Just Want Somebody to Love (Bella Warren Book 1) (23 page)

Justin smiled at her, but the knot that went down his throat spoke loud enough to proclaim his uncomfortableness. Still, there was no denying the way his shoulders curled in and a hint of a blush colored his cheeks. “Thank you.”

“You go to church?”

“I, uh…” He glanced to Whitney, and she just smiled his way and stayed out of the interrogation. “Not in a while, I’m afraid.”

Mrs. Laura made a sound that was part disappointing and all full of interesting. “Well, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not like you’re killing people for a hobby.” She eyed him. “You’re not, are you?”

“No, ma’am,” he said again. It was the answer he’d given to the other asinine questions he’d been asked today.

She nodded at Whitney. “He’s not from ‘round here, but he’ll do.”

Whitney could only smile. She knew exactly where this town was going with the two of them together. Considering their opinion of Justin not two weeks ago, that was impressive. Of course, once news got around that Justin took being the ass of her joke in good spirit, he pretty well won over every person who’d heard.

Mrs. Laura was the third person who’d all but jumped on him since they’d sat ten minutes ago. If he planned to hang around this town at all, he might as well get over it and let them have their fill until they were satisfied.

Mrs. Laura patted his shoulder. “I’ll let you two kids get back to your date. I see my food coming, and if I take it home cold to Larry, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

She walked away with the familiar limp to her right side as she moved.

Justin shook his head. “I don’t remember the last time I’ve had so many women interested in me. You should be worried.”

“I already am. Mrs. Laura was looking sexy in her moo-moo.”

He chuckled. “I had a hard time keeping my hands off that leopard print.”

Whitney glanced around and caught a few eyes on them. “Word’s getting around.”

“At least I’m getting a green checkmark. I figure by the end of the week, we can be engaged, and you’ll have a line around the block of people wanting to throw you a shower.”

Engaged. Then married. She resisted a dreamy sigh. The idea of it was tempting as Justin fit her bill. He already knew she didn’t cook and was okay with it, since he liked to. Already aware she tended to be more cluttered and less tidy. They shared a bit of a wicked sense of humor. To put more whipped cream on this already delicious sundae, they were great together. Unlike guys in the past, she enjoyed every single aspect of their time together.

Not that he hung around for marriage sake. That was just crazy thinking. He was here for, well the why part, she didn’t know. Had he been serious when he asked her to come to Dallas?

He watched her, so she gave him her best stern look and hoped he couldn’t see right through her. Being he usually did, she doubted she succeeded. “Don’t give them any ideas.”

“How come you’re not married yet?”

Good question. One she asked herself a lot. “No one’s ever asked me.”

He sat back. “Really?”

Well, yeah. If you left out the part about not having a long term boyfriend. “I never dated the same guy for a long time.”

His eyes narrowed. “Do not tell me you’re not the kind of girl a guy takes home to mom.”

She never thought of it like that before. Maybe. Maybe not. “I was no saint when I was a teenager, but you already knew that. Not that a lot of people knew that. Or at least, I’m sure adults heard whispers, but I was careful and I didn’t get caught. I really don’t know what people’s parents thought.” She picked at the corner of the table. “I’ve never put too much thought into it because I was having fun. The guys I ran around with never took me home to meet mom. I was too easy so they never had to bother.”

“Easy is the last word I’d use to describe you.”

She grinned his way. “I think part of it is also because I never met the right guy. I had fun with the ones I ran around with, but I didn’t initiate the bring-them-home-to-meet-mom-and-dad either.”

“Uh-oh.” He pointed at her. “You’re afraid of commitment.”

She laughed again. That happened a lot with him. “Maybe I am and I’ve never known it.”

He watched her and shook his head. “Nah. You just haven’t found the right man yet. When he asks, I bet you’ll say yes and go with him where ever he wants.”

She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t because she didn’t know what they were about, and she was getting her hopes up with him for reasons she couldn’t explain. He tempted her in so many ways, and for that, she had to ask. “What kind of man is that?”

