Old Dog New Tricks

by Roxanne St Claire

  She felt a smile pull. “You think you can orchestrate that? Wow, the Dogfather is very good.”

  “I’m six for six.”

  “And you made every one of them happen?”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure I had some help from above.” He looked skyward and laughed. “Divine intervention, a little guidance from their mother, and really lucky timing, but yeah. I did.”

  “So what are the secrets to success?”

  He thought about that, taking another deep draw on his water. “So much of it is organic, you know. Just done by feel. When Jessie showed up, I instantly saw the change in Garrett. Like, the very first hour she was here. She almost left and abandoned her assignment to interview him, but I encouraged her to stay, and that was really all it took. Shane was a little more of a surprise to me, since I was trying to get Liam and Andi together, but Shane jumped in and met Chloe. But then I managed to convince Liam to give Jag to Andi when she needed protection. And of course, they got ‘married,’ but it wasn’t real…” He grinned. “Until it was.”

  She laughed heartily. “And Molly? Darcy? Aidan?”

  “Oh, they were all putty in my hands. Molly didn’t know I knew the truth about Trace, but she should have realized Annie told me everything. I wasn’t sure Aidan would fall for Beck, but I suspected her similarity to his best friend would attract him, and I was right. Darcy, well. I honestly didn’t set out to fix her up with Josh, but after she met him, I knew we had a winner, and I merely encouraged her.”

  “You must have something that tells you the match might work.”

  He considered that, nodding. “The trick is to put them in the right place at the right time, then give them a mutual cause.” He reached down and rubbed Rusty. “And a dog.”

  “A dog?”

  “Every one of those romances happened because of a dog.” He beamed at her. “But we already have a mutual cause with these two families.”

  “Nick?” Her brows rose.

  “The restaurant in Bitter Bark. Your family wants to turn Hoagies & Heroes into the next Santorini’s. My family can help. We need to get them together, convince your kids that the place is perfect, and mine will jump in to do whatever is needed to help transform it. Construction, word of mouth, an event. By the time it opens and has a line out the door, they’ll be fast friends.”

  “You think it’s that easy?”

  “It could be.” He scooted a little closer. “Listen, Hoagies & Heroes closes after lunch on Sunday. That’s a perfect time for the Santorini clan to do a walk-through and sit down with the owners, which I can easily arrange. Then, since you’ll all be in Bitter Bark, everyone comes to Sunday dinner at Waterford. Then we have everyone together, talking about a mutual cause. Easy-peasy.”

  Until it wasn’t. “And when we announce that we kept this very important piece of information from them?”

  He shook his head, taking her hand. “Don’t think of it that way, Katie. We’re not telling anyone until we know for sure. And then we’re telling Nick first. We’re not withholding anything.”

  “We?”

  “We,” he said, with no hesitation or doubt. “We’re in this together.”

  “That does make it easier,” she admitted, curling her fingers into his.

  “Yeah.” He looked down at their joined hands for a long moment and visibly swallowed. “Easier…in some ways. A little difficult in others.”

  “What do you mean, Daniel?”

  “I mean that I do like being in it together. I like it a lot.” He blew out a soft breath and looked away. “Maybe…too much.”

  She put her hand on his chin and turned his face back to her. “Because you almost kissed me back there on the trail?”

  He closed his eyes. “I thought maybe you…”

  “Didn’t notice? I was not, as the calendar will so wretchedly prove, born yesterday.”

  He smiled, but his expression grew serious again. “Katie, it’s been a long, long time of being alone.”

  “And that’s why you wanted to kiss me? Because you’re lonely?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I’ve had enough opportunities not to be lonely in the past few years. What I meant to say is it’s been a long, long time since I’ve wanted to kiss anyone. Never thought I really would again, to be honest.”

  She swallowed, realizing that despite the bottle of water, her mouth was dry. “And you do now?”

  Very slowly, he nodded. “And it scares the crap out of me,” he admitted in a husky voice.

  “Makes you feel like a cheater, a traitor, and a bad spouse?” she guessed.

  “Like I’m breaking a vow.” He ground out the words, obviously cut by them.

  “I’m pretty sure part of that vow was ‘until death do us part.’” She leaned closer. “Our marriages didn’t end in divorce, Daniel. We lost people we loved wholeheartedly, and both of us think our dearly departed other halves are watching right now.”

  He let out a sigh. “It’s the other reason I didn’t call you for a few days.”

  “Because you wanted to kiss me?”

  “Because I’ve been thinking…things.”

  Oh. That changed things, didn’t it? “I’ve been thinking about those things, too.”

  “You have?”

  “How could I not?” she admitted on a nervous laugh. “I was attracted to you the moment I laid eyes on you at some party in an apartment more than forty years ago. I wanted to kiss you five minutes after we started talking. And I was still in love with Nico then, like I am now.”

  He regarded her for a long time, holding her gaze long enough to make her pulse beat faster and her breath quicken.

  And long enough for every cell in her body to want him to kiss her.

  “Why don’t we just get it out of the way?” she suggested in a soft whisper.

  “Once we kiss and know that it’s not…”

  “Not what we’re used to,” she finished.

