by Addison Fox
Louisa could hardly blame Fender. The woman was lovely and incredibly beautiful. A genuine knockout, as it were, and the sort of woman who usually caught her son’s eye.
Yet there was something more.
Harlow was pretty, but Louisa sensed it was the least of the woman’s attributes. There was a genuineness about her that belied both her beauty and the privilege she’d grown up with. In Louisa’s experience, that sort of ease often created a person who was innately out of touch with others, not necessarily through intention, but by circumstance.
But Harlow seemed to have none of that.
It made it that much harder for Louisa to swallow the fact that she’d willingly contributed to the parental betrayal the young woman had lived with for most of her life.
“My Harlow, she’s a sweetheart. Pretty as all get out and whip smart.” Kincaide grinned broadly over the candlelight, his blue eyes alight with pride. “She’s my Pip, she is.”
“Pip?” Louisa asked. The conversation rarely turned toward his children, so it was a surprise he was so intent on it tonight.
“She’s my Pipsqueak. Though she’s been growing like a weed lately. I’m not sure I can call her that any longer. She’s going to be the tallest kid in third grade if what I see of her friends is any indication.”
Swallowing back the sour taste that coated her tongue, Louisa reached for her wine. She and Kincaide had spent a lot of time together of late, and it was jarring to remember he went home to his family when he left her. That he was there with them in his free time, playing with his children and shuttling them back and forth to their friends, to school. Putting them to bed.
“Are you alright?” Kincaide’s focus turned sharp. “Is there something wrong with the meal?”
“No.” She waved him off and pasted on a broad smile. “No, it’s fine. I’m sorry for the frown. I randomly remembered something I left at work is all.”
He took the lie at face value, but the shift in conversation was enough to have him changing topics. “The Novasis merger is going to be a big one. You ready for it?”
“I am. The paperwork’s nearly completed, and we began the SEC filings on Monday.”
The words felt bland on her tongue, but they were easy. Work was her life, and she could navigate her way through business conversation even as other things swirled in the back of her consciousness.
What was she doing here?
Kincaide had told her repeatedly that his marriage was over. That Gretchen was cold and aloof, and that they had no discernable marriage to speak of any longer. That it was only a matter of getting his business affairs in order so he was protected financially before he began the divorce proceedings.
But the way he spoke of his daughter didn’t sound cold, or aloof, or separate. It sounded real.
And so very far removed from the two of them and the life she’d begun to imagine.
The heavy knock at the door pulled Louisa from the long-forgotten memory, and she caught herself, recentering her focus on the warm, yellow kitchen in Brooklyn, in what felt like a million years from that fine restaurant in Manhattan.
The side door in the kitchen was a throwback to the days when ice, milk ,and bread were delivered by hand and, she got up to answer the casual knock, only to find Dave Maxwell standing on the other side.
“Dave.” She gestured him in, pleased to see him.
“Louisa.” He leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. The move was vintage Dave—and a normal, affectionate greeting between neighbors—yet she saw his face grow a light shade of pink that had nothing to do with the August heat as he pulled away.
She ignored the awkwardness that had sprung up between them and tried to focus instead on being grateful he was there. “Come on in. We missed you at brunch this morning, but I have some waffles and bacon I can heat up.”
“No.” He waved her off as he stepped in. “I had breakfast already. I’d love some coffee, though.”
“Coffee then.” She said, determined to keep a bright smile on her face. Dave had been one of her brunch misfits, as her sons called them, consistent in his attendance week in and week out. She’d been the one to ruin that by her stupid reaction to his ill-timed kiss earlier in the summer. A kiss she’d wanted desperately, even though she’d ultimately told him that she couldn’t be in a relationship. Since then, he had been conspicuously absent from brunch, a fact her other misfits had begun to notice.
But no one had noticed it more than she did.
They’d had a few coffee dates, random catch-ups that never delved deeper than neighborhood gossip and her prattling on and on about the boys for something to say. Nothing of weight or substance. Or anything that could take away the heaviness of what she’d told him earlier in the summer, when she’d confessed her affair with Kincaide. But even with those tentative meet ups, he’d stubbornly avoided brunch.
God, how she missed him. Missed their easy conversation and the appreciative look in his eyes when they spoke. Missed the way he understood her, listened to her, and sparred with her over ideas. He’d been one of the people most adamant that she should pursue the candidacy for borough president. And she’d gone and ruined it all by reacting poorly to his kiss.
One she’d wanted desperately.
“I’m sorry I missed everyone this morning. It’s been a busy summer.”
“It has.” She fussed with the coffee maker, selecting a pod with the strength she knew he liked. While that brewed she dug up the fresh carton of cream she had in the fridge, keeping her back to him as they exchanged the sort of pointless conversation acquaintances shared.
Which hurt almost as much as his not coming around. And she had no one to blame except herself.
Well, herself and the wretchedly poor timing that had Dave finally making a move at the same time Gretchen Reynolds came back into her life, determined to put a black mark on her credibility and her personal choices.
