by Lisa Wingate
Kaylyn nodded her approval, her pert little nose scrunching. “Mmm-hmm. Did you read Taming the Texan yet?”
I wasn’t sure whether to confess that the books she’d loaned me were gathering dust in my apartment. Across the table, Josh, all two hundred and eighty pounds of him, was once again watching Kaylyn through lovesick eyes. Even though they shared an office at a software company, she wasn’t the least bit romantically inclined toward poor Josh. He didn’t look anything like her favorite cover models.
“I … uhhh … started it. There was some good … history,” I hedged. That seemed a benign enough response.
Kaylyn was pleased. “I told you so.” She lifted her straw from her cup and sipped drips from the end while Josh watched wistfully. “Wait until I give you His Irish Bride. It’s so good. You know that if two people meet on St. Patrick’s Day, they’re destined, right? That’s why I asked if the guy was Irish.”
“So, it only works for Irish people?” I raised an eyebrow to indicate that I was in no way being sucked into any premise that came from a used paperback.
“I’m sure it works for anybody.” Snorting, she flashed an eyetooth and dipped her straw back into the glass. “Except cynics. Amy Ashley does her research, by the way.”
“Who’s Amy Ashley?”
Kaylyn wheeled a hand as in, Pay attention here. “She wrote His Irish Bride. She’s won Readers’ Pick of the Year, like, five times. She does her research.”
I ate a few peanuts, pretending to defer to the wisdom of Amy Ashley. “All right, all right. But the odds of my running into the rotunda guy again are a million to one. I’ve never seen him around before. He was probably a tourist from Hackensack. Anyway, I’m not a cynic. I’m just … realistic.” Is that so wrong? “But I’m not Irish, either, so I don’t suppose it matters. I think you’d have to be Irish for the St. Patrick’s Day thing to work.” I threw a peanut across the table. “What do you think, Josh?”
Josh helped himself to the peanut and pretended to think about it. “We could test it.” Throwing his head back and his arms out, he smiled and said, “Kiss me. I’m Irish.”
Kaylyn rolled her eyes and pointed the straw at me again. “All right, how about we just put our money where our mouths are. I bet—” she interlaced her hands and steepled two fingers—“a year’s supply of romance novels that you see that guy again, and that he asks you out before the month is over.”
“You’re on, sister.” Laughing, I stuck out my hand to seal the deal. I wasn’t a gambling type, but it seemed like an extremely safe wager.
Across the table, Josh was shaking his head with an expression of foreboding.
He knew how many romance novels Kaylyn could read in a year.
My beloved is mine, and I am his.
—Song of Solomon 2:16
(Left on the Wall of Wisdom by Blaine and Heather, proud new owners, Harmony Shores Bed and Breakfast, Moses Lake)
Chapter 2
Love is a many splendored thing. There’s a more classic history to that phrase, I’m sure, but I learned it from a Sinatra album—the old-fashioned vinyl kind my father played on an ugly console stereo that looked like something out of The Jetsons.
The night after my sixth birthday party, that song tugged me from my bed. I moved to the sliding glass doors, pulled back the curtain, and saw my father out for a late-night swim, trying to coax my mother into the pool. She was curled in a chaise lounge, wearing a long, filmy negligee. The feather-edged sleeve floated diaphanous and light on the breeze as she playfully slapped his hand away. Laughing, she let her head fall against the cushion, her gaze rising into the starry night.
She never saw him coming. Without warning, he scooped her off the chair and carried her across the patio as she protested, squealed, and told him what she’d do to him if he ruined her new loungewear. He ignored her completely and swept her straight down the steps and into the water, deep blue under the smoky patio lights. The hem of her nightgown floated to the surface, her body and his disappearing into the darkness below as he kissed her.
I’d never seen my parents behave in such a fashion, never even considered whether they kissed or hugged or got romantic like the Bradys did on afternoon cable reruns. But after watching them in the pool, I knew that love really could be the way it was in the movies. From that night on, I believed in the possibility. Even if I’d never been lucky enough to find the right guy, I clung to a yearning that made me want that kind of intensity. All of my life a still, small voice had been whispering in my ear, If it can happen to Mom, it can happen to anyone.
