“Uh… Yeah. You just… You sleep naked?”

  “Usually, yes. It has health benefits.”

  “Right. Health,” Arwen said, looking at where Iro had unbuttoned the top button of her shirt and loosened her tie a bit.

  “What do you sleep in, beautiful Arwen?”

  “Usually, an old T-shirt that has a spaghetti sauce stain on it and a pair of old sweats that I cut off into shorts when I tore the left leg too much to sew them back up.”

  “Perfect,” Iro replied.

  “Hardly.” Arwen laughed.

  Iro squeezed her hand and asked, “Do you need to lock all those locks before we go?”

  “Oh, yeah. One sec.” Arwen nervously locked all four locks and turned to her. “So, where are we going, exactly?”

  “You are not great with surprises, are you?” Iro laughed and held out her hand for Arwen to take.

  CHAPTER 9

  Arwen

  “I hope this place is all right,” Iro said.

  Arwen turned to look out her window then. She hadn’t bothered to glance outside the entire twenty-minute ride. She had been too busy staring at the woman next to her to even notice that they were driving anywhere.

  “Where are–” Arwen stopped when she saw the name of the restaurant and recognized it immediately. “It’s a vegan restaurant. It’s the vegan restaurant.” She looked back at Iro. “It’s the best vegan restaurant in the city. Well, there aren’t all that many, but it’s won awards. All of them, I think. I tried to walk in once, and they said they were booked out for weeks.”

  “I made a reservation.”

  “When? Today?”

  “Yes,” Iro replied.

  “And they had a table?”

  “They did, yes. Shall we?” Iro said, nodding to the door that was opened for Arwen by the driver.

  “I hate to say this, but I could get used to that.”

  Iro climbed out after her and said, “We could’ve taken the subway, but I wanted to at least pick you up for our first date. If you want to do that on the way back, though, we can.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Arwen said with a little smile. “I’ve never been here before, but I’ve looked up the menu online, and it looked amazing. Do you even eat vegan food? Can you find something here to eat for yourself?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Iro replied and took Arwen’s hand.

  Then, her free hand moved to open the door for Arwen, and she let go to motion for Arwen to walk in first. Her hand landed on the small of Arwen’s back as they arrived at the host stand.

  “Reservation,” Iro said.

  “Name?” the woman asked.

  “Iro.”

  They were sat at a table by the window, and the hostess handed them their menus before she walked off, leaving them alone.

  “What should I get?” Iro asked. “You’re the expert.”

  “Can I ask you something first?”

  “Of course.”

  “Just then, you gave her your first name, but normally people make reservations under their last name.”

  “Is your question regarding my last name, Arwen?”

  “Yes. What is it? I tried to find you online, but I couldn’t. Even with your rare first name, I couldn’t find you.”

  “You tried to find me online?” Iro smirked.

  “Yes. I wanted to know more about this mystery woman who was taking me out on a date.”

  “No mystery, I assure you. But if you were looking for Iro, you wouldn’t have found anything on me because that’s the name I choose to go by, and I always have, but my given name is Irabella.”

  “Irabella?” Arwen smiled. “That’s beautiful.”

  “It is. But it doesn’t exactly suit me, does it?” She motioned to the actual suit she was wearing. “And my last name is Black. If you were trying to find me through my company, that would be Black, Garnier, and Lopez Investments. We’re global, and you can check out our website and holdings at any time. Or, if you prefer to be bored, I can walk you through all of it now.”

  “You have partners?”

  “No. I thought it would sound better if it looked like I had partners, so I chose Spanish and French names to go next to mine. I have staff and offices all over the world, but I am the sole owner of the business.”

  “Wow,” Arwen said. “Successful and gorgeous.”

  Iro smiled coyly and asked, “What should I eat now that we have that settled?”

  “How are you about sharing food?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I order something and you order something different, do you share?”

  “Oh. If you’d like, yes,” Iro replied.

