by Dana Corbit
“Sure, she’s upstairs, trying to make an entrance and all of that, you know.” She paused long enough to give him a critical once-over. “Dinah’s right. You’re pretty hunky.”
“Ruth Fraser, come in the kitchen this instant,” came a voice from farther inside the house.
“Sure, Mom.” The young woman glanced over her shoulder and then, turning back to Alex, she shrugged. “She thinks I’m boy crazy,” she said, before sauntering down the hall.
Naomi Fraser was probably right about that, and he had an idea why Ruth was attending a women’s college, but Alex figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to say so. That was all he needed, to add offending Dinah’s family to everything else that had gone wrong today.
So much for the romantic dinner for two that he’d been looking forward to all day.
Naomi appeared from the kitchen then, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She grabbed him for a hug with the practiced hands of someone comfortable hugging everyone.
“You’ll have to forgive our Ruth, Alex. She gets a little overenthusiastic.”
“She’s fine. Good kid.”
“Ruth’s that, all right.” Naomi chuckled. “Sorry that John can’t be here to meet with you. He’s in his study, working on Sunday’s sermon, but…”
She let her words fall away as a door creaked open. Reverend Fraser appeared in the hallway, his glasses perched on the end of his nose. “No, I’m here, my dear. I wouldn’t miss this chance to have a few words with Dinah’s young man.”
Young man? Alex hoped the minister was joking, but Reverend Fraser kept a straight face.
“It’s nice to see you again, Alex.” He offered his hand.
Alex gripped it, wondering if he should remind Dinah’s father that he’d been an adult for well over a decade. “Good to see you, too.”
“So, what are your plans for tonight?”
“That’s up to your daughter, sir,” Alex answered vaguely. They might not be going out at all, depending on what she decided, but he didn’t mention that. If the minister asked him about his intentions regarding Dinah, he would die of embarrassment right then and there.
John opened his mouth to say more, but Naomi crossed to him and placed her hand on his arm.
“I wonder what’s taking Dinah so long,” she said. “They probably need to get going or they’ll be late for dinner.”
The reservation, Alex thought with a grimace. He’d felt so privileged to get one at the last minute at the fancy steak house he could barely afford, and now he had to cancel it.
A creak from above drew their attention to the stairs. The woman descending from the second floor took Alex’s breath away. Dinah had fussed with her appearance, wearing a soft-looking sweater and a long, filmy skirt with flowers all over it. She’d arranged her hair in one of those fancy updos, leaving a few pieces down, soft about her face. He’d never seen her looking prettier or more feminine.
“Wow.” The word just escaped him before he had a chance to censor himself. After a reaction like that, there was no way the minister would let him out of the house with his daughter, even with chaperones.
The color of Dinah’s cheeks deepened, but she smiled. “You’re not interrogating my date, are you, Dad?”
“He was trying, but I stopped him in time,” Naomi said with a chuckle that gave a hint where Dinah got her musical laugh.
As she reached the landing, she glanced at Alex again, and her gaze narrowed as she took in his jeans, brown leather jacket, rugby shirt and tennis shoes. “Am I overdressed? I thought you said this place was dressy.”
“That’s what I was going to talk to you about.” He’d been dreading this moment all night, and he felt just as lousy as he’d known he would, but he hadn’t expected the words to come so hard.
Finally, he took her arm and directed her to look out the front window. From across the street, they still would have been able to see Brandon and Chelsea sitting in the backseat, but it was much more obvious since Chelsea had rolled down the window and was hanging out it, waving.
Dinah looked sidelong at Alex. “Was that dinner reservation for four?”
Alex blew out a breath that underscored his frustration. “No, just two. But I know now why parents complain so much about babysitters. First, my neighbor who’s always available to sit…wasn’t. Then the college girl my neighbor suggested must have received a better offer because she canceled at the last minute.”
She’d turned back to him, and her smile spread as he told his story.
“Sounds like you’ve had a rough night.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Well, that’s too bad.” She turned her chin up and studied him as if she’d be willing to hear the rest of what happened, giving Alex another reason to like her. Lately, he was finding more reasons than he could count.
