by Gina Wilkins
There was still a frown in his eyes, but his hand was very gentle when he stroked it down her arm. “You’ve got a couple hours free, right?”
She nodded. “Lucy and the kids won’t be home until eight. She puts them to bed if I stay out after their bedtime, which isn’t often, but occasionally.”
He picked up her cardigan and held it for her. “Let’s get out of here.”
She was too surprised to resist as he helped her into the sweater. “Where are we going?”
“Out.”
“But—”
“Look, if we stay here, we both know how we’re going to end up spending the time,” he said flatly. “If we go for a drive or a burger or something, at least we can talk some.”
She wasn’t sure what unnerved her more—the thought of staying in with him or going out with him. But she let him help her into her coat and followed him out.
Though Evan drove a dual-cab pickup truck for practical business reasons, it was a nice vehicle with cushy seats and a beautifully appointed dashboard. It suited him. “Jingle Bells” played from his radio when he started the engine. His smile a little embarrassed, he turned down the volume. “Guess I got carried away with the season. Normally, you’d be hearing something suitably edgy and masculine in my truck, I assure you.”
She laughed and fastened her seat belt.
This was beginning to feel very much like a date, she realized abruptly, her laughter fading. Some people might say it was about time, considering everything—but now she was suddenly nervous. Silly, maybe, but true—and it was that exciting kind of nervous that made her fingers tingle, her skin warm, her toes curl in her shoes. He slanted a smile at her and her breath caught. Yes, this was nice—and terrifying.
“Um...” She pushed her voice through her tight throat. “Where, exactly, are we going?”
“We have a few choices. We could go to a restaurant. We could see a movie. We could go bowling. We could drop in on a party one of my friends is hosting tonight. I have an open invitation.”
“Bowling?” she asked with a smile.
“Is that your choice?”
“No, it’s a question. Are you a bowler?”
“I think the last time I bowled was in college. It just popped into my head. But I’m game if you are.”
Renae laughed. “Let’s eat—I’m hungry.”
They decided on a quiet Japanese restaurant Evan recommended. The lights were almost a little too dim, but the atmosphere was peaceful and the food was excellent. Because of their public setting, they kept the conversation light and casual, and their easy discussion of books, movies and current events only reinforced the date-night feeling.
Those more troubling issues between them were still there, of course, simmering just below the surface of their comfortable prattle. But for that leisurely hour, Renae allowed herself to enjoy the novelty of sitting across a candlelit table from a handsome man, enjoying grown-up conversation. They shared a sinfully rich chocolate mousse cake for dessert, leaning toward the center of the little table so that their heads were close together, laughing softly as they scooped up bites with their spoons.
After dinner, he drove her around town to admire some of the light displays Price-Daugherty had been commissioned to design while holiday music played softly in the cab of the truck. He seemed in no hurry to return to his apartment. All too aware of passing time, Renae tried not to think too far ahead but instead appreciate each moment of this very pleasant outing.
They had to head back eventually, of course. A silence fell between them as he drove across the I-30 bridge spanning the Arkansas River. His apartment building lay just ahead and she studied it somberly, trying to pick out his windows. He parked, then turned to study her in the pale security lighting.
“Do you have a little more time?”
The dashboard clock informed her that it was just before eight. They’d eaten early and hadn’t been out all that long. She could send a quick text to Lucy that she’d be a little later tonight. But still...
“Maybe I’d better go,” she said softly, giving him an unguarded look. “I’m afraid if I come up, I’ll be tempted to stay too long.”
He reached out to toy with her hair, tucking a strand behind her ear. “You wouldn’t see me rushing you out.”
“That doesn’t help,” she chided, though she couldn’t resist rubbing her cheek against his hand.
He turned his hand so he was cradling her face in his palm. “I’m not ready for you to go home.”
“I’ve had a very nice time,” she admitted.
“I’ve enjoyed it, too.” Evan leaned closer to brush a kiss across her mouth.
She clutched the collar of his shirt, her lips responding to his. His kisses were familiar now, but each still thrilled. She knew his taste, his feel, his scent, and still she wanted more.
Several long, heated kisses later, he lifted his head with a groan, shifting his weight to ease a cramped leg. “I’m too old for making out in the parking lot.”
Renae was surprised to hear a giggle escape her. “Apparently not.”
A smile flashed across his face in the shadowy truck cab. “Oh, well, if any of my neighbors saw, I probably just gained a few extra stud points.”
“Unless they heard ‘Jingle Bells’ playing from your radio earlier.”
He made a face at her. “Funny.”
“I’d better go,” she said with a wistful sigh. “Thank you for the lovely evening, Evan.”
He kissed her again, slowly, but drew away without trying to change her mind. “I’ll call you.”
She nodded and reached for her door.
His hand fell on her shoulder. “Renae.”
“Yes?”
“That party Emma’s family is giving Saturday evening? I’d like you to go with me.”
“I said I would be there,” she reminded him. “I promised to represent the scholarship fund with you and Tate and Kim.”
