddy. They’re going down the shore for the week. They should be ok. They have summer work for school and mom has stuff planned for them to do all week.”

“That sucks. Do they suspect anything? Do you think you will forgive him? Do you think he means what he says?”

“I don’t know. We’ve been together so long, but I feel like I can’t trust him. The kids don’t know anything. His mom is giving him hell for doing what he did.”

“
Absolutely. She thinks you’re the best thing that happened to him and you’re her grandsons’ mother. Give it a couple days and don’t rush into anything. At least you’re free all week with no pressure.”