by Jenny Hale
“I just always thought I’d end up at the bakery, you know?”
Phoebe frowned, her bottom lip protruding in a pout to show her concern, Jo nodding in understanding.
“I don’t really know where I’m going anymore and I’m worried that I’m setting a terrible example for Lucas.” She felt the lump in her throat as she said his name.
“You don’t have to know where you’re going all the time,” Phoebe said, scooting closer to her in a show of support. “Look at me! You think I want to play the Snow Queen at Christmas and work in the children’s theater all my life? I have big dreams of getting that great part, and I know that I’m living in the wrong place to get it. I don’t know where I belong either. But I do know that, as you always say, the stops along the way are pretty great. Quit worrying so much.”
“Give it a chance,” Jo said tenderly.
“Maybe you’re right.” She mustered up her courage and looked both her friends in the eyes one at a time, her hands beginning to sweat. She knew they could read her and she was about to drop a bomb on them. “This is about more than the job,” she said, her heart starting to hammer in her chest.
“Whaaaat,” Phoebe whined dramatically. “You’re killing me with that face. What is it?”
Noelle swallowed and took in a steadying breath. “He kissed me,” she said quietly, throwing a quick glance over to Lucas. He was busy, listening to one of the crew as he pulled the velvet curtain on the side with the long cord that stretched to the ceiling.
Jo’s eyes nearly popped out of her head and Phoebe fell over backwards, catching herself on the lighted makeup table.
“Twice.”
“Oh my God!” Jo squealed, slapping a hand over her mouth. “How in the world did you manage that?”
“I have no idea.” And truthfully, she didn’t. It had all happened so fast. But as she looked at her friends’ stunned faces, it became real. “And now I’m totally confused because the Alex that my father and Pop-pop described isn’t the Alex that I’ve gotten to know. I’m not sure Alex has connected me to the bakery either.” And by letting Alex into her personal life, she was also letting him into Lucas’s, and that was bigger than just a few dates. Lucas really liked him. If and when they broke things off, Lucas might not forgive her.
“So what happens now?” Phoebe asked.
“Um…” She was still thinking, scrambling for some way for all of this to make sense. “I guess I take it one day at a time. Speaking of one day at a time, he wants to come to Wednesday Night Karaoke.” She made a face.
“Oh my God!” Phoebe shrieked, silencing Lucas and the men. They all looked their way until she waved a dismissive hand.
“We don’t have to do it this Wednesday,” she said. Having a guy meet her friends wasn’t something she would usually do unless things got serious. And their relationship wasn’t significant enough yet. How would she ever explain it to her father? For that matter, she didn’t know how to explain it to herself. She knew she was letting her heart guide her when she should be thinking with her head. How were her feelings for Alex honoring her gram? She already knew the answer: they weren’t at all. But maybe she should stop overthinking things and just go with it, like her friends had said.
“You’re telling me that I have a chance to see Alexander Harrington sing karaoke and you want me to wait? Are you kidding me? Happy hour starts at five. You all can meet me at the bar!”
“Hi, Alex!” Lucas said, walking quickly over to him with a grin as they entered the house. The sun had gone down hours ago, the cloud-covered sky now an inky black. The chandeliers in the grand entranceway sent shimmers across the shiny floors.
Noelle hurried after Lucas, worried, by the swiftness of Alex’s clip as he was walking by, that he had something to do. Lucas was a few paces ahead of her, going full speed, and she had to suppress the panic that her son actually liked this man. Why did she and Lucas have to connect with Alex like this? How could she ever have in their lives the man who took Gram’s bakery? It would always come back to that. After agreeing to let him meet her friends, she’d been beating herself up about it the whole ride there.
“Hi, Lucas,” he said, stopping and flashing those perfectly white teeth at him.
He turned to Noelle. “How was the play?”
“It was good.” She didn’t elaborate, as she risked mentioning that Phoebe was already planning karaoke.
