The Dam Guy and the Diner Woman - Dynamite was a Problem
I had been getting breakfast at the diner for a few days when I met Janice one morning.
"What happened to Cathy?" I inquired.
"Her sister in law is in the hospital having a baby, and Cathy is watching the kids for a few days. You will have to put up with me. Aren't you new around here?"
Over the following week, we picked up pieces of background on each other. I was an engineer, sent here to supervise a dam project about ten miles outside of town. She was the owner of the diner, mostly by accident. After college, she was looking for something to do and her aunt prevailed on her to take a shift at the diner. The aunt picked up a new boyfriend and wanted to marry him and leave town. Janice took a deep breath, told herself this was totally silly, and spent five years buying out her aunt.
On a lazy Saturday morning, we shared a booth, having a second cup of coffee. I asked, "Can a guy get a date with you?
"You just trying to make conversation?"
"Well, I've spent a week talking to you without hearing about any man in your life, and I sit here looking at a pretty woman, and a little voice says to me, 'Ask her out.' "
"The dating possibilities are limited, unless you just want a roll in the hay."
Her face said she wasn't sure she should have said that.
I smiled and said, "We could go for a moonlight drive and look at the dam site."
She held my hand down and pounded on it with her fist. "You are trouble, but I am going to say yes. It's up to you to make it a nice first date, Dave." Her dark brown eyes stared at me with challenge in them.
"I'll tell you what. Invite me over to your house and let me cook. A night off for the real cook. If something clicks, let me take you to San Francisco for a weekend. Lots of things to do."
"Most guys around here think they are treating a girl well to ask her to go camping and sleep on the ground."
"I only stay in hotels with excellent mattresses."
"When is this cookout going to happen?"
"What about tonight? Do you have your social calendar with you?"
"If you can actually cook a decent meal by tonight, I guess I can find my little black dress somewhere. I'll see you at four so you will have plenty of time to mess up my kitchen."
Janice lived in a small frame house on the edge of town. White clapboards, front and back porches, yard with roses, sunflowers and fruit trees. I struggled to the front steps with several bags in hand. She opened the door with a big smile on her face.
"You're going to do it! I was afraid you would show up and say we were going to a place in the next town over."
"My friends would tell you I am a man of my word."
For that, I got a light kiss on the lips, and her hand taking a bag. The kitchen had been redone and was impressive.
She explained, "My aunt Steffie grew up in this house and when her parents went to the retirement home in Arizona, she told me she was fixing the kitchen and didn't care what it cost. She won't sell the house to me, even though she says she is never coming back. Would you live here rent free?"
"It has small town charm. Do the plumbing and heat work?"
"All the guys who do that stuff eat at the diner. Of course, they work."
She had cowboy jeans on with a gingham shirt and looked great.
"You are supposed to garden or something while I work in here. Menu is a secret."
"I've decided to give you some motivation. I cleaned the hot tub and refilled it. It is heating right now. But if the meal is a bust, no hot tub."
"What if I fix margaritas and you sit on that stool and only make polite suggestions?"
Her arms went around my waist and her lips were on the back of my neck. "You are big and strong and have a smooth line. Where is the wife or girlfriend?"
I turned around, pushed Jan against the counter and gave her a proper kiss. "Women discover I'm wedded to my work, which takes me all over, mostly to uninhabitable places."
"How long are you going to be here?"
"Project schedule says twenty months. Might be longer if we run into trouble."
"So there could be a few dates?"
I wrapped her in a bearhug and got another kiss. "Seems like the odds of more dates are rising."
I eased her to the stool, and made two margaritas the way I like them, with fresh lime juice and triple sec and tequila. Put just a little salt on the rim. She took a long swallow and said, "You are winning my heart, Dave. This is really smooth, just like you."
"No compliments please, until after you have tried my food."
She sat there, bantering with me, while I did my chef thing. The menu was very safe, since I knew nothing about her tastes in food. Prime rib, roast potatoes, string beans, and a mixed green salad. I did all the preliminary work and put the meat into a roasting pan, to which the potatoes would be added a little later, and set the timer for 90 minutes.
I asked about a second drink, and she said, "Let's go for a stroll up the back hill. It has a nice view."
