by Abby Gaines
“Yeah, that was before he ‘found God’ five or six years ago. He enrolled in the seminary shortly before Mom died.”
“I think Lissa said your mom died of cancer?” Jane queried. “But it was sudden?”
He nodded. “She’d had a bad back for years. By the time they found a tumor in her spine, she only had a few weeks left to live.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am.”
He nodded his thanks. “Me, too. About your mom, I mean. Last year.”
She wasn’t prepared for the rush of tears to her eyes—she blinked them away, appalled. “You’re the first person who hasn’t spoken as if my mother’s death must have been a relief to me,” she said.
He shook his head. “She can’t have been that old. Was she ill?”
“The doctor said her heart gave out for no real reason. Other than years of hard living, I guess. She was no saint and she was in some ways an awful mother. But I know she loved me in her own peculiar, negligent style and...I loved her, too. Even if I couldn’t live with her.”
“Whereas I had the perfect upbringing,” he said wryly. “Mom stayed home with us kids, while dad won the respect of the whole town as a great cop. We went to church on Sundays, and it was more than lip service. Mom was on the PTA and the garden club committee. My parents loved each other, and they loved me and Gabe.”
“That’s quite a litany,” she said uncertainly. Was he trying to make her feel bad?
“How much of the fact that my brother’s a pastor and I’m the mayor is down to nature, and how much to nurture?” he asked.
“Oh.” Surprise had her blinking again. “When you put it like that...” It seemed obvious that nurture was the main factor.
“Maybe you’re wrong when you say I’d blame the Slater DNA for any problems that might occur in Daisy’s life,” he suggested.
She’d love to believe that. “Logic doesn’t always apply to life. Even you’ve been guilty of making assumptions about me.”
“I shouldn’t have,” he said. “Not when I also knew how good you’d been to Lissa.”
“So did everyone else around here, if they thought about it. But in the eyes of some people I’ll only ever be not quite as bad as the rest of the Slaters.”
He nodded slowly.
“It’s not like I care.” Her laugh sounded brittle in her own ears. “I know the kind of person I am. It doesn’t matter what other people think.”
Kyle leaned forward, and his eyes were very dark. He placed his hand over hers, sending a trail of tingles up her arm.
“I think you’re an honorable, honest woman,” he said.
Her pulse thrummed. “I hid the truth about Daisy from you.”
“You didn’t owe me the truth,” he said. “Lissa did.”
And right now, she was hiding the fact that his dad was on a date with Micki. Did she owe him that truth?
* * *
QUARTER PAST SEVEN, and Charles’s date hadn’t arrived. Had Michelle Barratt stood him up, or was she fashionably late—whatever the heck that was?
Charles resisted the urge to check his watch yet again—the last time he looked at the time, the waitress had given him a pitying look. He didn’t have a cell phone number for Michelle, so he couldn’t check if she was on her way.
He realized he had a distinct preference for punctual women. He’d arrived at Sam’s Steakhouse two minutes before seven, and that had been no mean feat. He’d dropped Micki and her overnight bag at the Lizard Lounge a half hour ago, then had a quick drink at a little bar down the road to calm his stomach, all knotted from the tension of having Micki in his car and the sight and scent of her, while he was on his way to date another woman. Micki had touched his hand on the steering wheel as she wished him a great night. It had felt as if any chance of greatness evaporated when she closed the door of his truck behind her.
Charles had stopped to buy a packet of mints, in case Michelle Barratt didn’t like whiskey breath. He’d felt furtive, as if already he was trying to please a persnickety woman.
He frowned. He had to stop thinking of his date in negative terms before he’d even met the lady. He shouldn’t assume that every woman he met would compare unfavorably to Micki. Michelle Barratt sounded lively and warm in her emails—she seemed to share a lot of his views. And while it was unlikely she’d be as pretty as Micki, there were plenty of women in their fifties who kept a trim figure. Not that that really mattered at his stage of life.
Heck, who was he kidding? Micki’s curves haunted his dreams—he couldn’t look at her these days without wondering how she would feel in his arms. Pathetic.
Charles had asked the maître d’ for a corner booth, from where he could watch the door. He deliberately hadn’t asked Michelle what she looked like or what she’d be wearing. He hadn’t wanted to make her feel her appearance was more important than her personality. Now, he wondered if that had been a bad idea.
If she weighed three hundred pounds, it was best he knew beforehand, so he didn’t look too surprised. And to be honest, he’d never really gone for big women. Not that he liked them skinny, either. A woman should have curves, like Micki.
The restaurant door opened; next moment, Charles choked on his iced water. Hell’s bells! Micki had just walked in!
Despite the icy water, Charles broke out in a sweat. Why wasn’t she at the Lizard Lounge? He hadn’t told her he was going to Sam’s and she hadn’t asked.
Blast it, he’d told her he wasn’t on a date. If Michelle arrived now, Micki would know he’d lied—something he never did. Worse, he felt as if he were cheating on her, which was plumb crazy. She’d laugh that big, generous laugh of hers to hear that.
