by Thea Dawson
“How’s the graphic design biz?” he asked suddenly. “Still going well?”
She looked up. “Yeah. I sent a proposal to Susan. Waiting to hear back. And I’m working with a couple of local businesses. Things are good.”
“So ... do you still want me to look for a replacement for you?”
She glanced warily into his eyes. “Yes, I think that would be best,” she replied, though she felt a fleeting regret as she said it.
He nodded. She could almost have imagined that he looked sorry, but it could have been a trick of the fading light. He took a deep breath.
“Listen. About the other day. I owe you an apology—”
She studied the top of Rowan’s head to avoid looking at Richard. He did, in fact, owe her an apology, but she squirmed at the thought of revisiting either that memorable night or the painful morning after. “It’s okay—” she mumbled, concentrating on the top of Rowan’s downy head and pretending to brush something away.
“No, it’s not,” he said flatly. She looked up and met his gaze, again feeling her face flush.
He smiled slightly. “You’re blushing.”
She raised one eyebrow. “I’m surprised you’re not,” she said tartly.
He ignored the remark. “I guess you’ve probably gathered that things didn’t end particularly well between Peyton’s mother and me.” Richard looked out the window at the shabby lawn where Peyton, Lily and Rosie were clambering around the faded plastic playhouse. “There was a lot of ... drama. Peyton was devastated when she left, and I can’t risk something like that again.”
“I understand,” she said quickly.
He turned to look at her again and shrugged a bit helplessly. “It’s not that you aren’t attractive. And sweet. It’s not—”
“I know. It’s not me, it’s you.” She forced a light laugh, though the cake she’d just eaten felt as if it had turned to lead in her stomach.
There was a pause. “I ... I hope you don’t regret it too much.”
Exasperation surged through her. Part of her wanted to put Rowan down and pull Richard in for a deep, passionate kiss that would remind him what they’d shared. Part of her wanted to throw him out of the house. What nerve, to treat her like that then ask her if she regretted it …
... Did she?
“No,” she finally said, looking him straight in the eye. “I regret your behavior afterward, but I don’t regret anything else.”
He met her gaze steadily. Whatever else she could say about him, she gave him credit for bringing the subject up and putting it on the table. He nodded, looking serious. “I behaved very badly, and I apologize,” he said.
Her first impulse was to brush it off again, tell him it was okay and to just forget about it so that they could put the whole embarrassing incident behind them, but some instinct made her stop and study his face. There was a mute appeal in his eyes as if he were silently begging her to understand something that he couldn’t say. He was really trying.
“Accepted,” she said sincerely. “Thank you.”
She followed his gaze out the window too, wondering if he saw the same things she did.
“You have a lovely house,” he said, his tone back to conversational.
Both relieved and a little disappointed that they were back to a normal, casual discussion, she smiled and shook her head.
“No, I mean it. It’s very homey, very cozy. You make it a good home.”
“Thanks,” she murmured, unconvinced that this was anything more than small talk.
It felt like a long silence passed, but in reality it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. He slapped the table lightly with his hand and stood. “Well, I’d better collect Peyton and get out of your hair. Thank you for letting us share your birthday.”
She scrambled to her feet. “Oh no, thank you! That was a lovely dinner. It was a really nice treat. The kids had a great time.” She paused. “And so did I. Really.”
He nodded absently. “I’m glad things are going well with your business,” he added. “I’ll keep looking for a new nanny.”
She thought he was going to say something else, but he didn’t, so she spoke. “Thank you,” she said again.
Another silence. The air seemed to crackle with anticipation. Maybe it was more than just an apology, she thought. Maybe he was interested after all. If he was going to kiss her again, this would be the time.
But he simply smiled and turned away abruptly, walking out into the backyard and calling for Peyton.
They couldn’t leave until Peyton had hugged everyone several times, but finally they were gone. Even with three energetic children still in the house, it suddenly seemed empty. Bereft. The little voice of hope was still making itself known, but she suppressed it ruthlessly. Richard had cleared the air and apologized, and that was decent of him, but that was all. If he’d wanted them to be anything more than they were, he’d have let her know.