“Did your mom show you my office?” he said to Lucas. “There’s something new on the shelves.” Alex raised his eyebrows in anticipation, for Lucas’s benefit, making her feel sick to her stomach. She was uneasy at the way he could get her attention, and it was even worse how he could command her son’s. And now he was going to look like the hero because he had money to throw around, buying all those books. She needed to face it: When the excitement wore off, where would they be? She couldn’t compete with all this.
“I’m heading there now. Come with me.”
“I’d like to check on William,” she said, hoping Alex would take her suggestion that they do it another time.
“Oh, he can spare five minutes, I’m sure. Jim just told me he got him a glass of brandy. He’s reading to him in his room.”
Noelle pressed her lips together to keep from pleading. After all, Alex was the one paying her, so she shouldn’t argue with him. She wanted to tell him to be careful with Lucas because he was a quiet boy already and he didn’t need any disappointments drawing him further inward. And she knew that if she was feeling this way for him, she could only imagine what Lucas felt. She didn’t even want to think about how it would feel when Alex moved to New York. She was already trying to put that idea out of her mind.
Alex tousled Lucas’s hair and led him down the hallway, Noelle walking up beside them. When they entered his office, Lucas ran in, immediately noticing the additions to the shelves of old books. With a look back at Alex, he pulled one off the shelf and inspected the cover, excitement showing on his face. She knew that kind of excitement. She felt it when Alex did something nice for her too.
“I’ve seen this book!” he said, turning it over in his little hand, concentration taking over his features. “It was at the book fair at school.” The book fair where he hadn’t bought anything. The book fair that she’d had to ask him to browse for his Christmas list because she didn’t have enough cash to send to school with him.
“Look up,” Alex said, alight watching Lucas’s reaction.
Noelle was still processing when she realized that Lucas had climbed the ladder and was pulling another book from the shelves. He grinned down at Alex before something caught his eye.
“What’s that?” Lucas asked, pointing toward the telescope.
“Come here and I’ll show you,” Alex said, walking over.
Lucas climbed down the ladder and joined him. If Noelle squinted, their bodies looked like silhouettes as they inspected the telescope. She came closer.
“This was my great-grandfather’s,” Alex said. “It’s difficult right now with all the winter clouds, but when the stars come out at night, you can see the constellations through it. You can even see the craters on the moon. It was the best of its kind in his day. You can get them a lot smaller now.”
Deep down, buried where no one could ever see it, was the tiny wish that Lucas could have a father figure in his life who could do this very thing: tap into his interests, share his time with him, make Lucas feel special. He had her dad and Pop-pop, but there was something magical about having a father, someone to wake up to every morning, who could talk to him over breakfast and read stories with him at night before bedtime. She was doing her very best, and she didn’t let that wish enter her mind often, but it was always there, lurking, troubling her.
“We should probably see William,” she suggested. She’d been gone all afternoon and, while she’d been given the afternoon and evening off, she didn’t want to leave him all by himself for so long. She also knew she was trying to get Lucas away from Alex before he coul
d get too invested, but she was worried that she couldn’t keep Lucas away forever if they lived and worked there. She thought again about her friends’ faces and letting Alex into Lucas’s life, and she was beginning to wonder if she’d made a mistake getting involved with Alex. She’d have to just take it one day at a time, like she’d said.
“All right,” Alex said. “We can’t see anything right now anyway. I’ll show you the moon one night when the sky is clear.”
Reluctantly, his focus still on the telescope, Lucas followed his mother out of the office and Alex sat down at his desk. Her mind whirring with thoughts, she hurried Lucas down the hallway.
“You finally get to meet William,” she said. “I think you’ll like him.” She knocked on the door to William’s suite to announce their presence before opening the door.
Lucas didn’t respond, his attention on the book he was still holding. He must have realized she’d spoken because he looked up blankly to acknowledge her. Noelle smiled at him. Alex had made Lucas happy today, and she was thankful for that.