He leaned forward now. With him to her right instead of across the table, he sat oh so deliciously close. “Someone with a strong mind. You’re clever and have a great, dark sense of humor. You’ll need someone to match that. But no one stuffy. You’ll be bored.”

“I need someone to take me out to the woods sometimes and let them have their wicked way with me.”

“That goes on the top of the list. You’re pretty when you laugh, so a guy who makes you laugh is required.” Now that just warmed her through, and he kept with more. “You’re playful too, so you need someone you can tease and someone who can tease you back.”

“Now to find this mystery man.”

His eyes never left hers. “Maybe you have and you just don’t know it.”

Oh my God
. Her throat was so tight, which wasn’t a good combination for her heavy breaths. “Maybe so.”

Then dadgum Melody showed up. “Y’all ready to order yet?”

With a few quick flips of his hands, he handed the menus up. “Two cheeseburgers. Put everything on them and a couple sweet teas.”

Whitney hated pickles on her burger, but she couldn’t find enough air in her tight chest to make words. She wasn’t sure she cared too much, and she could damn well pick them off, because when Justin looked at her like that, there was no one else.

His hand touched her knee, then rested on her thigh. Not high enough to be considered PDA, but his touch was there and claiming. As the heat of his hand warmed through her pants, she felt possessed. Owned. Wanted and marked. She tried remembering anyone putting their hand on her like that in public, and there hadn’t been one.

He rubbed a small strip with his thumb. “I figure if your mystery man was in this small town, you would have found him by now.”

“Probably,” she managed to squeak out.

He nodded. “That confirms it. You have to visit me in Dallas and start looking there.”

In Dallas. Where he was. “I doubt I’d ever get out of your apartment.”

“I’m not seeing a downside to this plan so far.”

Neither was she.

A chair at their tabled was jerked out. The sharp scrape of the metal on the concrete floor scattered the magic. Wade dropped in the seat and let out a long breath. “Sorry I’m late.”

She forced a smile his way. He could have been later. Or just not shown up at all. That would have been okay with her.

Justin scooted his chair forward a touch and straightened, but his hand never came off her thigh. “We ordered a couple burgers a few minutes ago if you want something.”

“Nah. Kara had me a plate fixed when I passed through the house. She forgot I was meeting you two and that’s why I’m late. Did you discuss anything without me?”

Plenty. Nothing about WW Farms. Now she had to get her head on straight to have the conversation they were supposed to be having. “Not yet.”

Wade nodded. “Let’s get started so I can get back. Whitney will be more helpful than me, so I’m not sure why I need to be here. I do crop rotations and equipment maintenance. She does the rest.”

And all that rest couldn’t be further from her mind. She cleared her throat and tried to focus on this conversation instead of the one she wanted to finish. “Like we mentioned, we’re organic. Currently, we only sell to Jake’s Grocery.”

Justin nodded. “Distribution to us will be the main thing to figure out.”

“We have a small fleet of trucks and drivers. Each farm is equipped for packaging and processing. If we wanted to yell about healthy, we felt it was important to freeze and package as close to the groove as we could manage. The goal is to have every last pea frozen within twelve to twenty fours of being picked to maintain nutrients.”

Justin nodded and grabbed his phone. He clicked across it a couple times and pulled a pen from somewhere within. “I looked up your farms, and from what I saw you have five.”

“That’s right. I’ve thought a little about the distribution issue. Since we already deliver to Jake’s Grocery, we can discuss with them to see if they would be interested in serving as a distributer for you.”

He frowned, but also nodded as he wrote over the screen. “But with them as a middle man, that means it’ll cost me more.”

“The cheapest option to buy the vegetables is for you to have your own fleet of trucks to drive to our farms and collect your order. Downside is by the time you buy trucks, gas, and maintain drivers for however many restaurants you have, it may not be cheap anymore. Or it may equal out to about the same to distribute with Jake’s.” She took a breath. “And since I deal with the drivers and trucks, I can go ahead and tell you, you’ll need someone on your staff to manage that if you plan to have enough trucks to reach all your restaurants. We set up slow and permits vary by state. Lots of fees and licenses too. It is a full time pain in the butt job to maintain that. And that’s with our small fleet.”