And what were they, exactly? Something more than a business relationship but not quite friends, despite the pleasant evening.
And certainly not more than friends.
16
“You guys have a busy weekend planned?” Richard asked the following Friday. He tried to keep his voice light and jovial, but he sounded fake to himself. He was just trying to make conversation ... but he was also, he admitted to himself, trying to delay them leaving for another minute or two. The house always felt emptier once they were gone.
Celia smiled in a satisfied sort of way as she hoisted the tote bag over her shoulder. “Grand opening of the new coffee shop on Main. It’s one of my clients. If you’re free, you should come by. She’s going to have some musicians, raffles, lots of samples. They have some amazing ice cream. Should be very kid-friendly.”
“Can we go, Daddy? Please?” Peyton grabbed his arm and looked at him excitedly. Ordinarily a kid-friendly coffee shop wouldn’t have held much interest for him, but somewhat to his surprise he found himself asking what time.
“The event’s all day, but we’re going to go there for lunch, around noon,” Celia answered.
“Peyton’s soccer game ends just around then. Maybe we could stop by afterward.”
Lily and Peyton cheered and gave each other big hugs. “Yay! We get to see each other tomorrow!” Lily crowed. “I already got to try some of the ice cream and it’s really delicious,” she boasted.
Celia shook her head fondly at them. “These two. You wouldn’t think they saw each other every afternoon already.”
Richard was momentarily tongue-tied. He too had found that the weekends seemed longer than they used to and that he looked forward to Mondays now. Looked forward to coming home in the evening to a house full of kids and laughter ...
And Celia.
“I’m sure it’ll be fun,” he said gruffly, not knowing what else to say.
Celia apparently took his words as her cue to leave and began sweeping her family out the door.
“Text me the address, okay?” he asked.
“Okay!” she called over her shoulder.
Then the door shut behind her and it was just him and Peyton again.
“What did you do at school today?” he asked, trying to fill in the empty space around them.
Peyton began telling him, but for once he was only half-listening. He was thinking that the coffee shop’s grand opening was growing more interesting, somehow, and that he was looking forward to being there.
Celia parked the stroller at one of the tables, happy to see that the Riverfront Cafe was respectably full. Merilee had gone all out in an effort to attract customers, especially the suburban mom market that she was after. One table had been dedicated to a face painter; a balloon sculptor occupied another corner, and Celia knew that various local musicians had been invited to play throughout the day. Fortunately, it was a sunny, relatively warm day, which gave Merilee a good shot at some decent foot traffic.
Merilee bustled over to her and gave her a hug. “What do you think?” she
asked breathlessly.
“Looks like a good crowd,” Celia answered her, happy to see that it was going well.
Merilee nodded happily. “Your ads did a great job!”
“And I see your Adam is back,” Celia observed slyly, noticing the handsome dairy farmer as he scooped ice cream from behind the counter. She’d met him once before while dropping off some preliminary designs and had thought she’d noticed some warmth between the ice cream vendor and the pretty café owner. Since then, he’d hired her to work on a logo of his own, but they had only communicated by phone and email. His hands were too full to wave but he caught her eye and flashed her a grin. Celia turned back to Merilee, who was blushing.
“Yes, he’s been really helpful,” Merilee replied with overstated casualness. Celia lifted her eyebrows but didn’t comment. It looked like Adam might have been promoted to something beyond ice cream vendor. Celia wondered if she’d get more of the story later.
Just as this speculation was going through her mind, she heard the doorbells chime and turned to see Richard ushering in Peyton, who was wearing her soccer uniform. Peyton’s eyes landed on Lily and she waved excitedly while Richard was still looking around the cafe, a slight frown creasing his handsome face. He wore a polo shirt and khaki shorts, looking every inch the preppie soccer dad.