“Who do we have here? I see an outline of a child,” William said, teetering over on his cane to meet them as they entered. Lucas’s eyes were on the handle of William’s cane—an ornate ball of silver and gold with stones set into the surface of it.
“This is my son, Lucas,” she said, ushering him forward. “He’s looking at the handle of your cane. I hadn’t noticed it before. It’s beautiful.”
William lifted his cane up, catching it in the middle and tipping the end of it toward them so they could get a better view. “This handle was made sometime before eighteen ninety-nine—we aren’t sure of the exact date. It’s French. It’s been passed down in our family for generations and I have a special cane-maker who added it to the top of this cane.”
Lucas reached out and ran his finger over it, clearly captivated.
William squinted toward Lucas. “Are you holding something? What do you have there?”
“It’s a book Alex got me.”
William’s eyebrows shot up, surprised. “Oh?”
“I like Alex. He’s really nice,” Lucas continued.
“Is he?” William’s interest was unmistakable. “How is he nice?”
Lucas looked up at him. “He talks about things I like. He knows about dinosaurs.”
“Ha! Does he?” William laughed despite himself.
“Did you teach him about dinosaurs?”
William sobered, leaning back on his cane. “No, I didn’t, I’m afraid,” he said, some sort of thought swimming around his face—regret? Sadness?
“I wonder how he knows so much, then.”
“He’s a very smart man. He went to all the best schools and he studied really hard. Do you like school?” He slowly led the way over to the sitting area.
“Yes,” Lucas replied, not very convincingly.
William must have noticed Lucas’s polite but not believable answer. He sat down and patted the sofa next to him. Lucas joined him, his little feet dangling above the floor. “If you could change school, how would you change it?”
Most kids would’ve said to add more play time or only do drawing all day, but Lucas said, “I’d have more exciting things.”
“Like what?”
“Math is really easy for me. I already know how to do it. I want to learn the kind that the big kids do. And I want to do their projects. One of the tables down the hall had volcanoes that really erupted and models of the ocean floor—I want to do that.”
Lucas had never told Noelle any of this.
William smiled knowingly. “I understand why you like Alex now; thank you for explaining it to me. I think he was probably a lot like you as a boy.” He looked up toward Noelle to let her know he was speaking to her. “Alex stood apart from the others as a boy, and he still stands apart now. Even though he has his eye on business most of the time, he notices things, he takes in what’s around him. For that, I’m grateful.”
Lucas had started reading his book, lost in the pages. Noelle smiled at him and then turned her attention back to William.
“I wasn’t good at showing how I felt about people. I’m still not great at it. But he is. I heard about your outing today. I pried it out of Jim,” he said with a smile. “Alex doesn’t let many people in, Noelle. And I’ve never seen him go to lengths like that for anyone.”
She nodded, feeling more unsure of what to do next by the minute.
Chapter Thirteen
Noelle had driven Lucas to her mother’s for school, wishing she could talk about Alex with someone. Her friends were too blinded by his money and good looks to think clearly. But she was finding it difficult to slow her feelings for him for other reasons. She’d fallen asleep last night thinking about how William had found similarities in Alex and Lucas, the idea of this thrilling her. She’d never thought in a million years she’d find someone as perfect as Alex was for Lucas. But in the light of morning, she could easily see the facts: she didn’t need a karaoke date with Alex. She needed Gram’s bakery. However, it was getting increasingly challenging to keep herself from falling for him.
After returning to the mansion, she decided to call Pop-pop. She needed to hear a friendly voice, and to run her feelings by someone close to the bakery. She wasn’t ready yet to tell her parents about her feelings for Alex—she’d opened her mouth to say something twice when she’d dropped Lucas off, both times quieted by fear. But Pop-pop would lend a listening ear. Gram used to say she’d told him all her secrets and she knew he was The One because he’d always been there for her, listened to her.
“Do you think Alex Harrington is a bad guy?” she asked him with no warning, after a few minutes of chatting. She’d always confided in Gram before, so telling Pop-pop was new. She trusted Gram, and knew that if Gram could talk to him, then Noelle could too. She’d just never told him her inner troubles before like she had Gram.
