Changes

by Judith Arnold

  ***

  The place he named was his own house—or, more accurately, a supermarket about a mile away from his place. Diana considered eating in an excellent suggestion. She had stopped at the Ocean Bluff Inn to drop off her suitcase, but she was still dressed in her jeans, which now had grains of sand embedded in the seams despite her having vigorously dusted herself off when they’d left the beach.

  She was tired of eating in restaurants, being served, grazing through tasting menus. She hadn’t cooked in nearly a week, and while she wasn’t the most talented chef in the world, the thought of fixing a simple, home-cooked meal with Nick appealed to her.

  Suburban supermarkets were so much more spacious than the neighborhood grocery stores where she did most of her shopping in Boston. She and Nick loaded the cart with chicken, vegetables, a baguette of French bread and, at Nick’s insistence, a quart of premium vanilla fudge ice-cream. He assured her he was well stocked with everything else they could possibly need—butter, salad dressing, coffee, spices.

  His house was tiny. It contained a small kitchen equipped with twenty-year-old appliances and Formica-topped counters, a slightly larger living room filled with mismatched but comfortable-looking furniture, and a bathroom not much larger than a closet. Despite being ridiculously small, the bathroom was clean. “I’ve got to buy a new shower curtain,” he mumbled when he showed her the room, but she couldn’t see anything terribly wrong with the shower curtain hanging from the rod.

  He was a bachelor, and she doubted he was earning a six-figure salary as a social worker running programs for Brogan’s Point’s children. The house might be modest, but it suited him. She couldn’t imagine him living in an elegant apartment like Peter’s. Nick’s eclectic furnishings, the tidy stacks of books and the recently vacuumed carpet covering the living room floor indicated that he took pride in his home. On the living room walls, he’d hung a few seascape paintings. Not masterworks, nothing Diana would have encountered in her art history classes at college, but they were pretty.

  “All right,” she said once they’d returned to the kitchen and unloaded the groceries. “Go do something. I’ll give a holler when dinner is ready.”

  “Forget that. I’ll help.”

  “If you help, I’m not treating you to dinner.”

  “If I don’t help, you won’t know where to find the pots and pans.”

  She surveyed his kitchen. There weren’t too many places to hide pots and pans—some cabinets above the counter, some below. She’d bet the pots and pans were below. She swung open a cabinet door and found exactly what she was looking for—a roasting pan. She pulled it out and gave Nick a triumphant smile.

  Still, even if she didn’t need his help, she liked having his company in the cozy little kitchen. They worked side by side, seasoning the chicken, scrubbing the carrots and potatoes and broccoli, arranging everything in the roasting pan and shaking assorted spices over the whole thing. Once that was in the oven, she prepared a salad while he disappeared down a flight of stairs to the basement. He returned a minute later holding a bottle of red wine. “I don’t have any white, so I hope this will work.”

  “I like red,” she said, and once he’d opened the bottle, she slid the roasting pan out of the oven and added a splash of wine to the chicken.

  They didn’t talk much while they prepared the meal. Diana was aware of Nick watching her—not in an uncomfortable way, but more to observe what she was doing. “How much garlic powder did you put in there?” he asked. “You didn’t measure it.”

  “I cook by feel,” Diana told him. “My parents had a maid when I was growing up. She did a lot of the cooking. I used to help her. She never measured anything, but everything always tasted great.”

  “I don’t measure much when I cook, either,” he admitted, “but that’s because I don’t cook anything that needs to be measured. Spaghetti—you fill a pot with water and toss in a handful of pasta. You open a jar of sauce and pour some on top. No measurements necessary.”

  Diana made a face. “Homemade sauce is so easy,” she told him. “You shouldn’t be using stuff from a jar.”

  “Yeah. My mother—” He abruptly stopped.

  “Your mother…?”

  “Would say the same thing,” he concluded. “Fiore. I’m Italian. I ought to know how to make sauce. Gravy, she calls it.”

