Dameon actually looked a little embarrassed by the praise.

“What are you two drinking?” Carrie lifted a notepad and poised her pen to write.

“Is Adam behind the bar?” Grace asked.

“Yup.”

“Tell him it’s me and I want an old-fashioned.”

“Make it two,” Dameon said.

“Coming right up,” Carrie said with a wink.

She walked off and Dameon leaned closer. “She seems nice.”

“Carrie’s good people. Her little boy is adorable.”

“How is it growing up in a place where everyone knows you?”

“There’s well over two hundred thousand people in this valley. Not everybody knows me.”

“Why do I doubt that?”

“It helps that my dad was a cop in this town. That’s a close-knit group all by itself.”

“Does it get you out of tickets?” he asked.

She shook her head, then nodded. “When we were new drivers, my dad would tell his friends to pull us over if we sneezed wrong.”

Dameon laughed.

“We were so paranoid about getting a ticket that our friends never wanted us to drive anywhere. The funny thing was my dad’s friends weren’t nearly as bad as my mom’s. The PTA moms in this town knew who just got their driver’s license and were constantly reporting if they saw something they didn’t like. It’s easy to spot a police car. But everyone and their brother drives an SUV in this town.” The busboy dropped off a basket of garlic bread, and Grace dug in. “We didn’t get away with anything.”

“Kept you safe, I bet.”

“It did. I look back and realize I’ll do the same thing if I have kids.” Although she’d started to lose faith that kids would be a part of her world if her relationship status didn’t change. “What about you? Did your parents helicopter you growing up?”

“Nothing like yours. My dad was a contractor, worked with his own team doing remodels and the occasional small complex. His reach wasn’t nearly as big as your family’s. Mom helped with his bookkeeping and back office work. She was involved in some of the school stuff we were in, but I don’t remember the PTA being a thing.”

Carrie arrived with their drinks, murmured something about getting an order out, and disappeared.

Grace swirled her drink with the cocktail straw. “So that’s how you got into investing? Your dad?”

“My dad taught me construction. But I thought he worked too hard. He said he kept his business small because he didn’t need the stress that went along with the money of making it big. But apparently his stress level was up there anyway.”

“Oh, why?”

Dameon picked up his drink. “We lost him five years ago. Heart attack.”

Grace looked him in the eye. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.” She couldn’t imagine losing her dad.

“Thanks. It was hard. None of us saw it coming. Hit my mom the most.”

Grace sipped her drink. “I bet it did.”

“I wanted to build more, be more, than my dad. My parents encouraged me, helped out in the beginning.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

He nodded and tilted his drink back. “I do. I like the fact that I employ people and build things. Or my company does, anyway. With that comes responsibility for the people who work for me, and I never lose sight of that.”

“That’s good. Keeps you humble. I would think a lot of men in your situation forget where they started and make bad choices when they do.”

Carrie stopped by the table again. Neither of them had opened a menu, not that Grace needed to. She ordered prime rib with her desired sides, and Dameon lifted two fingers in the air.

“You trust me with your cocktail and your dinner?” Grace asked.

“How soon we forget the pedicure.”

Grace started to laugh, her eyes met Dameon’s, and he laughed right along with her. They eased into a conversation that moved from pedicures to projects, and the stress of the day began to melt off her shoulders. They took their time eating and talking about their families. Dameon told her he wasn’t close to his brother, which baffled her. She countered with the fact that there wasn’t a week that went by that she didn’t talk to her brothers if not see them. It helped that she was friends with their significant others.

They finished with coffee and skipped dessert.

With her full stomach and head slightly affected by their drinks, Grace found herself staring at Dameon and wondering how the hell they got there. Yes, she knew, of course, but despite the fact that she knew better than to foster anything more than a working relationship with the man, she kept wondering what if . . .

What if they had met outside of work?

What if he was as infatuated with dating her as he said he was?

What was really wrong with that?

“Someone got quiet,” Dameon said, snapping her out of her internal monologue.

She dropped her gaze to her hands resting on the table. “I was trying to figure out a way to blame you for breaking my self-imposed rule.”

“What rule is that?” he asked with a grin.

“Dinner and drinks with someone I’m working with.”

“Ah. You make it sound like I’m part of the office staff.”

Their eyes met again. “You’re hardly that.”

He reached over and covered her hand with his.

Her skin buzzed with the simple contact. And from the way Dameon’s smile disappeared and was replaced by heat in his eyes, he wasn’t unaffected by the touch either.

Silence spread between them, and for the first time all night, Grace couldn’t think of a single word to utter.

The gentle touch of Dameon’s thumb stroking the back of her hand had her trembling.

“Grace—”

Carrie walked up to the table at that moment, cutting Dameon’s words off. “I’m so glad you came in tonight,” she said, her cheery voice a full octave above the tone at the table.

Grace shrugged out of the spell Dameon was placing her under and turned to her friend. “Let me know when you need a night out, we can go for drinks or maybe a spa day.” As Grace spoke, she slowly slid her hand out from under Dameon’s.

“You don’t know how much I would love that.” Carrie set the bill on the table. “Nice meeting you, Dameon.”

“Likewise,” he said.

Carrie walked away, and Dameon confiscated the check before Grace could grab it.

“I said I was buying,” Grace told him.

He placed a credit card in with the bill and set it on the table. “Not in my world.”

She kept her hands in her lap to avoid the temptation of touching him again. “Is that a sexist thing? You can’t let a woman buy your dinner?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. Then he stopped and looked her in the eye. “Yeah, probably. My mom would call it good upbringing.”

Grace shrugged. “My dad would say the same thing.”

Dameon paid the bill, and they said their goodbyes to Carrie.

Halfway to Grace’s condo, Dameon brought her back to why they were out together in the first place. “Are you feeling better about tonight?”

“With Sokolov?”