  “Then, we should get the roasted beet hummus and the avocado crispy rice for appetizers. I heard they’re both amazing. Do you like pizza? They have pizza here.”

  Iro smiled and said, “Whatever you want.”

  “I’m a little excited. Sorry.” Arwen giggled.

  “Don’t apologize to me. I like it.”

  “What if we got a pizza and something else to share?”

  “I’ll try anything once,” Iro replied.

  Arwen swallowed and tried to keep her mind focused on the food.

  “Barbecue chicken pizza?”

  “Chicken?” Iro asked, surprised.

  “Not real chicken, obviously.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “Their roasted tofu. They cook it in a cast-iron skillet, and it looks so good.”

  “Okay. I’m in.”

  “You’re not judging me for ordering this much food, are you?”

  “No, I like a woman who eats,” Iro replied. “Food is a necessity of life. We all need it to survive, but it can also be delicious and come with great company. Why shouldn’t we eat as much as we want and enjoy it?”

  “High cholesterol? Diabetes? Heart problems?”

  “Well, the food here is incredibly healthy, so I think we should be okay,” Iro said with a smile.

  “What if I put on, like, eighty pounds because I eat everything on this menu?” she asked.

  “More of you to go out with next time,” Iro said.

  Arwen laughed and replied, “You really are good at this, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not trying to be. I mean everything I say, Arwen.”

  “I can tell you do,” she said, getting serious. “It’s a big change from what I’m used to, though, so bear with me while I try to adapt.”

  “Good evening,” their waiter said, approaching. “My name is Jacob, and I’ll be your server tonight. I’d love to get you started with something to drink and review our specials, if you’re interested.”

  “Do you serve vegan wine?” Iro asked.

  “We do,” he said.

  “Red. You can bring the bottle of whatever you have. And my date isn’t a big wine drinker, so whatever she’d like as well. Normally, I’m not a big wine drinker myself, but I thought I might like to try vegan wine for the first time,” Iro added that last part to Arwen.

  “Actually, I’d love to try their wine,” Arwen said, surprised that Iro would even know that a lot of wines weren’t vegan. “Are you sure you don’t want bourbon?”

  “Maybe. If the wine is horrid,” Iro teased her. “Your best red is fine,” she added to the waiter.

  “Excellent,” he replied. “I’ll bring that right out. Would you like me to go over the specials?”

  “I think we’re ready to order,” Arwen said. “Unless you want to hear them.”

  She looked up at Iro to check.

  “No, whatever you want is fine,” Iro replied.

  “Can we start with roasted beet hummus and the avocado crispy rice?”

  “Of course,” the waiter said.

  “And the barbecue chicken pizza and the roasted tofu after that.”

  “Sure. Let me go get your wine and some water for you as well,” the guy replied before walking off.

  “I can’t believe I’m here. This place has been on my list of places to go since it opened,” she said. “How did you get them to give you a table on such short notice?”

  “I think you’ll find, Arwen, that as disappointing as it is sometimes, money can get you just about anything, and I have a lot of it.”

  Arwen leaned in and asked, “Your business is that successful?”

  “I have made great investments over the years, yes, and I started young.”

  “Your parents must be very proud,” she said, trying to learn more about this beautiful woman.

  “My parents passed away when I was young. They don’t know about all this. But I’m sure, wherever she is, my mother is proud of me.”

  “Not your father?”

  “My father was a hard man. He was what we would call very blue-collar, and he wanted a boy. The last thing he wanted was another daughter.”

  “Another? You have sisters?”

  “I had four sisters,” Iro shared.

  “Had?” Arwen asked.

  “They’re no longer around, either.”

  “What? Iro… What happened?”

  “Accidents for two of them, then cancer, and one died during childbirth.”

  Iro sounded very much unaffected, as if she’d given this exact sentence over a hundred times, and maybe she had, so Arwen didn’t want to push about their deaths.

  “I’m so sorry. Were you older? Younger?”