The path was wide enough for us to walk together and she took my hand. We stood under a tall oak near the top, my back against the trunk and her back against me. She wrapped my hands around her and then moved them on top of her breasts.
"You sure do make a woman feel comfortable around you."
I kissed her ear and licked her neck. She wiggled her behind into me. "The single guys around here won't take you out again unless you go down for them on the first date. Sort of like a meat market. I don't have to do that for you, do I?"
Looking out at the rolling foothills with summer brown grass everywhere, I said, "You surely don't. If we get to sex in the air, will you tell me if you are needing some?"
She laughed and turned around in my arms. "Yes, I promise to tell you when I am needy." The kiss was long and wet.
I said we should eat at the kitchen table, a piece of history that looked perfect in the modernized room. I had brought an aged Pinot Noir with me and it was fine. We sipped while I finished the salad and let the roast rest a bit. She got off the stool and grabbed me.
"You are pretty handy in a kitchen. Where did that come from?"
"I was married for a while to a woman who hated cooking. She wanted a career and thought cooking was beneath her. I taught myself to cook and said goodbye to career woman."
"What about a woman who cooks as a career?"
I kissed her and said, "Seems like a dynamite combination. Let's eat."
She liked my food. "I guess there will have to be more than one hot tub."
"Let's go for that drive I offered."
We did go to the damsite. I let us through the gate with my key and parked above the big hole. It was almost dark and there were long shadows.
"Tell me what is happening here."
"They have to remove the overburden down to hard rock, and then make a trench that will be filled with concrete and rise up into the dam foundation, locking everything together. Then a hundred feet of engineered fill and concrete over the top."
"Is there going to be boating?"
"They are arguing about that. Lots of issues, water pollution, safety, cost."
Back at the frame house, after my dinner was well complimented, we sat on the sofa in the parlor with coffee and dense chocolate cake. She lay down with her head in my lap and closed her eyes. I spread the blanket over her.
"No one has been this nice to me for a long time, Dave. Maybe you should stay and warm my bed tonight."
"I haven't had a sleepover invite in a long time."
Her lips were soft and wet. Her tongue danced with mine. The hands that pulled my head down played with my hair. I wondered if she was feeling needy.
She found a new toothbrush, and we brushed side by side at matching original pedestal sinks. She had on a pretty embroidered nightgown.
"My mother gave it to me as an engagement present. The guy got cold feet and disappeared. She told me to save it for later. You are the first man to see me in it."
I was standing at the bedroom window when she came out and I gathered her in. "The hospitality in this house is pretty special."
"If you are trying to seduce me, you are succeeding. I haven't been this hot and bothered since I was a teenager."
"Your mother told me I was to strictly behave on a first date."
"You said that if sex was in the air, I could tell you I was needy. Take the nightgown off."
She had my shorts on the floor next to the nightgown in a moment. We rubbed on each other, kissing and nibbling.
"I want you to pretend we went camping, and you have me down in the pine needles, jamming yourself into me. I scream at you to be a proper lover..."
She got it right there, on her bedroom carpet. My best bad guy technique. Letting him explore every crevice of her delicious body. She bucked and humped and shouted, and came. I turned down the bed, lay her in it, and retrieved towels from the bath.
As we slipped off to sleep, she whispered, "I am sooo needy..."
It was four am by the bedside clock and I had to go. I had hardly started when she was there, her hand on me. She said, "This is another first, holding you."
I hugged her and said, "We are rewriting the book on first dates."
She lay her leg over mine in the bed and laughed. "I'm asking myself whether I am just a slut for what we did after all that talk about first date behavior."
"The book is under revision. Needs to be brought up to the present. In this modern age, your mother would want to watch."
She wiggled and giggled. "You are bad. In the new version of the book, I'm not sorry in the morning, I'm getting fucked again?"
I licked her breast and went back to sleep.
The sun was on my eyes, which weren't open yet. I was alone in the bed. I stretched and remembered my needy girlfriend's wild behavior last night. Did she already ask for more in the morning?"
"Sit up, engineer. Here is your breakfast. And your slut."
The tray was all she had on. I shoved up against the headboard and took the tray. She made sure she was pressed tight to me and turned her lips for a kiss.
The coffee was dark and hot. It burned its way down and I thought about many cold Sundays on job sites with only lukewarm instant to drink. Better see if you are invited for more nights in this fine bed.