My mother was about as stiff, proper, and practical as a woman could get. If she could be swept off her feet, anybody could.
I was off my feet almost from the moment I met Daniel Webster Everson. Both in the literal sense and the figurative sense. I twisted an ankle running for a subway train the day after the spilled-bill incident, and I was wearing a walking cast later that week when I hobbled into the office of James V. Faber, honorable congressman from Arkansas. Two steps in the door, and I found myself once again face to face with the startling green eyes I remembered from the rotunda.
Congressman Faber’s home district was big in poultry production and processing. Daniel was a biochemist working for the USDA, visiting The Hill at Faber’s request to discuss some particulars in a pork-barrel (or in this case poultry-barrel) rider to a bill working its way through committee. I’d dropped by Faber’s office to personally pick up a LOI—Letter of Intent—that would make Faber a cosponsor for my boss’s Clean Energy Bill.
Suffice to say that a freakish alignment of legislation brought me together with Daniel Everson for a second time.
Or perhaps it was the Irish legend.
Choose to believe as suits you, but God does create soul mates, and Daniel Webster Everson was mine. I knew it from the first time I saw him, and by the second time, I knew I knew it.
I limped into his life once again carrying an armload of papers. Daniel glanced up from the leather sofa in Faber’s receiving area and noticed my uneven walk and the cast, attractively embellished with Sharpie drawings by office coworkers and the Gymies.
“Looks like things haven’t quite taken that upturn yet,” he observed. Very astute of him. Then he laughed softly and smiled, and I forgave him for making light of my unfashionable situation.
I noticed those boyishly thick lashes again. And his smile. If I had to feed Kaylyn’s romance novel habit for a year, or ten, I had to know who he was.
“It’s been that kind of week,” I admitted. “Month, actually.”
There was a flash of something in his eyes, as quickly as a car passing at the other end of an alley, but I saw it. A look that said, Yeah, me too. That kind of week … month … year.
I shifted the stack of papers onto my hip and tried to look as though one arm wasn’t slowly growing longer than the other. My foot was hurting. I needed to get off it. The doctor had prescribed limited walking for a couple weeks while the ankle healed. You can’t limit your walking on The Hill, not and be in the know. It’s a big place. My position as a legislative assistant put me about halfway up the congressional staff ladder. There were plenty of young kids hungry for advancement, and each of them had two good feet. My only advantage was charm and the fact that, even though I’d tried for anonymity, word had gotten around. People knew who my father was.
Daniel stood up like he’d been pushed out of his seat by a loose spring. He reached for the documents. “Here. You look like you could use some help with those.”
The rest was history, or a whirlwind, depending on your point of view. I asked about Daniel; he asked about me. Faber’s personal assistant gave us irritated looks for muddying up a congressional office with an obvious flirtation. We exchanged business cards before Daniel headed for a consultation in Faber’s office. After he’d passed the snotty personal assistant, he turned around, pointed at her and made a face, then mouthed, I’ll call you, as if we’d known each other forever.
The grouchy lady swiveled a stern look over her shoulder. Daniel made a show of turning around and heading for the congressman’s door.
I giggled.
I fell in love.
My ankle didn’t hurt anymore, because I wasn’t standing on it. I was floating a few inches off the ground.
Within four hours, my artsy cast and I were having dinner with Daniel at a hole-in-the-wall Italian place with decor that was vintage Dollar Store. I didn’t mind. The food was good, and it hadn’t taken me very long to figure out that my newly discovered prince, my gypsy king, my romance novel cover guy was, unfortunately, fairly broke. He had a master’s degree in biochemistry, two years of university research experience, two years of interesting stories from having traveled the world doing crop science for an underfunded non-governmental organization, and a couple years of teaching experience at a city college. His recently acquired position at the USDA was his first real eight-to-five job. He also had a healthy supply of student loans, medical bills from a car accident a few years back, and a three-and-a-half-year-old son who, that particular week, was in Ohio with grandparents.