  “I was the youngest. My oldest sister, Elizabeth, died in childbirth. Her baby, a girl, didn’t survive. She was premature. The next eldest was Mary. She had cancer. Then, there was Agnes, who died in a… car accident.” Iro cleared her throat. “And Joan was with her.”

  “Oh, my God,” Arwen said, placing her hand, palm up, on the table.

  Iro stared down at it in confusion, almost as if she didn’t know what to do, which made Arwen wonder, but then, Iro slipped her hand into hers.

  “And your father?”

  “Long gone,” Iro told her, keeping it vague, and Arwen didn’t want to press again. “What about your family? I hope more pleasant news.”

  “My mom and dad are both lawyers. I guess it runs in the family. I’m an only child. My mom is a public defender, and my dad has his own not-all-that-successful injury firm, so we were never well-off or anything. I grew up in a small two-bedroom house in Virginia. They’re still there.”

  “Where did your passion for the environment come from?” Iro asked.

  “Years ago, my parents watched a documentary about the meat industry and turned me onto it. We all became vegetarians after that, and a few years later, I went vegan. They’re still vegetarians, but my mom knows just about every way to make something vegan for me when I come home for a visit. Anyway, that documentary got me hooked on learning more about the environmental impact of the modern world, and I started making changes as I could. It’s actually cheaper for me to make my own soaps and stuff, so that’s an added benefit because you don’t make a lot of money doing what I do.”

  “The millionaires are the ones polluting the environment, I suspect,” Iro noted, pointing to herself.

  Arwen smiled and said, “We’re all polluting it, no matter what we do, really. But I don’t get mad at people who are making a real effort to learn and try to do better. I get mad at climate change deniers because it makes no sense to me. How can you not see it?”

  “I think there are a lot of things that are obvious, but people choose not to look,” Iro replied.

  “Here’s your wine, and I’ve got waters as well. Would you like to sample?” their waiter asked.

  Iro checked with Arwen, who shook her head and said, “I wouldn’t know good from bad, so it’s up to you.”

  “You can just pour,” Iro replied, letting go of Arwen’s hand in order to give him space on the small table.

  “Your appetizers should be right behind me.”

  “That was fast,” Iro said.

  “No meat to cook.” Arwen winked at her. “You usually get your food faster.”

  “Another added benefit,” Iro said.

  The appetizers arrived right after the waiter had finished pouring their wine, so he set all the plates between the two of them and left them alone again.

  “What should we try first?” Iro asked.

  “Try the hummus. I’ll try the rice. Then, we’ll switch.”

  “Or…” Iro faded out before she picked up a piece of the country bread served with the hummus, dipped it, and held it out for Arwen to bite into.

  Arwen leaned over and tried her best to take a delicate bite so as not to make a mess. When she started chewing, she couldn’t believe how good it was.

  “It’s amazing,” she noted as she held a hand over her mouth to cover her chewing from view.

  Iro dipped the remaining piece of the bread and took a bite herself.

  “Yes, it’s excellent,” she said when she was done chewing. “Your turn.”

  “I never thought I’d be one of those people,” Arwen joked to try to reduce the intensity of the moment somewhat as she took a piece of the crispy rice that resembled sushi and held it out for Iro to taste.

  When Iro took the whole thing and ended up touching her fingers with her mouth before leaning back to chew, Arwen leaned back as well because that was, embarrassingly, the sexiest thing she’d ever done in her life, and yes, she was including all the times she’d ever had sex.

  “Delicious,” Iro said, looking at her in a way that made her swallow. Then, Iro wiped her mouth with the provided tan cloth napkin that had been in her lap and asked, “You’re not going to have one?”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.”

  Arwen cleared her throat and felt like she’d been doing that a lot lately before she picked one up and bit into it.

  “Just eat the whole thing, Arwen. You know you want to.”

  ‘I would happily eat you up,’ Arwen thought to herself before she took the other half into her mouth and chewed. She smiled through it because, damn, if this wasn’t the best vegan food she’d ever had.