Merilee raised her own eyebrows. “Who’s that tall drink of water?” she asked.
“Uh, I work for him.” Celia gave him a wave, but Peyton was already pulling her dad toward them like a little tugboat.
“Lucky you,” Merilee said, a nudge-nudge, wink-wink look in her eye.
Now it was Celia’s turn to feel her face getting red. “Yeah, he’s good looking, isn’t he?” she said, her voice straining to stay light and disinterested. “I just invited him ... because ...” Fortunately, Richard and Peyton arrived at the table just then and Celia was spared trying to think of a worthwhile excuse.
Richard smiled politely as Celia introduced him to Merilee, who greeted him and Peyton with her normal bubbly enthusiasm then bustled off to greet more customers.
“So that’s your client?” Richard asked.
Celia nodded. “Yup. The menus, the banner over the front door, the website, all me.”
Richard picked a cream-colored standing menu up off the table. “Very nice,” he said politely.
Celia wasn’t convinced he’d know good design from bad, but she appreciated that he was trying to be polite. “And the guy serving ice cream, Adam, he’s a client as well,” she added. “He just hired me to do a logo for his ice cream brand.”
“Wonderful.” Richard put the menu down again. “Sounds like business is really picking up.”
His words hung awkwardly between them for a moment. Should she remind him that he was supposed to be looking for someone to replace her now that she was getting design work? But before she could decide whether or not to bring it up, he interrupted her thoughts.
“Peyton and I are going to go grab some sandwiches. We’ll be right back.”
They soon returned carrying sandwiches and drinks. Celia had grabbed a couple extra chairs for their table and they all squeezed around it.
Because Lily, Peyton and Rosie all had to sit next to each other, Richard and Celia found themselves sitting together. Celia was excruciatingly conscious of Richard’s closeness.
Lily and Peyton gobbled their lunches and ran off to the balloon man. Celia insisted Rosie stay until she’d finished lunch, while she and Richard made idle chit chat about the weather and school.
“Mama, I need to use the bathroom!” Rosie suddenly said.
“Okay.” Celia stood up, shifting Rowan in her arms. She knew from experience that when Rosie said she needed to go, she meant it. Waiting a moment longer than necessary could be disastrous.
“Just leave Rowan with me. You’ve got your hands full as it is,” said Richard.
Celia looked at him in surprise.
“Mama!” There was urgency in Rosie’s voice.
“It’s fine. I like kids. I won’t eat him.” Richard held out his hands expectantly.
“Okay. Thanks.” Still a little disconcerted at the sudden offer of help, Celia handed the squirming Rowan to Richard, who pulled him onto his lap.
“Hey, buddy.” Richard smiled warmly at the little boy. “Let’s hang out for a moment while the women go do their thing, okay? Just us guys.”
“Thanks,” said Celia, trying to tear her gaze away from the sight. “I’ll be right back.”
When she and Rosie came back a few minutes later, the fiddle player Merilee had hired was playing a jig. Richard was sitting in his chair holding onto Rowan’s hands while Rowan stood on the floor, stomping his feet to the music and chortling with glee. Richard had an enormous smile on his face.
Celia stopped for a moment, absorbing the sight.
“Mama, come on!” Rosie tugged on her hand.
Celia followed Rosie back to the table just in time for Lily and Peyton to swoop Rosie away to get her face painted. Celia slipped into her chair and watched Richard and Rowan, her emotions churning in a completely unexpected way.
Not letting go of Rowan, Richard turned to her with a grin. “He’s got a better sense of rhythm than I’ll ever have.”
Celia put her hand over her mouth to suppress a sob as her eyes suddenly welled with tears.
“Are you all right?” he asked in a stricken voice.
“Sorry,” she sniffed, grabbing for a paper napkin out of the dispenser than lay on the table between them and wiping her eyes. “I just ...” she sniffed, a few tears rolling down her face. “I’m sorry.”
The fiddle player came to the end of his tune, paused, and began a new one. Rowan gave a happy shout and continued stomping. Richard continued to stare aghast at Celia.