He couldn’t let her see him. Charles looked around discreetly. The men’s room was on the other side of the restaurant; she’d be bound to notice if he tried to make a dash for it. Micki’s gaze roved the room. Charles put his napkin up to his face and scooted around the other side of the semicircular booth’s padded seat, so he was now side-on to Micki. Then he got a better idea—he traded the napkin for the leather-bound menu, which he held open in front of his nose.
The words merged in a fuzzy mess that was already giving him a headache. He felt like Mr. Magoo.
“Hello, Charles.” It was a familiar, feminine voice.
So much for hiding. Charles lowered the menu. He cleared his throat. “Micki! Hi! Fancy seeing you here.” Then he added, “Wow!”
The word just slipped out. He’d been so panicked at the sight of her entering the restaurant, he hadn’t noticed what she wore. When he dropped her at the Lizard Lounge, she’d worn jeans and a denim jacket. Now he saw a black dress in some sort of clingy fabric that wrapped across her breasts, leaving a tantalizing vee. Three-quarter sleeves emphasized her strong but slim wrists. Lower down, the skirt was slit at the side to reveal a glimpse of shapely leg.
There was something different about her face, too. Makeup, that was it. Charles liked the scrubbed clean look she normally presented, but with color in her cheeks and reddened lips, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Her lashes seemed darker and longer, lending a sultry look.
She’d gone to a lot of trouble to meet a bunch of girlfriends.
Charles processed the evidence the way any observant cop would, and came to the only logical conclusion. “You’re not meeting your girlfriends, are you?”
She held up her hands in the busted gesture. “No, I’m not.”
“You’re meeting a man.�
� He heard the jealousy in his own voice, but he didn’t care. She gave him that secret smile he’d seen so often in the past couple weeks, and now he understood it. He’d been so dense! “Anyone I know?”
In answer, she slid into the booth next to him. Charles felt a fleeting anxiety for Michelle Barratt and what she would think to find another woman sitting here, then he forgot about her, in the pain and pleasure of seeing Micki, so beautiful, here to meet some guy.
Micki took the menu he hadn’t realized he was still holding and laid it down on the table. She took a deep breath, and Charles braced himself instinctively.
“Charles,” she said, “I’m here to see you.”
“Huh?” Oh, yeah, very articulate. But with her breasts showcased in that slinky dress he could barely string two thoughts together, let alone produce words.
“I’m Michelle Barratt.”
He waited for that to make sense, for the pieces of the story to fall into place, the way they did sometimes during an investigation if you just let all the evidence float through your mind.
Nope, not happening. “You mean, you know Michelle?”
“I am Michelle. I’m the one you’ve been emailing the past week. I wrote an answer to your ad. It meant I had to lie to you, and I’m sorry.”
Michelle Barratt. Micki Barton. Charles’s thoughts churned. Why would she do this? Some kind of prank? A joke that she and Kyle were playing on him? No, Micki loved a joke, but she wasn’t mean.
“Charles, please say something.” Her eyes clouded with worry. She twisted the amethyst bracelet on her arm.
“Why would you do that?” he said. “Maybe my brain’s not as quick as it used to be, but—”
“Aargh!” Her cry of frustration shut him up, and startled several neighboring diners into looking at them. Her fists clenched on the table. “Charles Everson, you are the smartest, liveliest, handsomest man I know and I—”
She clapped a hand to her mouth.
He was the smartest...the handsomest? Elation bubbled inside Charles...tempered by incredulity. Maybe he’d misunderstood. “And you...?” He prompted her to finish her sentence.
“And I like you.” Her voice dropped almost to whisper. “I really like you.”
His heart threatened to jump out of his chest. He wanted to leap across the table, haul her into his arms. Yet still, a part of him figured he must have misunderstood.
“You did all this—emailed me as Michelle Barratt, hitched a ride into town with me on some phony excuse, made yourself look like this—for me?”
She nodded, her eyes brilliant, her smile tremulous.
No doubt about it, he wanted to kiss her senseless. He didn’t recall ever kissing anyone senseless before and the strength of the longing took him by surprise.
But he was Charles Everson, fifty-nine years old, elder of St. Thomas’s Episcopalian Church and a grandfather.
There could be no hauling, no kissing.
He weighed his words, a ton of regret in each one. “Micki, I am so honored.”
“Don’t you dare say but,” she warned. “And don’t you dare remind me you’re twenty-two years older than I am.”
He winced. Was it that much?
“And before you point out how weird this will look back in Pinyon Ridge, how everyone will be talking behind our backs—”
Heck, he hadn’t even gotten that far. But she was right—much as he loved the town, gossip was a besetting plague.
“Just answer me one question,” she said. “Do you like me the way I like you?”
“That’s not the most important question,” he began.