It was a lot to take in on a first date. I had a feeling that Daniel didn’t usually share so much information so quickly. I wondered how much of his life he normally offered up to women he’d just met. Then I found my brown eyes going a little green over the idea that he met other women. Ever. I felt strangely possessive.
That didn’t matter, as it turned out. For the next two weeks, we were together every evening. Both of us knew we didn’t want to see anyone else.
Kaylyn started hounding me to pay her romance novel bills and to admit that Amy Ashley’s Irish love legend had validity. Irish magic aside, the night before Daniel’s son was to come home, I was worried. Other than roughhousing with my nieces and getting them in trouble with their mothers, I had no idea what to do with children of any size, particularly not a three-and-a-half-year-old. Aside from that, I’d grown up in a family full of girls. Boys were a complete mystery.
I was trying not to classify little Nick as a stumbling block, but a sense of loss and foreboding had begun needling me, even though I didn’t want it to. It wasn’t mature to think of a preschooler as the competition, but I liked things the way they were. Life with Daniel was … perfect. We were perfect. Just the two of us.
I hated myself for having that thought. I really did. I knew all about Nick. He was adorable—a towheaded version of his dad. I’d looked at his pictures in Daniel’s apartment. I’d laughed at many a “Nick” story over dinners and lunches with Daniel. I’d stood in the doorway of Nick’s room when Daniel wasn’t looking, studied Nick’s toys and his little race car bed, trying to imagine him there. I’d sympathized with Daniel when he’d snuggled me under his chin and brooded because Nick had started to notice that other kids in day care got picked up by their mothers. Nick wanted his mother to pick him up. Nick didn’t have a mother. Not that anyone could see, anyway.
“Nick’s mother doesn’t ever get in touch?” I asked, trying to picture her. There were no photos of her in Daniel’s apartment. I suspected that was intentional. Daniel’s face revealed an obvious pain whenever Nick’s mom came up in conversation. “She doesn’t ask to see him?”
A sigh deflated his chest beneath my cheek. “She didn’t want kids. She’s into her work.” The bitterness in his voice worried me, if I wasn’t worried enough already. I already knew that Nick’s mother worked for an oil company and traveled around the world. “Nick wasn’t planned,” he added.
“I wasn’t planned, either, but my mom didn’t just walk out on me,” I said, and then admonished myself for overstepping.
“It is what it is.” Daniel’s arm tightened around me in a way that made me feel good. I was reassured that I hadn’t said the wrong thing. I tried again to imagine Nick’s mom. I conjured an image of an executive. In my mind she was tall, svelte, with the face and body of a fashion model. Blond, probably, judging by Nick’s hair. He didn’t get that from his father.
“It’s just harder now that he’s asking, you know?” Daniel’s hand slid up and down my arm, raising a pleasant tingle on my skin. I felt an expectation in that caress, in Daniel’s words, in the absence of Nick’s mother. There was an empty space to be filled here, for both Daniel and Nick. But I’d met Daniel only two weeks ago. How could either of us possibly know whether I was the person to fill it?
I wasn’t a very likely candidate. If I met Nick now, we might only be setting him up for disappointment. On the other hand, if I didn’t meet Nick, how would I continue to spend time with Daniel? With no relatives living nearby, Daniel was a full-time single dad. The last two weeks had been an anomaly.
Real life was headed this way, safely strapped in a car seat in the back of the grandparents’ minivan.
“I don’t usually let him … meet people,” Daniel offered, and I felt sick. He was having second thoughts, trying to gently tell me that we needed to cool it for a while. Maybe now that Nick was coming back, Daniel was rethinking things altogether. Now that there was a child involved, perhaps Daniel was sensing the thing that men seemed to pick up on innately: I was hopelessly nondomestic. I couldn’t even make macaroni and cheese, the boxed kind.
I understand. I knew that was the correct response, but I couldn’t force the words out. I felt another unwanted stab of competitiveness toward little Nick. Looking across the room, I took in a picture of him dressed in a Giants jersey, a massive football helmet hiding his face in shadow, so that only a huge smile showed. I envisioned myself getting into a squat like an NFL lineman and knocking him off the playing field. I was bigger than he was… .