  “We have to come back here,” she suggested. “It’s so good.”

  Iro held up her wineglass and nodded to Arwen, who did the same.

  “To many more dates like this, and as many of them as you want here,” Iro said.

  They clanked glasses, and Arwen took a sip as she processed that statement. Most people hesitated to even commit to a second date while still at the beginning of their first, but Iro was suggesting they not only have one more, but many.

  “How is it?” she asked Iro about the wine.

  “It’s surprisingly good. As I said before, I’ve never had vegan wine. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it’s enjoyable.”

  “Not six thousand dollars of enjoyable, though, right?” Arwen teased.

  “Did you look it up?”

  “Zara did. She told me the next day that what you gave her was close to six thousand dollars a bottle. She finished it, by the way, and she loved it.”

  “I’m glad,” Iro replied. “I’ll get her another, and she can drink it on a special occasion.”

  “What? No,” she said, laughing a little. “You don’t have to buy my friend expensive wine, Iro. I’ll go out with you again without it.”

  “Arwen, remember what I told you about having money? I have it. I like to spend it on things that matter. Good wine matters. I’ve had a lot of bad wine in my life, which is why I don’t usually care for it, but good wine is special and should be shared with people. If Zara can’t afford good wine, I can at least get her a bottle to keep for a special occasion. Perhaps, she’ll even open it on her wedding day with her future spouse. She’s unmarried, yes?”

  Arwen laughed a little and said, “Yes, she’s unmarried. I swear, sometimes you sound like an old British person from Shakespearean times.”

  Iro looked around and asked, “Where did you go to law school?”

  “No segue? Okay. I went to Ohio State. Virginia for undergrad. Then, Ohio for law school. Graduated and moved here when I got the job at my firm.”

  “You’ve been there since law school?”

  “I had a professor who knew I wanted environmental law, and he was old colleagues with the firm’s founding partner. He got me an interview. I got the job. I liked it and never left. I’ll be a partner next year, maybe, or the year after. It just depends on how this case goes.”

  “Case?”

  Arwen picked up a piece of the bread, dipped it into the hummus, held it out for Iro, and asked, “Do you really want to be bored?”

  “I can’t imagine anything you’d say would bore me, sweet Arwen,” Iro replied before taking a bite and licking her lips as she stared deeply into Arwen’s eyes.

  ◆◆◆

  “That was the best meal I’ve ever had,” Arwen shared when they arrived on the sidewalk.

  Iro’s free hand was on the small of her back while her other was holding her phone to her ear.

  “The car is on its way. He got stuck a few blocks over.”

  “No problem. It’s a nice night,” she said.

  “Yes, it is,” Iro replied and turned to her, moving one hand to Arwen’s hip and the other to her cheek. “Remember how I said I’m old-fashioned?”

  “Yes,” Arwen said.

  “Well, I am, but you look so beautiful right now, Arwen. Will you please allow me a brief kiss? Just something to hold me over until–”

  Arwen cut her off by leaning in and gently pressing her lips to Iro’s. She’d only meant it to be a chaste kiss, but she couldn’t stop herself from deepening it when Iro seemed to want the same. They stood there, on the sidewalk, as people walked by them, and Arwen wrapped her arms around Iro’s neck. Iro’s went around her waist, pulling her closer. When Arwen felt Iro’s tongue slip into her mouth, she moaned. She was in public, and she moaned. She couldn’t believe this was happening.

  As much as she wanted to take this further, though, she knew she wasn’t ready for that yet, and it appeared Iro wasn’t, either, because she pulled out of the kiss after it ended naturally and pressed her lips to Arwen’s forehead.

  “Wow,” Arwen said, unable to stop herself.

  Iro pulled her in tighter, and they were hugging on the sidewalk now, with Arwen pressing her lips to Iro’s neck and Iro pressing against hers.

  “Yes, wow,” Iro whispered softly into her ear before she pulled away when the car arrived.