  “Your mother never taught you?”

  “I didn’t want to learn,” he said laconically.

  Diana suspected there was more to his story than simply his not wanting to learn. She opted for tact, however, and busied herself wrapping the baguette in foil to heat in the oven.

  But as she finished the dinner preparations, as Nick set the small butcher-block table beneath the window with carefully folded paper napkins and mismatched silverware, as she tossed the salad and he pulled two wine glasses from one of the cabinets, a thought tugged at her brain: you know nothing about this man.

  True, she knew some things. But she didn’t know about his mother. More important, she didn’t know why his eyes darkened with shadows when he mentioned her, why an emotional shutter seemed to slam shut inside him, barring further inquiry about the woman who’d raised him.

  If he were Peter, Diana would respect that locked shutter. She wouldn’t press, wouldn’t probe. Experience had taught her not to push him into places he didn’t want to go. When she did, he became cranky and mean. She had learned that it was wisest to leave certain things unspoken with him, certain questions unasked.

  But she was no longer Peter’s fiancée. Perhaps one reason she’d left him was that she’d finally come to realize that having to exercise so much caution around him would make for a dreary, exhausting marriage. If she was ever going to get married, it ought to be to someone with whom she could discuss anything, without hesitation or fear.

  Nick Fiore and marriage did not belong in the same sentence in her mind. But she was eating dinner at his house. She’d kissed him. She wanted to kiss him again. She wanted to do much more than kiss him. She ought to be able to ask him anything. No holding back. No censoring herself.

  She waited until they were seated at the table, they’d sipped their wine, and he’d tasted the chicken and pronounced it delicious. Then she took a deep breath, as if about to dive off a high board into a very small pool, and said, “So, you’ve got a lousy relationship with your mother?”

  His eyes flashed, and then he surprised her by laughing. “You could say that.”

  “I just did.” She laughed, too, relieved that he hadn’t blown up at her. “Where does she live?”

  “Here.”

  “Here?” Diana gazed around the kitchen, half expecting to see evidence that Nick’s mother resided in this house.

  “In Brogan’s Point,” he clarified.

  “So, you grew up right here in town?”

  “I did.”

  “And never left?”

  “I went to UMass for college and grad school, but other than that…”

  Diana shouldn’t have found that fact so amazing. She’d lived her entire life in the greater Boston area, except for a semester of college in Barcelona. She’d traveled to London twice to visit Serena, toured parts of Europe with friends, spent an idyllic week in Cozumel, but as far as actually living somewhere, Boston and Brookline were her home.

  But Boston was a world-class city, filled with theaters, museums, parks, universities, four-star hotels, boutiques, gourmet shops, and residents speaking dozens of languages. Brogan’s Point was a sleepy little Cape Ann hamlet. Could a person actually live his entire life here without growing bored?

  Evidently, yes. Nick had lived his life here, and he didn’t seem the least bit bored.

  “Does your father live in Brogan’s Point, too?”

  She sensed the shutter slamming shut once more. “No.”

  Don’t hold back, she ordered herself. “Your parents are divorced?”

  “He’s gone,” Nick said tersely. />
  “Dead? I’m sorry.”

  “I…” Nick drank some wine as he sorted his thoughts. “I don’t know if he’s dead. He left town years ago. I don’t even know if my parents are legally divorced. I just know he’s gone.”

  “Really?” How could he not know if his parents were still married? How could he not be curious enough to find out?

  “It is what it is,” Nick said. “My father is out of my life. That’s all.”

  That certainly wasn’t all. But Diana decided to do him the kindness of dropping the subject for now. The fact that he’d told her as much as he had—even if it wasn’t much—and hadn’t lost his temper or accused her of unforgivable nosiness was a victory in itself. She’d touched some sore spots, and he didn’t seem to hate her.

  That alone made her want to kiss him—and more.