The thought was reprehensible, of course. It was only proof of what I already knew: I was the spoiled, self-centered, overindulged, late-in-life baby of the family and would never grow up. Completely hopeless.
“So … then … what …” What are you saying? What does this mean? What do you want me to say? I reached up and rubbed my eyebrows, then pinched hard, a little pulse thrumming beneath my fingertips. The I’m-not-going-to-cry feeling stung my throat. Daniel’s parents would be here tomorrow, road weary after driving from Ohio, and on their way to visit their other grandkids. Daniel and I had already established that this wasn’t the best time for me to meet them. They’re a little touchy because of Nick, he’d explained. Now Daniel was having cold feet, too.
“He’s getting old enough that he notices things,” Daniel remarked vaguely.
“Things?” My voice trembled a little, just getting that much out. I felt like I was groping in a dark room, waiting for Freddy Krueger to jump from the shadows and slash my heart in two. Another relationship meets its gruesome demise.
A soft little laugh-snort ruffled my hair and my thoughts. Now I was completely confused. Daniel found this funny? I was dying here. “Yeah, like the other day on the phone, he asked me why some people at Nanbee’s and Grandpa’s have one name, and some people have two. The second cousins, even the teenagers, who seem like grown-ups to him, are Angie, Chris, Corrie, and Zack, but the great-aunts and uncles are Aunt Tammy, Uncle Carl, and so on. The nursery ladies at their church are Miss Lori and Miss Teresa. He’s all confused.”
“Oh.” So was I—all confused.
Daniel shifted on the sofa, forcing me to sacrifice the warm spot under his chin, so I could see him. Those eyes, those beautiful green eyes, took me in. They were so pensive, so concerned, as if an invasion of the Daddy-body-snatchers had stolen away my gypsy king.
I felt every heartbeat in my chest, felt the teary lump rising and growing more imminent by the minute. Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it.
“So, anyway, I was thinking …” he began.
Here it comes, here it comes. I braced myself. Or tried. For some reason, a snippet of Josh and Kaylyn’s video-game programmer talk raced through my mind. Shields, shields, raise the deflector shields …
“ … what do you think he should call you?” Daniel finished.
; “I … huh?” My disembodied self melted back into the carcass of the highlighted-blond, brown-eyed girl on the sofa. Seriously? I wanted to say. You scared me to death for that?
I pretended to have a tickle in my throat and something in my eye. In reality, tears of joy had begun to seep onto the bridge of my nose. “Sorry. I must have gotten a whiff of something.” I fanned myself, my body hot, then cold, then hot again. My gosh. I was crazy about this man. How was that possible after only a couple weeks? “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.” Because I know absolutely nothing about kids. To my nieces, I was just a big kid—someone fun to play with, but completely useless at mealtime or bath time.
Daniel scratched the nape of his neck, seeming to agonize over the question. “It’s just that … well … however we get him started, that’s what it’ll be forever. Kids are creatures of habit, you know?”
I nodded. Nope, didn’t know. This whole issue had never even crossed my tiny little mind, nor could I really focus on it now. I was still stuck on one word of that sentence: forever. Forever, forever, forever.
“Why don’t you pick?” I suggested. “I’m okay with whatever you decide.”
Whoops. I instantly sensed that I’d given the wrong answer. He looked disappointed—as if I’d blown off something he considered important, indicating that I didn’t understand the weight of it. “Okay, let me think a minute.” I said. Think. Think, think, think …
I’m not his aunt. I’m not his mother. Well, not yet, but a girl can dream. These were changing times, but I had always been taught that children didn’t call adults by their first names. My mother found the familiar way my older nieces spoke to me to be completely distasteful. Since they wouldn’t use Aunt Mallory, she had attempted to convert them to Tante M, the French word for aunt, which, in her view, had greater hipness to it. It was a flop, unless the nieces were trying to tease me. Then, when Mother asked who’d spilled Kool-Aid on the kitchen floor and failed to wipe it up, they’d call out, Tante M did it, with an emphasis on the French.