by Abby Gaines
“My spat was with that old prune in his office,” Cat said.
Jane rolled her eyes. “What were you doing visiting Gabe, anyway?”
Silence.
“Cat?”
“Thought I’d catch up for old times’ sake,” Cat mumbled as she hung two mugs on hooks in the cupboard. “Figured he’d be there on a Sunday, and he was.”
“You don’t...still like him, do you?” Jane asked with trepidation. Because the complications between the Slaters and Eversons were already manifold. They really didn’t need any more.
“I still think he’s hot,” Cat said. “It was a bit of a shock to discover he’s a pastor.”
“I gather he’s good at it,” Jane said as she finished sorting the silverware into its drawer.
“Gabe’s good at everything he does.” Cat’s expression turned faraway.
Jane snapped her fingers in front of her sister’s face. “I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means. I haven’t seen Gabe so riled about anything as he was with you today. Do you think he still likes you?”
Cat’s mouth flattened. “Like never came into it on his side. He wanted an easy girl, and I wanted him. I liked him. We did it every which way till Sunday, but he never once took me out on a date.”
Jane felt a surge of indignation for her sister. “That’s awful.”
“To be fair, he offered to take me to a movie the first time we went out,” Cat admitted. “I said no, because I knew it would cause a fuss and his parents would hear about it and he’d likely be forbidden to see me. After that, he assumed I was happy just to hook up for sex.”
“Man, he really was a jerk.”
“I wanted him badly enough to agree,” Cat said. “And I didn’t have any self-respect to get in the way. But, yeah, he should have known better. I think I’m a reminder of a time he’s ashamed of.”
“What about that forgiveness thing he preaches? Shouldn’t he have gotten over the past?”
“We might be forgiven, but it’s human to have regrets,” Cat said knowledgably.
“What are you, a Baptist?”
Cat grinned. “Thinking about it.” She laughed at Jane’s shocked expression. “I told you, I got kind of interested in church stuff in Vegas.”
“I thought you were making it up.”
“Nope, I’m just not sure if I want to give up my bad habits and go all the way.”
“Gabe could advise you, I suppose,” Jane said dubiously.
Cat wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t want to give him the satisfaction of converting me.”
Jane laughed.
“So what’s going on between you and Kyle?” Cat asked.
“Nothing.” She said it too fast. “I mean, we’re cooperating, for Daisy’s sake. We might even be friends.” Mention of Daisy reminded her to check on the little girl. Jane glanced through the dining room to where she could see Daisy, busy with her coloring.
“And those hot and heavy glances you keep exchanging?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jane straightened the glasses in their cupboard.
Cat might be her sister, but Jane wasn’t in the habit of sharing confidences, especially when she didn’t entirely trust Cat. Heck, she didn’t trust anyone in her own family.
I trust Kyle.
Cat’s eyes on her were all too knowing.
“We both want to do our best for Daisy.” Jane deliberately transferred her gaze to the little girl, intent on her coloring in the other room.
Cat came to stand beside Jane. “Cute kid,” she said. “There’s something about her face....”
“Yeah, she really is adorable.” Jane heard the emotion in her own voice, and winced. “Poor girl. She misses Lissa horribly.”
In the living room, Daisy screwed up her face in concentration, and the tip of her tongue came out the left side of her mouth.
Cat’s hand clamped over Jane’s forearm, the nails digging in.
“Ow!” Jane yelped.
“I just figured it out.” Cat shook her arm. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. This is unreal.”
“What are you talking about?”
Cat hauled Jane to the other side of the kitchen. “That thing Daisy’s doing,” she hissed. “The tongue and the screwed-up face. Who does that remind you of?”
Oh, hell. “I’m sure lots of kids do that.”
“I said there was something about her face—it’s the shape of her chin.” Cat smacked her forehead. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before, it’s so freakin’ obvious.” Her eyes were bright with excitement.
“Calm down,” Jane ordered. “Cat, whatever you think you know, you mustn’t—”
“I’m not blind, Janelle. It’s obvious Darren’s been sowing his wild oats too close to home.”
Busy cudgeling her brain for alternative explanations her sister might believe, it took a moment for Jane to hear what she’d said. She frowned. “Darren—what do you mean?”
“That kid’s a Slater, it stands out a mile off.” Cat’s eyes narrowed. “Which means your friend Lissa must have done the deed with one of our brothers. Or our father, which is too creepy, even for him. Johnno would have been in Australia by the time Daisy came along, so I’m picking Darren as the father.”
“That’s insane,” Jane snapped.
“I wonder if Kyle knows,” Cat mused. She broke into a sly smile. “Even better, I wonder if Gabe knows.”