“None of it has to ruin tonight, though. I doubt the fancy restaurant would work, but the four of us could get a pizza or something. Or if you’d rather just reschedule…” He wished he couldn’t hear the hope in his voice. He didn’t like being vulnerable, and he didn’t want to start now.
“I’ve got to go upstairs.”
Dinah turned and jogged up the stairs, not looking back even once. Alex stared after her until she reached the upper level, and then he looked at her parents.
“Now what just happened?” He’d known when he’d shown up there and suggested alternative plans that there was a chance she would say no, but he wasn’t prepared for this reaction. Was this her way of saying no? Had she just trucked upstairs to see how long he would stand around waiting until he got the hint and left?
Reverend Fraser shrugged and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Your guess is as good as mine. Women. You’d think I would have figured them out after all of these years, but, sadly, no. God has made them a delightful puzzle, hasn’t He?”
Naomi rolled her eyes and elbowed her husband in the side. “Delightful, all right. All I know is I raised these children to have some manners, and they’ve all forgotten them.”
Ruth chose that moment to return from the kitchen, where she’d been temporarily banished.
“Aw, don’t worry, Mom.” She slipped in next to Naomi and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “We have those nice manners you were working so hard to instill in us. Even Jonah. We just do a good job at hiding them.”
Ruth planted a kiss on her mother’s cheek, and though Naomi frowned at her outspoken daughter, she kissed her back.
John’s hearty chuckle filled the room. “You see. They’re quite a puzzle.”
The sound of footsteps brought back everyone’s attention to the stairs. Now sporting a pair of jeans, a sweater and tennis shoes, Dinah looked as lovely as before, if a lot more comfortable. She had a jacket over her arm. Her pretty hairdo she’d tugged down and pulled into a regular ponytail, but the little wisps of hair at her cheeks remained.
“What’s going on, everyone?”
Curiosity lit Dinah’s eyes, but Alex had his own question to ask. “You’re coming with us?”
“Of course I’m coming. Why are you asking that?”
Alex shrugged. “When you said you had to go upstairs, I thought—”
“That I didn’t want to go?” She looked at him as if that thought was ludicrous. “Of course I’m going. I happen to love pizza.”
Reverend Fraser clapped his hands together. “Glad we have that settled. Two chaperones are a great addition to the evening, in my opinion.”
Dinah directed a frown her father’s way as Alex helped her into her jacket. “Do I need to remind you that I’m twenty-five years old?”
He tilted his head to the side. “You’ll always be my little girl.”
Instead of bristling at her father’s comment, Dinah smiled. “I know, Daddy.” She stepped over to him and kissed his cheek.
It was a sweet gesture between father and daughter, but Alex couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be the privileged recipient of her kiss. He wa
s still imagining that gift when Dinah crossed back to him and took his arm.
“Now it’s time to eat some serious pizza. Did I mention that I could eat my weight in pizza?”
He patted her arm with his free hand. “My kind of girl.”
Though he’d meant it as a joke, the truth in his words struck him. Only Dinah Fraser could be equally delighted with a pizza foursome as with a dinner for two. He liked that about her, that she could see the fun in any situation. She looked at her world with the bright eyes of a child, when his own eyes had been jaded and dull for too long.
Perhaps it was this joie de vivre that drew him to her, or perhaps it was something more difficult to pinpoint. All he was certain of was that he was more excited for this date-for-four than he’d ever been for a date before.
“Five whole dollars? Apiece?”
Chelsea’s eyes had to be the size of silver dollars, but she was quick to grasp the two five-dollar bills that Alex waved in front of her and to hand one of them to her brother. Brandon had managed to stay sullen all through the pepperoni with extra cheese, but he perked up at the prospect of a video-induced stupor. He took his bill and they rushed off in search of a token machine.
Dinah followed their departure with her gaze until they’d reached the pizza parlor’s game room, and then she turned back to Alex. They still weren’t really alone, but the idea of a few stolen minutes, just the two of them, made her hands sweaty.
“That went well,” she said with a smile.
“I know. I know. Bribing children would rank up at the top of the ‘don’t’ list in any parenting guide.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“But you thought it.”
“I didn’t even think it.” No, her thoughts had been on things other than his parenting skills or even the children.
“Hey, thanks for being so cool about it when I had to change our plans. I expected you to cancel when you saw the kids. A lot of women would have.”