He shook his head. “I don’t mean I want you to attend as part of the group. I want you to go with me.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip, suddenly realizing what he was asking. “You mean, like a date?”
He shrugged. “If that’s what you want to call it.”
So he had viewed tonight much the same way she had—as a shift in their...well, relationship was the only word she could come up with.
“I could meet you there,” she said, though she wasn’t sure he would be satisfied with that offer.
She was right.
“I’d rather pick you up, so we can go in together.”
She twisted her fingers in her lap. “You know what you’re asking of me.”
Holding her eyes steadily, he nodded. “You have to tell her sometime, Renae.”
“Do I?” she murmured.
After a pause, he asked, “Did you think we could just keep doing this indefinitely? Meeting on Wednesdays for a couple hours of lovemaking or maybe an occasional secret dinner out without Lucy ever being the wiser?”
She sighed ruefully. “It had crossed my mind.”
“As much as I’ve enjoyed having you to myself these past few weeks, it’s time to decide where we’re going from here. I’m thinking a first step would be for us to see each other openly. We got a start on that tonight, but maybe the party would be a chance for us to take it a step further.”
Renae had been relatively confident tonight that they wouldn’t run into anyone who knew them. What Evan was suggesting was a far bigger step than having dinner in a dimly lit, out-of-the-way restaurant.
And she didn’t know if she was ready.
“I’d have to think about it. I’d have to decide what to tell Lucy.”
His dark brows furrowed. “How about telling her you choose your own friends?”
Friends? She could figure out what to say if she and Evan were simply friends. Surely he understood how much more difficult it would be to tell Jason’s mother that she was sleeping with the enemy.
Not that she would
be quite that blunt about it, of course. But Lucy could be a little too perceptive.
“Just let me think about it, okay?”
“You do that.”
He sounded grumpy, and that wasn’t the way she wanted to end the evening. But she wasn’t going to make rash promises just to appease him, either. He might as well accept that now.
She reached again for the door. “I really do have to go now.”
He met her at the back of the truck and walked her to her car. He waited until she’d unlocked her door, then slipped a hand behind her head and gave her a long, thorough kiss that left her clinging to the car for balance when her knees threatened to buckle.
“Think about that, too,” he advised her, stepping away.
Swallowing hard, she slid into her driver’s seat. Evan closed the door for her, then walked away without waiting for her to start the engine.
Looking after him, she felt a mixture of frustration and fear. Evan Daugherty had always aroused strong emotions in her, and that wasn’t changing as they spent more time together. In fact, it was growing worse.
She was going to have to make some hard decisions where Evan was concerned—soon. She wanted to believe that there was no question what choice she would make if it came down to Lucy or Evan.
But the thought of watching Evan walk out of her life was almost more than she could bear.
Which left her...where?
* * *
Trying to catch up on some paperwork that had accumulated during an especially hectic day, Renae stayed a little late at work on Thursday. She called to let Lucy know she’d be delayed and not to hold dinner for her. She would make it up to the kids this weekend, she vowed. She’d promised to take them to see Santa at the mall Saturday morning, and while she wasn’t looking forward to the crowds, she knew the kids would enjoy the holiday bustle.
Cathy, too, stayed after hours, claiming she had some extra work of her own to complete. Renae suspected her coworker simply didn’t want to leave Renae working late alone, though Cathy refused to admit that was her motivation.
They sat side by side at computers, Renae answering correspondence and dealing with insurance claims while Cathy entered billing information and cleaned up the appointments calendar for the next week. For a few minutes after their last coworker walked out, the only sound in the clinic was the clatter of dueling keyboards.
Cathy was the first to speak. “So, how have your scholarship meetings been going, Renae? Getting a lot done on it?”
“Yes, we’re ready to accept applications. We’ll name the recipients in April.”
“It feels really good to be involved with such a worthy cause, doesn’t it?”
Cathy was active in several local charitable organizations herself, so she spoke from experience. Renae nodded. “Yes, it does.”
“Not to mention working on the cause with such a good-looking man. You are still working with Mr. Hottie, aren’t you?”
Renae slanted her a look. “Don’t start.”
Her expression sobering, Cathy turned in her swivel chair to study Renae more closely. “You know I consider you a friend as well as a coworker, right? I mean, you were there for me when Joe and I broke up in July, and I really appreciated that.”
Renae looked away from her monitor. “Of course we’re friends. Is there something you need to talk about?”
“Not me. You. I just want you to know you can talk to me if you need to.”
Her fingers tripped on the keyboard, bringing up a string of nonsense on the screen.
“I’m fine, Cathy, but thank you for the offer.”
Pushing a strand of frizzy red hair out of her face, Cathy gave her a chiding look. “Like I said, we’re friends. I can tell when you’re troubled. I mean, you’ve been sort of teetering between giddy and perturbed the past few weeks, which, in my vast thirty-nine years of experience, is usually a sign of a problematic new relationship.”
“I haven’t been giddy,” Renae refuted immediately, uncomfortable with the word.
“Okay, maybe not giddy,” Cathy conceded, “but definitely distracted, and in a good way.”