“Why do you ask?”
Her hands shook as she mustered the courage to explain. “I like him,” she said simply. “The more I get to know him, the more I like him and it’s confusing me.” It was all coming out and the pressure was lifting with every word she uttered. “He’s kind to Lucas and… me. I really like being around him.”
The silence buzzed in her ear, and just when she’d felt a release from getting it off her chest, the lack of response from Pop-pop seized her up again. Finally, he said, “Noelle, be careful.”
She wanted to ask why, but she already knew why—she’d known all along; she just didn’t want to admit it to herself. Disappointment sank deep into her stomach. Noelle had hoped that Pop-pop would hear her out, tell her that weirder things had happened, and make her feel okay about the feelings she was having. If anyone would see past the situation and think objectively, it was him—Gram had said so herself, and Noelle had seen him listen to Gram. They were like magic together. He always kept a level head, and Noelle could count on him for his honesty. “Okay,” she said in surrender, putting her face in her hands.
“It’s just—”
“I know,” she cut him off. It all came back to his actions regarding the bakery. “I’m glad I called, Pop-pop. I just needed to hear your warning to use caution.”
After she hung up with Pop-pop, Noelle poured a cup of coffee for herself and some tea for William before entering his room, trying to clear her head of the back and forth. She was fighting what she knew about Alex and she concluded that she needed to just face it: being with him wasn’t possible, so she needed to get over it. Quietly, she set the cups down on the table in the sitting room.
“Good morning,” William said, hobbling in on his cane.
“Good morning,” she returned. “I wasn’t sure if you were awake yet. I brought tea.”
“Excellent.” He smiled, putting her racing mind at ease. “Now you’re making yourself useful,” he teased. He’d warmed up to her and she was glad for that.
As he sat down, however, she noticed that he was still wearing the sweater he’d had on
yesterday. Come to think of it, he was also wearing the same top, and trousers.
“What?” he said defensively, lowering himself down slowly. He could always sense her thoughts as if he were somehow in tune with her movements. She realized then that her silence had caused his question.
“I was just looking at your clothes,” she said carefully.
“Can’t a man wear what’s comfortable?” He seemed to already know her concern, clearly overly sensitive about it, making her wonder.
“Of course you can. It’s your house. You can wear whatever you want.”
He ran his hand down his chest as if he were smoothing out wrinkles.
“Did you sleep in that outfit?” she asked.
He pursed his lips; the jovial look had now vanished.
“You know I’m here to help you. I’m getting paid to do it. If you need something, just tell me. I’m all yours.” She got up and walked into the closet that was the size of her old apartment, thinking she was going to encounter the rest of his suitcases. She’d only put a few things in drawers, and she hadn’t been in here. But as she stood, looking in, she was speechless. There were walls of shelving at least ten feet high with hanging pressed shirts, folded sweaters, slacks, dress suits—more clothes than a clothing store. There was no way he could see enough to get any of it down. She came back out.
“Is all that yours?”
“Yes,” he said, knowing already where she’d gone. “I had it moved prior to my arrival, and I’ve just used the suitcase of clothes the last few days or so.
She’d thought she’d been so helpful unpacking for him and tidying up his room when really someone else had done all this for him. Why was she even here? The truth of the matter was that William had everything he needed—except a person to listen. He didn’t have anyone to be with him, to make sure he was okay, and to talk to him. He had so much to say about his wife, about his life, and his thoughts regarding Alex, yet there was no one to hear the stories.
Noelle wanted to listen because she knew how important it was to have someone to talk to. Without Gram, over the last year, she’d struggled to find that perfect person to confide in, but she still had a wonderful network of people who cared about her. Whom did William have? The only family she knew that he had were Alex and Elizabeth. While getting William to open up to Alex would be a tough sell, she wondered if perhaps he’d actually enjoy talking to Elizabeth. But first, she had to get him dressed.