  “Yeah, yeah. That should be enough to, you know…”

  “Make us stop thinking about it.”

  He angled his head. “You think it works that way, Kate?”

  She didn’t know if it was the intimacy of the shortened name or the closeness of his mouth or the sunshine or the air or some long-dormant hormones that suddenly decided to spark up her body, but something made her lean closer.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Do you?”

  “Not sure. But I think it’s worth a try.”

  For a long, long time, they both stayed perfectly still. The only sounds were the blood thrumming in her head and Rusty’s soft snore. She could smell the clean, woodsy air that clung to a man inches away and feel the heat of his thighs straddling the bench and close to her body.

  She could see the flecks of dark blue in his eyes and the tips of his lashes when he closed his eyes and moved slightly closer. She could feel his breath then, and that made her eyes slowly close.

  And then he was gone.

  Up and off the bench so fast, she felt the air move.

  “Let’s not do this,” he said.

  The rejection hurt, but she nodded, standing slowly and wrapping up the other half of her sandwich. “Okay.” But it wasn’t. It really wasn’t okay at all.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “You could,” she corrected. “You don’t want to.”

  He gave a sharp laugh. “Oh yes, I do.”

  Turning to her, he squared his shoulders and raised his chin, the posture taking Katie back to a chilly January night in 1976. It was Daniel’s do-the-right-thing pose, the body language that said he didn’t exactly relish the direction his moral compass was sending him, but he’d go anyway.

  “We should be friends, Katie. Just friends. Nothing more, nothing less. We’re in this together, but…we need to make this as easy as possible on the people we love.”

  “In other words, if we kissed, everything gets a new layer of complicated?”

  “Many layers. If we can’t be friends
, then we’re back in this thing alone, and neither of us wants that. So we can’t. We can’t do that again.”

  They hadn’t done anything, but she didn’t want to drive that point home. They’d felt the same things, wanted the same things, and were terrified of the same things. But on Friday night, he hadn’t seemed quite so opposed to those things. Maybe the time he’d had to think about Nick had helped build a wall where she was concerned, and she certainly understood that.

  “Then we won’t.” She started packing up the food, cleaning the table for something to do with her hands, because putting them on Daniel’s rough cheeks and telling him he was wrong about that didn’t seem like an option.

  “You understand, right?”

  She turned and looked up at him. “Fully. Completely. And I agree.”

  White lie, but it was really the safest way to go.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “So when are you breakin’ the news, lad?” Gramma Finnie looked up from buttering her toast, meeting Daniel’s gaze moments after the last of the Kilcannons and staff left the kitchen to begin a busy Friday at Waterford.

  “In time.”

  She cocked her head. “I’m pushing eighty-eight, son. Don’t take too much time.”

  He narrowed his eyes because she knew he didn’t find jokes about her age funny. “No worries, Gramma. We have plans.”

  “And can I know them? Or is it only you and the lass in on your top-secret private plans?”

  “Just us, for the moment. But the plan kicks off on Sunday when we have Katie and three of her kids here for dinner.”

  Her blue eyes widened behind bifocals. “Saints and angels, Daniel Seamus. When were you going to tell me? Sunday’s young Ella’s birthday celebration, and all the Mahoneys will be here, plus our crew. We’re lookin’ at nearly twenty people, and that’s too many for the dining room, assuming Jessie hasn’t gone into labor, which could be any day.”

  He stared at her for a moment, his mind a thousand miles away. Well, about fifty miles…in Chestnut Creek. “A buffet is fine,” he said. “It’s not about eating.”

  “With twenty hungry people in this house, it is.” She put her knife down and leaned forward. “So you’re making the announcement then? I sure hope so, since I canna hold it in a whole lot longer, lad. When I’m alone with Molly or Darcy, I all but burst with the news.”

  “Please.” He gave her a stern warning look. “We still have to get the results from Bloodline.com, and if they are what we think they are, then Katie wants Nick to know first, and I couldn’t agree more. We’re a month away from anything like that.”

  “I know.” She held up her hand and nodded, since they’d had this very same conversation every time they’d been alone in the past week. “But why didn’t you mention the dinner sooner?”

  He shrugged, knowing the real answer was he was preoccupied. Thinking about Katie when he shouldn’t have been. Considering how they might tell Nick. Powering through his plan to be friends, while plagued by an age-old male frustration so foreign, he’d forgotten what it felt like to go to sleep hot, bothered, and second-guessing what he knew was right.

  “Daniel?”

  “I should have mentioned it,” he admitted with an apologetic tip of his head. “I know you worry about where people will sit, but what’s important is that we meld these families before we break the news. We thought it would help make the whole thing easier for them, and us, if everyone knows and likes each other. We’re sort of matchmaking the families.”

  He expected that to amuse her, but her gray brows shot up. “Got pigs in your belly, lad?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We…we…we. Didn’t take long for a ‘we’ to emerge from this.”

  “Well, we are kind of in this together.” Not as together as they could be, but as together as they should be.

  “Truth is, you’re ‘kind of together’ more than you’re apart lately.”