She knew what she was. What her choices all those years ago really meant. She was a home-wrecker. And while she’d built a new life for herself and her boys since then, none of it changed her choices when she’d decided to become Kincaide Reynolds’s mistress.
It was a sordid term, but it was accurate.
And it had colored how she’d seen herself and her willingness to enter a personal relationship ever since. She’d dated off and on through the years, especially after her boys had left the house, but she’d never let the relationships go very far, stepping away before they could become too serious.
Or force her to share too deeply of her past.
Dave had been different. A widower who’d moved in next door shortly after losing his wife, she’d simply reached out to him in friendship, urging him to come to her home so he wouldn’t be alone. How that gesture of friendship had turned into something deeper had been a mystery, but once on that path she’d been unable to think of him any other way.
Gathering up the creamer, the mug from the coffee maker, and her determinedly bright attitude, she crossed to the table and set the coffee before him.
“Thanks. How’s the campaign going?”
“Well.” She took her own seat and gestured toward the still-closed laptop. “Landon taught me how to update my website so that’s my project for the afternoon.”
“How’s it going?”
She avoided the eye roll but knew a frown marked her features. “I haven’t started.”
He laughed at that, tapping the machine. “You know he’d do it for you.”
“I know. But I feel like I need to apply the adage that I now know how to fish and can do it all by myself. Plus, he’s spending time with Daphne. He doesn’t need to be doing stupid tasks for me that I’m well able to do myself.”
“I saw him the other day. That boy’s floating about three feet off the ground.”
“He is. It’s a wonderful thing to see.”
A wonderful thing that had been a long time coming. Her sweet Landon, the quietest of her three boys and the one sh
e’d worried over the most. He’d rarely shown his pain, but his past had always concerned her. The abandonment by his drug-addicted mother had haunted him. Would he be able to fall in love? More, would he be able to trust another person?
In Daphne he’d found both, and the reality of that touched her heart more deeply than she could have ever imagined. The fact that he’d found a tentative path back to his birth mother in the process warmed her equally.
“Look, I stopped over because there are some things we need to say,” Dave began. And—” He broke off, then took a deep breath. “I’m sick of sitting in my apartment every Sunday morning when I’d much rather be here.”
“I’d rather have you here, too.”
“So what are we going to do about it?”
Images of her sons faded, her own problems rising to the fore. She hadn’t been so selfishly focused since before she’d found the boys, and it was odd to suddenly concentrate on herself—on her own needs—so closely.
“You’re my friend. We’re weathering a bump, Dave. That’s all. You’re always welcome here and I’d like us to put whatever that moment was behind us and move on.”
“What if I want to be more than your friend? What if I don’t want to move on?”
Pleasure shot through her, electrifying her nerves and nearly sending her out of her seat to pace the room. Even with the desperate hope that made her want to say yes, she forced herself to sit still.
And pushed him to see the reason behind why what he was asking wasn’t possible. “Why would you want that? I already told you about what happened. About my past.”
“A past that happened nearly a quarter century ago.”
“Yet it still found a way to my present.” Gretchen Reynolds had seen to that. The woman might have stopped her defamation campaign, but it didn’t change the fact that Louisa’s own behavior was still an easy mark.
More, that it still had the power to damage others.
“Let it go.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Actually, it is.” Dave reached across the table, taking her hand. “I don’t judge you for what happened. Why do you keep judging yourself?”
The earlier memory of Kincaide tugged at her, twisting up with the lovely woman who had captured her son’s eye. “My choices didn’t just ruin another woman’s marriage. I participated in a betrayal of his children, too. I knew better at the time, and I certainly know better now.”
“It’s in the past.”
As if to prove his point, he got up out of the chair and came around the table, leaning over and cradling her face in his hands. Her pulse sped up, the thick heartbeats throbbing in her throat as he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers.
The taste of him was all she’d remembered from their kiss earlier in the summer, but layered beneath this time were distinct notes of longing she hadn’t been fully cognizant of last time. She wanted to protest, or push him away, or tell him to stop, but knew they’d be token gestures only.
She wanted him.
Wanted him for a million reasons, even as she knew there was one huge, gaping one that meant she needed to stay away.
But oh, if things could only be different. She laid her hands over his and allowed him to continue the kiss. To take them both another fathom deeper, to where there wasn’t regret or sadness or mistakes she’d spent a lifetime running from.
To a place where there was acceptance and desire and second chances.
And then she thought of Emily’s gleeful retelling of meeting Harlow on Friday night. Thought further of the young woman’s apology a few weeks before over her mother’s actions. And no matter how much she wanted to believe Dave, she knew deep in her heart that he was wrong.
With one final squeeze for the backs of his hands, she pulled back, away from him.
Her past had come alive in her present. If not for the possible embarrassing personal consequences to her borough candidacy, she might be able to believe Dave’s sincerity. Believe they could put her past behind them.