“The hell it’s not!” Her flare of anger pinned Charles back in his seat. “I’ve told you I like you, Charles. But the truth is, I— I’m crazy about you.”
His heart leaped.
“If you don’t like me back, well, I guess I’ve made a fool of myself and I’ll have to live with that,” she said. “We’ll go home to Pinyon Ridge and we’ll never mention it again, and I’ll try not to feel like an ass every morning when I serve your breakfast.”
She leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. “But if you do feel something for me, then I want to know exactly what it is and what you’re going to do about it.”
For once, he was bereft of words.
“Well?” she demanded, her voice shaky, twin spots of color bright in her cheeks.
She was the most beautiful woman in the world to him.
Charles abandoned reason and voiced the words of his heart. “I can’t sleep at night for wanting you in my arms. When I close my eyes, I see your face. I come to that darned café every day, eat a bucket-load of cholesterol, drink enough coffee to poison myself and can’t bear to leave. I’m as jealous as heck at the thought of you being here to meet some man, and I wanted to kill my own son with my bare hands when I caught you kissing him.” He stopped. “Does that answer your question?”
Micki thudded back in her seat. “Yes. Thank you.”
It seemed he’d taken the wind out of her sails. They sat, looking at each other, both breathing heavily.
“So what now?” Charles ventured. No point throwing up a slew of objections that she wasn’t about to accept. And since Micki had known exactly what would happen tonight—he still couldn’t believe she liked him—she must have done some thinking about the next step.
“Now,” Micki said, and her voice quivered, “we get to know each other.”
“I feel like I know you better than I’ve ever known anyone.”
She reached across the table and covered his hand with her own. Like last time, her touch set him on fire. But this time, he gripped her fingers and reveled in the squeeze of reassurance she gave him.
“Me, too,” she said. “But you’ve still got a ways to go in thinking of me as girlfriend material.”
He snorted. “You’re not girlfriend material for me, there’s no doubt about that.”
“Yes, I am,” she said firmly. “But we’ll keep it simple tonight. We’ll have dinner, we’ll talk and then you’ll drive me home.”
“We can do that,” he said, relieved that the plan demanded so little. He signaled to the waitress, who came over immediately. Then he realized neither of them had looked at the menu—Charles ordered the first thing he saw, the T-bone steak, and Micki went for the rack of lamb. They ordered a glass of wine each—Charles wasn’t about to crack open a bottle when he’d had that whiskey earlier.
Then the waitress left, and it was just the two of them, sharing a table, the way they did most mornings. Only now it was completely different. New situation, new rules.
Charles cleared his throat. “Okay. So what shall we talk about?”
“The same things we always do, I guess,” Micki said.
He cast around, but his mind was a blank. She wasn’t producing any sparkling conversation, either. He couldn’t recall it ever being like this before—neither of them having a word to say.
He eyed her with a consternation that matched hers.
Then Micki started to laugh, and he caught the bug and joined in.
“After all that hard work,” she gasped, “I can’t think of a thing to say.”
“You can start,” Charles said sternly, “by telling me what that kiss with Kyle was about.”
* * *
JANE LICKED THE LAST of her crème brûlée off the spoon. She noted the way Kyle focused on her mouth. He’d polished off his apple tart a few minutes ago.
“Do you realize,” she said, “tomorrow is the last day of the four weeks we agreed I’d stay?”
He jolted back in his seat. “But you’re not leaving yet, right?”
His certainty cloaked her like a blanket, made her feel warm and...wanted. But she knew better than to jump to conclusions.
“It would be unsettling for Daisy if I left tomorrow when we haven’t discussed it recently,” she agreed.
“I’m not ready for you to go,” he said.
Still, she didn’t jump. They’d been in limbo for the past week, neither moving forward nor slipping backward in their relationship with each other. The sizzling sensual tension still fizzed at every casual touch, but neither of them had acted on it.
To move on from here would require a decision Jane wasn’t sure she was brave enough to make. What was Kyle’s excuse?
“So what would you say is going on between us?” she asked.
To his credit, he didn’t flinch from the question. When she set down her dessert spoon, he reached for her hand. He turned it over; his thumb traced a slow circle on her palm.
“Okay,” he said, “let’s talk about what’s going on. There are a hell of a lot of things I like about you. Starting with your pj’s and your gorgeous legs.”
She laughed.
“Then,” he said, “moving swiftly on to your incredible figure, your luscious mouth. I can’t stop thinking about your mouth, by the way.”
“I noticed you staring.” The obvious hunger in his eyes set up a fluttering in her stomach, dried her throat.
He grinned. “I like the feel of you in my arms. I’d like to feel that again.”
She nodded her agreement with the sentiment.
Silence fell.
After a moment, she said, “Getting back to my original question, what’s going on?”
“I’m still figuring that out,” he said with an honesty she appreciated. Sort of.
“So...you wouldn’t say we’re dating?”
“I’d say this is a date,” he said. “I like you, Jane. A lot.”