“I’d like to introduce this to a few flagship places in Texas to test it out first, so that’ll help.”

“That’s fine.” She glanced to Wade. He smiled like she should continue. “This would be a new venture for us to explore, so it doesn’t matter to us where or how you use our vegetables. As a limited supply or all across. I’ve done some research on your steakhouses, and our current size should be able to handle your orders. You’re in town for branching out, though. Depending on how many new restaurants you create in the future, that could change things. Any potential deal we made would be based on the number of restaurants you currently operate.”

He nodded. “That’s another reason I want to test it first, because I don’t know where my franchise is going at the moment.” He made a couple notes and looked between her and Wade. “Can I buy right off the truck while it’s in town delivering to Jake’s?”

Wade looked at her and she answered without consorting with him. Wade and legal speak weren’t on the best of terms. “Yes, but you’ll need somewhere to do that besides Jake’s parking lot. I doubt they’d appreciate it as a long term thing. We just need a piece of property big enough to park our truck on and for you to have someone there to meet him to take possession of the shipment and pay. If you’ve got far to travel, you’ll need a refrigerated truck. Or if you have a steakhouse set near a Jake’s, we can deliver to you. We can even deliver enough to one location to service several of your places if you want to transport from there. Either way, it will require us driving an extra distance—even if it’s just a half mile down the road—and it puts extra work on our drivers. You’ll have a delivery charge on top of the cost.”

He grinned. “Ruthless.”

Wade chuckled. “That’s why she’s in charge.”

Melody delivered their burgers.

Justin set his phone aside as Melody left. He leaned over his plate. “Sounds like y’all are pretty flexible. More than I expected.”

“We’ve never done this before, so we’re open to whatever is easiest. We’re not working around a massive schedule. If you have some other ideas, throw them out.”

Whitney looked at her burger and wondered where those pickles were hiding. She searched under the patty and over it, found the disgusting creatures hidden in the lettuce like a cruel game of hide and seek. Justin’s brows lifted as she plucked the offending things out of her sandwich.

He took them from the farthest edge of her plate and added them to his sandwich like it was a perfectly normal and routine thing for them to do. Nothing about this day was normal.

By the arch of her brother’s brow, he thought the same. “My needs are pretty simple. Get me a list of every vegetable you use and some that you have on a wish list.”

Justin cleaned his hands on a napkin and picked up his phone for more notes. “If you don’t grow something I want, would you be open to growing it?”

Wade lifted a shoulder. “It depends on what it is and what type of growing condition it’ll require. If it’s something picky with a particular set of fertilizing and planting issues that’s a pain in the ass to deal with on a commercial scale, then probably not. If it’s low maintenance, then yeah, I’d give it a shot.”

“Thanks. I like the sound of all this so far. I’ll have to hash all this out with Brandon, of course, but I can’t imagine him being against this. I wouldn’t think.”

Whitney couldn’t help the grin. “Tell him it was my mom’s idea.”

Justin’s brow lifted. “If that’s the trick, I should have used it from the start.”

She laughed. “Just about everyone loves Mom. And then if he refuses, I can promise you she’ll be knocking on his door.”

“Noted.”

Wade stretched and pushed away from the table. “If there’s nothing else, I’m heading back to the house to make sure everything is going as it’s supposed to be.”

Whitney glanced between the two men and nodded. “I think we’re okay. Until we get some details figured out, there’s not much else to discuss.”

“You coming back to the farm?”

She nodded. “By the time I get there, I should have some updated numbers from our farm in Texas. They report today and I’m actually not behind.” Her gaze strayed to Justin. It was easy to be dedicated to her desk if finishing early meant having him later. Heat started across her face, and she lifted her gaze back to her brother who gave her a knowing look.

Complete with a shake of his head. “I don’t want to hear more. I’m just glad you’re not behind.”

With that he left and she faced Justin. His smile was dark and a lot like the grin he’d given her two nights ago as he kissed his way below her belly button, then her inner thighs. She trembled with memories of his skilled mouth. She’d known before he was a great kisser. Man, she didn’t even have a clue.