Raymond & Raya: Forbidden Passion
Copyright© 2025 by R.R. Ryan
Chapter 7: An Intimate Dinner
Raymond Alexander’s Laptop Journal
The following night, I took Raya on our first romantic evening. And Denver’s winter air assaulted our skin. Even after we’d crossed the threshold into a building. As if the cold, persistent remembrance refused to let go. It trailed after me as I ushered Raya through the doors of the Bezel Bar.
Everything about the place screamed luxury. The kind of lavishness in that quiet, corporate way, which insisted you’d better have your credit card ready for a beating. Brass and glass everywhere. Soaring windows looked out onto frostbitten skyscrapers. Real candles, even at the door, because nothing said “upscale” like an open flame.
The suit wasn’t new. But I’d spent an hour with the iron. And an unhealthy amount of spray starch to make it behave. The shirt color lay somewhere near sea-green. The tie’s color was midway in the navy spectrum.
Banking on my attitude to distract from the little threadbare spot near my left elbow. One of those things you can’t unsee after fifty, my hands seemed even rougher by comparison. However, they appeared right at home next to the slip of a girl on my arm.
For her part, Raya didn’t dress for the occasion she inhabited her outfit. The dress wasn’t technically a dress. Not unless the old European houses marketed lingerie as evening wear. It was a bias-cut, pearl-white silk nightgown. With some intricate embroidery at the bust and a pair of filigree straps, which threatened to dissolve if you so much as breathed on them wrong.
The hem hovered a few inches above her knees. Exposing enough thigh to induce a cardiac event in the older patrons. The engagement diamond and a heavy wedding band that dwarfed her knuckle, her mother’s rings, glittered on her left hand. She ran a fingertip over them every few seconds.
The habit, a nervous tic, reminded me exactly how little she belonged here.
The hostess, young and blonde and doing her best not to stare, greeted us with the rehearsed warmth of someone who sniffed a fat tip.
She took in the rings, the suit, the pressed-together posture that said, “I belong to him,” and pasted on an extra layer of sincerity.
“Welcome to Bezel,” the pretty greeter said. Folding her hands as if praying for decorum. “Do you have a reservation?”
“Yes,” I said, clearing my throat, “under ‘Cartwright.’ Table for two.” My last name still sounded like speaking in tongues when I said it. I waited for the microsecond flicker of recognition. Some hidden files in the city’s memory, attached to lawsuits, hospital bills, and a front-page story in the News or Gazette, Father Fucks His Daughter.
The hostess didn’t blink.
“Of course, right this way,” she replied, scribbling the name with a real fountain pen onto her seating chart.
She led us across the marble floor, heels clicking out a beat to dance by. The place was maybe a third full. Mostly men with a slightly desperate look of a business traveler avoiding their hotel room. Overhead, a quartet piped in through hidden speakers played a song I vaguely recognized and immediately forgot.
The table was a little island in the bay of windows, with just enough privacy for conversation, and just enough public to be seen.
Trying not to look at her legs as she crossed them, I held Raya’s chair, and I sat across from her. The tablecloth, starched to the tensile strength of Kevlar, lay flat on top. For a moment, I just studied her. How she caught her hair with two fingers and tucked it behind her ear. And how she arranged her hands, so the rings were visible but not ostentatious. The way her eyes darted from the view to me and back again.
“Are you nervous?” I said.
“Not if you’re not.” She smiled, a small, private thing.
The lie, flatter me, and I took it.
“It’s not too late to call an audible,” I said, lowering my voice as if the other diners might listen in. “We could go get burgers. Or walk the mall.”
She gave me the look, the one she’d perfected by age thirteen.
“And waste all this effort? Please. I didn’t steal a bottle of Mommy’s perfume to go to Shake Shack.”
“You smell expensive.” I grinned.
Somewhere under the fortress of linen, Rayanna’s feet found mine. She pressed her toes against my ankle, a Morse code of defiance.
“I’m not the one worried about getting carded,” I said, nodding toward the wine glasses.
“I have an ID,” she said, her voice lowering a notch. “You said it looked real.”
“I said it looked better than mine.”
We both let the silence work for a moment, like two safecrackers listening for tumblers to fall. I watched the other diners and caught a couple dancing who glanced our way, but no one looked twice.
If anything, the spectacle of an older man with a girl who looked only about a day older than old enough to vote seemed positively tame. At least, if you compared it to what you saw in this city’s worst zip codes.
The waiter arrived in that gentle, almost apologetic way they train you in hotels. He was young, olive-skinned, with sharp eyebrows and a well-practiced air of discretion. His name tag said “Edgar.”
“Good evening,” he said. “May I offer you a cocktail or something from the wine list?” He produced a book, leather-bound and heavy enough to double as a murder weapon.
I looked at Raya, who put on her most grown-up smile.
“A glass of the Tuscany Tignanello, please,” Raya said.
He hesitated for a fraction of a second, eyes doing the math, and turned to me.
“I’ll have the same,” I said.
He nodded, jotting down the order. “I’ll just need to see your IDs.”
I felt my jaw tense, but kept my hand steady as I passed him my license. Raya produced hers with a little more flourish, extending it between two fingers. She’d practiced the gesture in the car, like it was part of an audition.
Edgar took them both, holding the cards up to the light. For a moment, his face was blank—no judgment, just the slow machinery of due diligence. He looked at mine a second longer than Raya’s, handed them back with a subtle, understanding smile.
The kind that said, “We both know, but it’s not my business how young your trophy wife is.” Only Edgar didn’t have a clue.
“Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright,” he said, sliding the menus in front of us. “I’ll have your wine right out.”
Not looking away, Raya’s cheeks flared pink. Resting her chin on the backs of her fingers, she leaned in, elbows on the table, and smirked at me.
“That wasn’t so bad,” she said.
Letting out the breath I’d been holding, and for the first time in an hour, it felt like the room was big enough for both of us.
“You did great, sweetheart. Honestly, I almost believed you were twenty-one.”
Full and unguarded, Rayanna kicked me and smiled. For a moment, her mother’s smile flickered across her face, and I had to glance down to steady myself.
“Do you think he knows?” she said.
“He doesn’t care.” I shook my head. “Most likely, he thinks you’re my underage bride.”
Opening the menu, I didn’t really see it. The nerves were gone, replaced by a low, pulsing sense of possibility. The words swam around, numbers mixed with letters, jumbled into a meaningless menagerie.
Across from me, Raya let the moment settle. She reached for her wineglass, empty for now, and cradled it like it was something precious.
“Do you think they have chicken nuggets?” She said, deadpan.
I snorted loud enough to draw a look from the table behind her.
“You’ll have to ask Edgar,” I said.
Her fingers played with the rings again, spinning them once, letting them catch the candlelight. The jewelry looked heavy on her, not quite a fit, and for a second, I wondered what it would be like to see her wear her own someday. But she looked up at me, and all the “someday’s” seemed far away.
The music changed. A pianist in the back hit the opening chords of “Blue Moon.” The other tables blurred into the background noise. All I saw was Raya, her skin glowing in the reflected light, her eyes daring me to play along.
“I like this,” she said. “Us.”
“Me too,” I said, the words as strange and true as anything I’d ever said.
At that moment, Edgar returned, setting down the wine with a white-gloved flourish. He poured a finger of ruby-red wine into each glass and waited.
“Anything else I can bring before you order?” he asked, eyes glancing between us.
I looked at Raya. She looked back, her answer clear.
“We’re good for now,” I said.
He left, and we clinked our glasses, the crystal ringing out in the hush.
“To...” I started.
“Us,” she finished.
We drank, and for a few minutes, the rest of the world simply ceased to exist.
The first sip of wine left a bitter coat on my tongue, but it was nothing compared to the heat that flared up when I saw the way Raya looked at me over the rim of her glass. She didn’t drink; she savored, eyes never leaving mine, like some kind of dare was being offered and I was too slow to accept.
I broke first. “You did great, Raya,” I said, keeping my voice low, as if we were at confession and not surrounded by the city’s moneyed elite.
She ducked her head, but her smile said she liked the praise. “Thanks, Dad.” The word carried a little more weight here, a reminder and a promise, both at once. “You look really handsome tonight,” she added, almost as an afterthought, but the kind that lingered.
The way she said it, “handsome” didn’t sound like a compliment for an old man; it sounded like a password to a different life. The knot in my chest pulled tight and unraveled in slow, uneven strands. I saw in the way her pupils widened just a touch that she’d noticed the effect her words had on me. It wasn’t a game, not really, but a test to see how far we’d bend before snapping.
“You look stunning,” I said. The word seemed too small for Rayanna. It was the only one that didn’t sound like a lie. “That dress, your mother would’ve lost her mind if she’d seen you in it.”
Raya’s lips parted, a brief intake of breath, as if she tried not to laugh or cry.
“Mom would’ve said it was indecent.”
“She’d have said it looked better on you.” I paused, letting the old ache pass. Adding, “And she’d be right.”
A silence dropped between us, heavy but not uncomfortable. I reached for Raya’s hand across the table. And she gave it willingly, her fingers cold from the glass and a little shaky. I glanced at the lines of her palm, every curve of her knuckle, and the gold bands that belonged to a different era.
“You make me nervous. In a good way,” she said, barely above a whisper.
“That’s mutual,” I said, and didn’t let go.
The windows reflected us. Two silhouettes, a little off-center, we’d stepped into someone else’s date and decided not to leave. The candles flickered, and the low hum of voices pressed in from all sides, but for a minute, it was us.
Only us and no one else.
Raya squeezed my hand, tugged gently. “Can I...” She leaned in, eyes searching mine for permission. I nodded, and she kissed me.
It should’ve been awkward—a teenager kissing her father in a packed restaurant, all the eyes and invisible judgments. But it wasn’t. It was clean and honest, and it hit me like a shot of whiskey, burning all the way down. Her mouth was soft and urgent, her hand sliding to my cheek, and I kissed her back before I talked myself out of it. It was over in a second, but it left the world feeling tilted, like we’d just skipped a step and no one caught us.
We broke apart just as Edgar materialized at the table again, menus in hand and a look of professional nonchalance glued to his face. If he noticed anything, he didn’t show it.
“Here are your menus,” he said. “Tonight’s chef’s menu is on the inside left. May I recommend the lobster risotto?”
Raya pulled her hair forward, shielding her blush behind a curtain of chestnut. “Thank you.” With her voice steady and her eyes sparkling.
I took my menu, pretending to read it while my heart hammered out Morse code. Under the table, her knee brushed mine, a secret apology for being so bold.
When Edgar left, I exhaled for what felt like the first time in ages.
“That was ... reckless,” I said, but there was no reprimand in my tone.
Raya’s smile turned sly. “You didn’t seem to mind.”
“I don’t.”
She tapped a fingernail against her glass. “Is this what you wanted? Us together, like this?”