  They spent the rest of the meal talking about safe subjects. He told her about coordinating the town’s summer programs for teenagers who were too young to get full-time jobs but not too young to get into trouble if they wound up with free time on their hands and nothing productive to fill that time with. She told him about her meeting earlier that day with James Sawyer, and about her task for tomorrow: making sure the estate she’d liquidated was carefully packed and trucked to the warehouse space Shomback-Sawyer had reserved for it.

  She and Nick lingered at the table until the wine was gone, then cleaned up together, side by side, occasionally bumping shoulders or elbows and laughing. Nick didn’t have a dishwasher, but he had soap, a sponge and a towel, and it didn’t take long for them to get the dishes washed and stacked in the rack to dry.

  “Some ice-cream?” Nick offered.

  Diana patted her tummy. “I’m stuffed.”

  “There’s always room for dessert.”

  She grinned and shook her head. “You tried to get me to eat too much toast that morning at Riley’s, too. I think you’re trying to fatten me up.”

  “No,” he said. He was smiling, but his gaze was serious. “You’re perfect, just the way you are.”

  He’d probably intended his words as a simple compliment, nothing more. But they resonated inside her. No one had ever told her she was perfect, with good reason. She was far from perfect. Yet when she tried to recall the last time Peter had told her she looked great, or her parents had told her they were proud of her, she couldn’t think of a single instance. She worked so hard to please everyone, yet no one ever seemed quite satisfied with her.

  Except James Sawyer.

  And Nick.

  She was no longer going to knock herself out in the hope that the people who were supposed to love her actually did love her. If they did, they ought to love her for who she was, not for her willingness to please them.

  She’d heard the song. It had persuaded her to change not just her relationship status but her attitude. Her world view was changing. Her determination. Her…what was James’s word? Confidence.

  “I’m not perfect,” she told Nick now. But she said it with a smile, with the self-assurance that he wouldn’t try to locate her imperfections and criticize her for them. One advantage of not knowing Nick that well was that, if he did decide to harp on her flaws and weaknesses, she could walk away. They had no relationship. She was free. She didn’t have to please anyone but herself.

  Nick tossed the dish towel onto the counter and placed his hands on her shoulders. “You’re close enough,” he said. Was he talking about how close she was to perfection? Or how close she was to him? An arm’s length away was dangerously close.

  Less than an arm’s length. He stepped toward her, molded his fingers to the curves of her shoulders, bowed his head, and kissed her.

  Close enough, she thought as her mouth softened beneath his, as her body nestled against his, as she sank into the warmth of his kiss. She no longer had to feel guilty kissing him. She had ended things with Peter. She was unbetrothed, unattached, free.

  Free to return Nick’s kiss. Free to part her lips and welcome the invasion of his tongue. Free to wrap her arms around him, to feel the sleek muscles of his back through the fabric of his shirt.

  His tongue stroked hers, at first gently and then more hungrily. This kiss tasted better than any ice-cream Diana had ever eaten. Nick Fiore was the most delicious dessert she’d ever had.

  He wrapped one arm around her waist as he had the last time they’d kissed. She loved the way that made her feel, petite and possessed. He ran his other hand up her side, under her arm, forward just enough for his thumb to brush the side of her breast. She shuddered.

  Maybe she wasn’t free. She felt like a captive, imprisoned not by his embrace but by the lush sensations he awakened inside her. She never wanted to escape. She just wanted to keep kissing and kissing and kissing him.

  No, not true. She wanted much, much more than his kisses.

  “Make love to me,” she murmured, surprising herself. She had changed, all right. The old Diana would never have been so bold.

  His breath hitched. He pulled back just far enough to peer down into her face. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. She’d said the words once. She wasn’t sure she had enough courage to say them again.

  Apparently, once was enough. He bowed and brushed her forehead with a light kiss. Then he lifted his hands to her head, digging his fingers deep into her hair on either side of her face and tilting her to receive another, deeper kiss from him. “Okay,” he whispered.