“When I saw ...” Celia choked back another sob. “It’s just—” she took a deep breath and got herself under some semblance of control. “Sorry. When I saw you holding hands with Rowan, it just sort of struck me that his dad ... Brad ... he missed out on so much. I mean ... he was a jerk, and honestly if he were still alive, I’d probably be happy if he wasn’t having anything to do with the kids, but at the same time ...” she looked wistfully off into space. “It just would have been nice if Rowan could have known his dad, you know?”
Suddenly she laughed. “Oh gosh, the look on your face!” She heaved another enormous breath and managed to get ahold of herself once and for all. “I get the sense that you’re not all that comfortable around emotional people.” She flashed him a watery smile.
She could almost hear him gulp. “Not really, no.”
Celia giggled, shook her head, and gave him a dismissive wave. “That’s okay,” she said. The storm had passed. She wasn’t sure where all that emotion had come from, but for the first time since that night, she felt truly relaxed with Richard.
“Are you ... really okay?” he asked warily.
She dabbed at her eyes again and nodded.
There was a long silence. The panic in Richard’s dark eyes had given way to sympathy. “He’s great kid. They all are. Your husband ...” he was clearly groping for words. “He would have been a lucky guy, to have all of you.”
“Thanks.” Celia swiped her cheeks one last time. “Do you want to hand him back?” She indicated the still-stomping Rowan. “So you can enjoy your coffee?”
“We’re good.” Richard assured her. “Enjoy having a meal without a child on your lap.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Richard swung Rowan onto his lap and offered him some potato chips. Celia bit into her sandwich so that she wouldn’t have to think of something to say in the silence that followed her outburst.
“So, Lily and Rose, you went with flowers for both of them?” Richard said with a kind of exaggerated casualness.
Celia swallowed her bite of sandwich. Clumsy as it was, she appreciated his change of subject. “And a rowan is a kind of tree, so it ended up being bit of a theme.”
“Did y
ou do it on purpose or did it just kind of work out like that?” Richard asked.
“There’s a painting by John Singer Sargent, you’ve probably seen it, called Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. Two little girls in a garden lighting lanterns. It’s one of my favorites. Lily and Rose worked nicely.”
“I guess Rowan was lucky he wasn’t named Carnation,” Richard said.
She grinned in response. “Yeah, that might have been a bit mean.”
“I know that painting,” Richard went on. “It’s in the Tate Gallery in London. I studied in England for a semester when I was in college. I went to the Tate a lot.”
“Oh, cool. I spent a year in Paris when I was in college, and I got to London a couple of times. What were you doing there?”
Richard smiled, but he looked a bit embarrassed. “Blowing off my studies, mostly. I got a really good scholarship to study abroad. I thought maybe it would help boost my chances of getting work with an international company, and I chose to spend a semester in London, but when I got there, I kind of ... dropped out for a while.”
“Like, literally dropped out?” She couldn’t conceal her surprise.
He shook his head. “No. But I was ahead in terms of credits for my major and I had a really strong GPA. I thought it would be fun to coast for a while, so I ended up taking the minimum class load and just spent as much time as I could exploring.”
She cocked her head at him. “Really?” she said, amused at the thought that there’d been a time when she’d been more driven than Richard.
He laughed a little. “It was really the only time in my life that I just ... sat back and had fun, enjoyed the lower drinking age, didn’t really worry about my grades. Just chilled out, went to every museum I could. Loved it. Loved England, loved London. I took a couple of art classes, actually.”
“Art classes? Really?” Celia was intrigued.
She was glad she was sitting down because the sly smile that Richard flashed her made her weak in the knees. “Oh, you’re not the only artist around here, you know.” He shook his head and smiled. “Not really. I enjoyed it, though. Took drawing and painting. I was actually really into art when I was in high school. Thought about studying it in college, but my parents talked me out of it, said it wasn’t practical.” He shrugged. “They were right, of course.”