“Don’t you dare say a word,” Jane warned. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Cat folded her arms across her chest. “But you know. I can see it in your eyes, Janelle Slater, you were never any good at lying. And if I want to give Mr. Self-Righteous Let’s-Pretend-We-Never-Had-Illicit-Sex a kick in the teeth, I will.” She was growing louder as she spoke.
“Shut up,” Jane said. With a glare at Cat, she walked to the doorway. “Daisy, sweetie, it’s time to go upstairs. Brush your teeth, I’ll come see you in a minute.”
Daisy obeyed without comment. But the heavy silence didn’t escape the little girl; she gave Jane a worried look. Jane blew her a kiss. She’d been doing that lately. Not physically kissing Daisy, which might seem like staking a claim, but just this casual, keeping-her-distance kiss.
When Daisy was gone, Jane pointed to the kitchen table. “Sit,” she told Cat. “I’m going to tell you the truth, because I don’t want you spreading wild rumors about Lissa and Darren. But I need you to promise you won’t tell anyone.”
“Sure,” Cat said, too glib, as she pulled out a chair.
“I mean it,” Jane snapped. “This isn’t about you taking Gabe down a notch or two, this is about destroying the world of an innocent child.”
“Whatever.” Cat rested her chin on her hands, elbows on the table. “Okay, okay, I won’t say a word, I promise.”
Jane had little choice but to believe her. She could always offer Cat a loan—or a gift—to encourage her silence. “Darren’s not Daisy’s father,” she said. “I’m Daisy’s mother.”
Saying those words for the first time to someone other than Kyle, so baldly, had the most bizarre effect. Her stomach lurched; tears welled in her eyes.
Cat swore. “This is insane, Janelle. Tell me what happened. Now.”
So Jane did. “You can’t tell anyone,” she reminded Cat at the end. “No one else has noticed any resemblance between me and Daisy.”
“Because no one else shared a bed with you wh
ile you did your homework into the night with your tongue sticking out.”
“You won’t tell,” Jane said. She deliberately made it a statement, not a question.
“I won’t tell,” Cat agreed.
* * *
CHARLES SET HIS KNIFE AND FORK down on the turned-leg dining table in Micki’s apartment, his plate of chicken Marengo untouched. “This is driving me crazy.”
“My chicken Marengo?” Micki smiled at him, and his chest clenched.
Blast that candle she’d lit, which stopped him from leaning across and kissing her.
“Your cooking is incredible, and you know it.” He took an appreciative sniff of the warm air still wafting off his plate.
Micki smirked.
“It’s driving me crazy that I have to sneak in here every evening,” he said. “Tonight I had to pretend I was reading realty listings until the Grays walked on by. And you know Betty Gray, it’ll be all over town tomorrow that I’m looking for a new house.”
“You wouldn’t have to sneak in,” she said, “if we told people we’re dating.”
And have it all over town that Charles Everson was making a fool of himself over some young thing?
Correctly reading his expression, Micki flicked her napkin at him. “It’s time. We’ve had dinner together every night, breakfast every morning.”
And nothing in between dinner and breakfast, but that was how it would stay, no matter how much he wanted to make love with her. He’d always believed sex should be sanctified by marriage.
“It’ll be a sensation at first, I admit,” she said. “But people will get over it.”
“I don’t know,” he said, unused to being indecisive...and not liking it much.
She reached for his hand across the table. “At the very least, maybe I was wrong to say you couldn’t tell Kyle and Gabe. What if they figure it out, or someone else does and tells them? They’ll be hurt.”
Charles frowned. “They’re big boys, they’re not that sensitive.” He’d been worried at the thought of keeping the truth from his sons at first, but now he liked that they couldn’t subject him to an inquisition about his feelings and his plans. The kind of inquisition he never hesitated to put them through.
“But they’d be...surprised you’re dating someone my age. More specifically, me. A friend of theirs.”
Charles began to eat. He preferred not to share every thought, liked to reach a conclusion before he spoke. He loved that Micki knew that, that she let him work through his meal.
When he was done, he set his cutlery to the side of his plate and wiped his mouth on his napkin. “This might be a shock for the boys—that chicken was incredible, by the way—but they’ll get over it. They want me to be happy.”
“So we should tell them now. Let’s just tell everyone.”
He hesitated.
“Are you worried about your reputation?” she asked. “Do you think people will think we’re doing something wrong?”
Hell, yes. But that wasn’t the main issue. “I’m not worried about what anyone else in town thinks. Not enough to stop me.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
He swirled the last of the red wine in his glass. Good for the heart, Micki had said when she poured it. She was good for his heart. “I guess I’m scared,” he blurted.
He could hardly believe he was saying this, but that was the thing about Micki, he could tell her anything, wanted to tell her everything. “Scared you can’t go on feeling the way you do about me.” He rushed the words out. “Any minute now, you’ll realize I’m too old, too boring, and that’ll be the end of it. If that happens after everyone knows we’re seeing each other, it’s going to be difficult for both of us.”