Renae sighed. “It’s—”
“—complicated,” Cathy finished with her. “Honey, it always is.”
“My mother-in-law blames Mr. Hottie, as you call him, for causing her son’s death,” Renae blurted. “She doesn’t even know I’ve been meeting with him, much less—well, that there would be any possibility of anything more.”
“Oh.” Cathy blinked. “Um, wow.”
“Yeah.” Grimly, Renae cleared her screen and entered the correct data.
“Why would she blame—Evan, isn’t it?”
Renae nodded without pausing in her work. “It was Evan who helped Jason buy a motorcycle a few years before the accident, to Lucy’s disapproval. And Evan was the one who talked Jason into going for that last ride, even though Jason had originally made other plans. Evan made it safely through the intersection only moments before Jason followed and was hit by the car. So Lucy decided that Jason would still be alive if it weren’t for Evan.”
“Wow,” Cathy said again, apparently at a loss for another word.
Renae nodded again and hit a few keys with a bit more force than necessary.
“I take it you don’t agree with her?”
“Of course not. Evan would never have done anything deliberately to hurt Jason,” Renae insisted.
Cathy eyed her with a frown. “Hmm.”
Renae wasn’t sure what she meant by that murmur, but she didn’t ask for clarification.
After another few minutes of working in silence, Cathy said, “I know you’re very close to your mother-in-law, but are you really willing to stop seeing a man you’re interested in just to keep her happy?”
“I think the question should be, am I really willing to risk alienating a woman who has been like a mother to me for a decade over what could prove to be a passing attraction to a man who only showed up in my life again a couple of months ago?”
“Well, when you put it that way...”
“When I put it that way, the answer is obvious,” Renae said with a renewed determination, struck by her own reasoning.
“But maybe—”
“I appreciate your concern, Cathy, really, but I need to finish up here so I can get home. Lucy and the kids are waiting for me.”
“Okay, but if you want to talk, the offer stands.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” And she did, really—but this was a problem Renae knew she was going to have to resolve for herself.
* * *
Evan hadn’t been exactly enthusiastic about the compromise Renae had suggested for the party, but he’d made the best of it, greeting her with a kiss when she arrived at his apartment. They would still walk into the event together, but she simply hadn’t been comfortable with him picking her up at her house.
“You look great,” he told her, stepping back to admire the total effect of her outfit. She’d obsessed a little over what to wear, finally settling on flowing black evening pants and a sparkly black-and-silver top with a deep scoop neckline and three-quarter sleeves. Conservative, but figure-flattering; classic, but with just a touch of bling for the holidays. The appreciation in Evan’s eyes made her feel that her choice had been worth the dithering.
“You look very tasty, yourself,” she assured him, eying his dark suit and holiday-red tie in approval. Evan could definitely rock a suit.
Drawing her gaze from him, she uttered a sound of surprise when she saw the Christmas tree displayed in front of his big window that overlooked the river. “Oh, how pretty.”
Before she even touched the blue spruce’s dense needles, she could tell by the scent that it was real. Tiny white LED lights glittered among the thick branches and reflected off delicate glass ornaments in red, gold and silver. A gold star sat proudly at the top of the tree, almost touching the ceiling. She couldn’t help thinking how much more elegant this perfectly coordinated tree looked compared
to the big artificial tree at home, covered haphazardly with multicolored lights, a hodgepodge of ornaments collected through the years and a few crafts-project ornaments made by the twins. While Evan’s tree was perfection, she decided she preferred her own.
She wondered how he would view her kid-friendly decorations. And whether seeing them would make him, like her, wonder how their very different lives would mesh. “Your tree is beautiful,” she said, pushing those disconcerting thoughts away. “Did you decorate it yourself or hire someone to do it?”
He shrugged, looking a little self-conscious. “I was at loose ends one evening, so I decided to put up a tree. I don’t always bother, but I thought you might like it.”
She moistened her lips. “You did this for me?”
“Well, I enjoy it, too, but—yeah. Mostly for you. I don’t have many other visitors.”
She was both incredibly touched and a bit disconcerted by his gesture. Every time she left him here, she wasn’t sure she would be back, but Evan had gone to a lot of trouble on the assumption that she would be here to appreciate his efforts. Was he that confident that she wouldn’t be able to stay away?
Or had he simply hoped she would not?
Evan glanced at his watch. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yes.” She was a little nervous about this party but she figured she might as well make the best of it.
He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I’d rather stay here with you, but I guess I’m ready, too.”
“Knowing how you hate parties, I’m not sure that’s such a compliment to me,” she teased, walking away from the tree.
He caught her around the waist and pulled her to him for a kiss that almost rattled her teeth. “Trust me,” he said huskily when he released her, “it was a compliment.”
Blinking somewhat dazedly, she followed him out the door.
Evan helped her into his truck, then rounded the front to the driver’s door. While he settled into his seat, Renae lowered the passenger-side sunshade mirror to repair her lipstick.
“Did you tell Lucy where you’re going tonight?” Evan asked as he stopped at the exit of the parking lot.
“Of course. I told her I was going to the party where her afghan’s being auctioned.”