  He’d fended off these comments—some subtle, some like a brick to the head—all week from his kids. “Not that much,” he mumbled, turning to take his cup to the sink.

  “Half a day on Tuesday.”

  “To pick furniture in High Point.” Which hadn’t taken long, but they’d turned it into a day trip and a wonderful drive with the dogs. They’d talked, laughed, and somehow managed not to even touch each other, but that hadn’t stopped the electricity that seemed to hum when he was around Katie.

  “And then here in town Wednesday.”

  “Had to get all those paint samples, and she wanted to stop in at Hoagies & Heroes.” And they’d tested Goldie in the park, which hadn’t gone well, so they’d brought her back here and ended up hanging out in the living room talking about what he might do with the furniture. And she’d told him wonderful stories about Nick, which he thought about all the time when he wasn’t thinking about her.

  “And yesterday?”

  He blew out a breath, calling on a lifetime of respect for his mother even when she took things a little too far. “Katie wanted to take me to a model home she’d decorated out in that new development south of Holly Hills to see some of her ideas.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He turned from the sink. “It’s not what you’re insinuating,” he told her.

  “I’m not insinuating anything.”

  “We’re friends,” he said. “Friends with much in common and a big…issue ahead.” Hadn’t he proven that with a quick hug every time they said goodbye? No more, no less. What friends did.

  “And today?” his mother asked.

  “Today, I’m meeting with some new Waterford clients, going into town for lunch with the Spring Festival Planning Committee, and then the boys are going to help me haul the living room furniture either into storage or onto a truck to go to Goodwill, so Katie and I can paint on Saturday.”

  “And then Sunday is the dinner.”

  “Buffet,” he corrected with a wink.

  “And you saw her on Monday, if I recall correctly.”

  “Have you ever not recalled correctly, Gramma?”

  “So, six out of seven days? Is my math right?”

  Really? That many? No wonder he was as frustrated as a teenage boy on a first date. He opened the dishwasher to slide the cup into a slot, pushing a little too hard. “I’m not counting.” Except the hours until he saw her again. Those, he was definitely counting. “But yes, your math is correct, though your assumptions are not.”

  “I’ll tell the troops. There’s a buzz of speculation so loud I can barely hear myself think.”

  He rounded the counter, planting a kiss on her head, anxious to end the conversation and get his mind on anything else. “Let them buzz, but you keep the secret. You promised.”

  “And my word is good.” She straightened the toast she’d yet to start eating. “So what do you two talk about all this time?”

  “We talk about Annie. And Nico,” he added when she gave him a look. “That’s what’s so great about being with her. We can talk to our heart’s content about our late spouses, and the other one never gets bored.”

  She lifted a brow, looking both dubious and amused.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “It’s a relief to be with a woman who wants to hear about the one and only person I’ll ever truly love.”

  “And you want to hear about her husband?”

  “Very much. Nico was a colorful character, and a good man. And we talk about Nick.” He leaned close to whisper, “He was valedictorian of his high school, graduated first in his class at Duke, and got into five medical schools before picking Johns Hopkins.”

  “Oooh,” she cooed, her eyes bright with the pride he heard in his own voice. “Isn’t he the smart one.”

  “And he cares about people so deeply,” he added, thinking about the volunteer jobs Katie told him about.

  “So do your other children.”

  He drew back, blinking at the admonishment. “I know that.”

  “Just don’t forget about them with your
new shiny…son.”

  “Shhh.” He frowned at her, but not for the use of the word. Because, as always, his mother got the truth of the matter.

  “It’s not a competition,” he told her. “I’m sure there’s some Irish saying about how we can make room in our hearts for one more, no matter how many there are.”

  “Not that I can think of, but I bet I can make one up.”

  He smiled at her. “You do that and give me a little breathing room, okay? I’m sixty-one.”

  “And whistlin’.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’ve been whistlin’ a lot.”

  He coughed a laugh. “And that means…”

  “You’re happy?”

  Was he? At least he wasn’t lonely. “Maybe I am.”

  “About Nick.”

  “About…life. And you don’t have to worry about the rest of my crew. You don’t have to let go of what’s in one hand to hold on to something in the other.”

  She made a face, drawing back in astonishment. “Daniel! Did you pull that out of thin air?”

  “Yes. You’re not the only pithy one around here.”

  She flicked him away and reached for her laptop. “Go on with you now. I’ve got a blog to write.”

  “Topic?” he asked.

  She lowered her glasses on her nose and leveled her aging gaze at him. “All I’m going to say is thank you for the inspiration, Danny boy.”

  He laughed at the nickname she probably hadn’t used on him in fifty years. Cheered by it, he gave her one more kiss and left the kitchen to head to work, but all day as he went from tasks to meetings to training time with Garrett and Shane in the pen, he heard the brogue of his mother’s voice in his head.

  But it wasn’t about Nick and the other six kids he already had. Frankly, he knew he could make room in his life for another son and make it work with his family.

  But…another woman? What did the possibility of another woman in his life mean to the one he would forever hold as the one and only?

  It didn’t matter—he couldn’t. And he wouldn’t.