“Sounds to me like you want to make it easier for us to break up.”
He backed down from her ominous tone. “I don’t want us to break up. Absolutely not.”
“But you don’t trust me to know what I want?”
Somehow, Charles seemed to be making this worse. He kept trying. “Sweetheart, people break up all the time. They get tired of what they had and want something new.”
“But that won’t happen to you, right? You won’t get tired of me?”
“Certainly not,” he said with total conviction.
“But it might happen to me?”
Uh-oh, minefield alert.
“Ah, I didn’t say that,” Charles reminded her.
“Because I’m too young, at nearly forty, to know my own mind?”
“No, that’s not it. And you’re not nearly forty, you’re barely mid-thirties.”
She rolled her eyes. “Tell me how you know you won’t change your mind.”
He was as brave as any cop when it came to walking into a homicide scene. He’d been shocked to discover he was a total wimp when it came to affairs of the heart. “I don’t have to tell you that.” He poured some more red wine, not planning to drink it.
“Yes, you do.”
“Don’t.” He took a slug of the wine and set the glass down.
“Do.” Micki whipped his glass away. “If you can’t tell me what gives you such incredible prescience and makes me such a flake, it’s time you left. Good night.”
“Micki, you’re being—”
“Childish?” She raised her eyebrows. “That’s because I’m twenty-two years younger than you. I’m not always going to react the same way as you or show your impeccable maturity, but you know what? It doesn’t matter a damn!”
“You’re one of the most mature women I know.” He had no idea if that was the right thing to say.
“Most men your age would revel in having a younger woman and want to shout it from the rooftops, but not Charles Everson,” she said.
Evidently it hadn’t been the right thing.
“No,” she continued, “for you it’s a dark secret.” She drew breath, presumably to tell him just what she thought of that. But maybe she caught sight of his stricken expression, because she softened. “But for some dumb reason, I don’t want any of those guys. I had to fall for the most ornery old coot—”
“I love you,” Charles said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE WAY MICKI CAME to a screaming halt was almost laughable. “What did you say?”
Charles reached across the table, slid the candle aside, then took her hands in his. “This ornery old coot loves you. I love you so much, that’s how I know I’m not going to change my mind. I’ve seen you every morning and every night for the past two weeks, and with every moment I love you more. But—”
“I knew there’d be a but,” she said fiercely.
He loved that she was so fierce. He shook her hands. “But a part of me is scared. Scared that one day you’ll wake up to just how ornery and old I am—I have arthritis in my left knee, did you know that?—and you’ll want something else.”
“I love you back,” she said, and his heart quickened. “Believe it or not, Charles, what I feel for you is more than lust for your gorgeous body—including your arthritic left knee.”
“Micki...” He was pretty sure he was blushing; her laugh confirmed it.
She moved around the table and sat on his knee. His mouth found hers and for a few minutes there was silence, save for tender murmurs and needy noises.
“You’re right,” Charles said when he surfaced. “We have to tell the boys. Tell everyone. I want to walk down the street holding your hand. I want to lean across my table at th
e Eating Post and kiss you in front of the whole world.”
From Micki’s arrested expression, he guessed the full consequences had just sunk in. She looked as if she couldn’t imagine that happening in a million years. “Maybe you’re right—there’s no rush,” she said.
Charles chuckled. “Cold feet, huh? You know what we need, sweetheart? We should go away for a few days. Camping. Somewhere private, where we can be together all day, doing all the kissing and hand-holding we like, just to get ourselves used to it. Then we’ll come back and give this place something to talk about.”
Micki’s face lit up so wonderfully, he couldn’t doubt the strength of her feelings.
“I can’t think of anything I’d like better,” she said. “I’d have to ask Margaret to run the café...and maybe I could ask Jane to help—I’ve been giving her barista lessons.”
“Jane Slater?” Charles thought he did a pretty good job of keeping disapproval out of his voice, but Micki sent him a sharp look.
“Jane’s been a wonderful support to me while I’ve been angsting over my feelings for you.”
“She knows?” he said, appalled.
Micki rapped his knuckles with her dessert spoon. “If I hadn’t had her to talk to these past few weeks, I’d have gone crazy.”
“If Jane knows, maybe I do need to tell Kyle,” Charles said. “Who knows how much those two share?”
“Can we have our break together first?” Micki asked. “Jane’s overnighting in Denver tonight, catching up with clients, but I’ll talk to her about helping out in the café when she arrives back tomorrow. If we can get away this weekend, it might be best not to tell Kyle until after that. To keep it simple for now, to what it’s really about. Which is you and me.”
With those wide eyes pleading, resistance was futile. “Just you and me,” he agreed. “For now.”
* * *