But her son was attracted to Kincaide’s daughter, and that put her in a position of confronting her choices in the most tangible way possible.
Could she dare drag Dave into that? Ask him to support her when she was most surely going to come face-to-face with the daughter of the man she’d had an affair with?
Could she?
She’d made her choices and she had to face that burden alone, and it hardly seemed fair to bring another person into it all.
“Louisa?”
“I’m sorry, Dave. I want to believe you. Please know I do. But nothing’s in the past. Nothing at all.”
Chapter Nine
Fender tossed his wadded up napkin in a nearby trash can as he and Harlow walked off their dinner through Central Park. She’d surprised him by suggesting hot dogs off a cart—who knew the woman could down two chili dogs like a champ?—and had succeeded once again in catching him absolutely and completely off guard.
“You’re suspiciously quiet. Which makes me think I succeeded in boring you senseless over art.”
He looked at her as they strolled. “I’m not bored. Not even close.”
“You liked it?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But I did like the Egyptian thing.”
“We could have left sooner. Although I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that your quiet disdain for art is sort of a turn-on.”
Surprised morphed to shock. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. It sort of completes the bad-boy triumvirate. I’m only human, you know.”
He grinned at the description. “The bad boy triumvirate?”
“The worn jeans and black T-shirt that shows off killer biceps. The surly, smoldering looks. And the hatred of art. It’s hot. But I suspect you already know that.”
Know that?
How the hell would he know that? Or that describing what she did for a living as boring and uninteresting was even polite, let alone a sexual turn-on?
“You’ve lost me.”
“Nope. I don’t buy that.”
“Why not?”
“You seriously don’t know that you’re hot? Like eight women have nearly fallen over in our winding path through the park. I swear one mentioned to her friend that you were ‘eminently fuckable.’ And one sighed. Actually sighed.”
Heat fired beneath his skin, licking a path up his face. “No one said that.”
“Hand to God.” She slammed a palm against her chest. “You really didn’t hear any of that?”
“No.”
She shook her head. “Dear, sweet, clueless man.”
“Well what about you? Every man who’s passed by has ogled your chest and your legs.”
“Because both are, to borrow that oh-so-classy turn of phrase, eminently fuckable.”
“What are we going to do about it?”
“I’d say get eminently fucked, but I’m not sure that’s what you mean.” Harlow slowed before turning toward him, the smile fading from her face. “Even if we both know that’s where we’re headed.”
“Are we?”
“I know so. And so do you.”
He did know. Had known it—at least for himself—from the moment she’d walked out of her gallery office the prior month to greet him and Landon. “So what are we going to do about it? Because nothing about you is easy, Harlow. Neither is this situation.”
“Not in the least.”
“And while I normally don’t bring my mother into any discussion of sex, she’s a part of this.”
“Just like my parents.” A small smile tipped her lips. “And for the record, I normally don’t bring them up when contemplating sex, either.”
“So what do we do about it?”
“Maybe we just consider today a success and leave it at that?”
“Today’s a success?”
“Still clueless.” She shook her head and managed to land a swift, surprisingly effective smack against the side of his head. “You telling me I’m a bad date?”
“No.”
“Then yeah, today was a success. It might be an even bigger success if you asked me to dinner this week.”
They might not be doing anything “eminently,” but she wanted to see him again. This did little for his immediate discomfort, but it went a long way toward kicking his anticipation of what was to come into high gear.
Ratcheting that need down to an anticipatory simmer, he couldn’t resist teasing her. “You’re still thinking about food after mowing through two chili dogs like a longshoreman?”
Delicate eyebrows lifted over those vivid blue eyes. “You want the truth or a polite lie?”
“I told you I don’t lie. I don’t expect them in return.”
“Then I could go for a third.”
Despite the tension and sexual frustration that gripped his body even thinking about the woman—a state that had grown nearly torturous being so close to her for the last several hours—he felt something inside ease up. It was light and airy, and if he were a fanciful man, he might call it joy.
“Harlow, would you like to go to dinner this week?”
“I’d love to.”
“We can figure out where as we walk.”
“Where are we walking to?” she asked, easily taking the hand he held out to her.
“We’re going to go get you another chili dog.”
* * *
The scent of pancakes greeted Harlow as she walked into the Park Heights Community Center. She’d struggled to fall asleep the night before, her mind whirling with the events of the day.
And how unexpected it had all been.
The morning spent with her mother and brother had left her frustrated and slightly disillusioned. And then, as if she’d conjured him up, Fender had called and changed the entire day for the better.
Their quiet jaunt through a lazy Sunday, from the coffee shop to the museum to the park. Even with the tense awareness of him and the wondering about what it all meant, the day had been fun.
Easy.
And more special than she could have ever imagined.
He’d been willing to discuss any manner of subjects, from the mundane to the deeply serious. Their discussion of the affair between her father and Louisa Mills had been an interesting one, and he’d given her perspective that she hadn’t had before.