“Not me.”
An unreadable emotion passed over his face, and then he nodded.
“And most women haven’t gone as long as I have without a date.”
“That long, eh?”
“Long enough that I had been considering being one of the first guinea pigs for a new online Christian dating service. Have you heard about it? It’s my mom’s brainchild.”
“I hadn’t heard about it, but I can picture your mom coming up with the idea. She seems like a real mover and shaker.” He poked at the lone piece of pizza crust still on his plate. “Now your dad, I can see how he would be tough on a daughter’s social life. He’s a little overprotective, isn’t he?”
“As he said, I’ll always be his little girl.” She shrugged. “He just doesn’t want me to get hurt.”
Alex nodded. “Wait, you said had been considering trying out your mom’s online dating service. Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”
Now how was she supposed to answer that? Should she tell him that it wouldn’t be fair to any of the dynamic Christian men she could meet through the online service when she would only compare them to a certain firefighter with dark, intelligent eyes and a hero complex? Would he want to hear that, for the time being, anyway, she didn’t want to meet anyone else? Coward that she was, Dinah opted for an easy way out.
“Since this dating-with-kid-chaperones thing sounded like the newest social craze, I decided to try it out for a while.”
“For a while?”
“A few hours, anyway,” she said with a shrug.
Alex glanced to the game area, where Chelsea sat perched on a stationary racing motorcycle with Brandon just behind the rear tire, offering direction. “Well, right now this appears to be a one-on-one date. For the next…ah—” he peeked at his watch “—twenty minutes or so, until they run out of tokens and come begging for more.”
“Then we’d better hurry up and have fun.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m having fun already.”
His smile was so warm that it felt as if he’d touched her without even moving his hand. “Me, too,” she managed to say over the tightness in her throat.
“It was worth ten dollars to get a break from Brandon’s scowl for a while.”
She recognized it as a weak attempt to lighten the intensity of the moment, but she decided to let him get away with it. “What was all of Brandon’s brooding about, anyway?”
“He had detention today for calling his history teacher an idiot.” He wore that same disappointed frown that had been on his face as he’d dealt with Chelsea after the false alarm.
“Why do you think he called him that?”
Alex reached for the last piece of pizza that Dinah guessed wouldn’t even have been there if Brandon had been acting, or more specifically, eating, like himself. After Alex took a bite, chewed and swallowed, he tilted his head to the side. “You mean besides that his teacher is an—”
“Yeah, besides that.”
“Oh yeah, you’re a teacher, too.” He was grinning as he said it, but then he became serious. “I don’t know why he said it. I can only assume that he’s still acting out because he’s worried about his mom and dad.”
She swallowed, remembering. For a few minutes she could forget about the worries Alex, Chelsea and Brandon shared, but those three couldn’t ever forget.
“At least he has an excuse for his crazy behavior. Most of us just have to chalk it up to surviving our irrational teen years.”
“That sounds like it comes from experience, but somehow I can’t imagine you being an irrational teen.”
It was Dinah’s turn to smile. “You mean because I’m a preacher’s daughter? Haven’t you ever heard about preachers’ kids who get into trouble?”
“Sure, I have. But somehow I don’t think you did.”
“I didn’t make the newspaper police blotter, if that’s what you’re thinking qualifies a person as a rebellious teen, but I was a bit of a wild child in my own way. I just didn’t do it in public.”
Alex rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward, appearing interested. “So what did you do in private to make you this wild child?”
She bristled at the way one corner of his mouth lifted. “Hey, it’s true. When I had friends sleep over, I would drive my parents crazy by blaring heavy-metal music late into the night. It wasn’t the kind of music they wanted me listening to, either.”
“Don’t worry. I wasn’t much of a rebel, either.”
“I wasn’t finished,” she said with a frown. “I even experimented with the idea of being an agnostic in high school, but, thankfully, that phase was short-lived.”
At that, Alex shook his head vehemently. “You, an agnostic? I can’t believe it.”
“When your parents are people of faith, especially people who are so public about their faith, what is the one thing you can do that hurts them the most? You question whether or not God exists.”
“You seem pretty active in the Chestnut Grove Church now. How did you find your answer?”
“My dad would be the obvious guess, but it was really Mom who helped me to see the truth. She sat me down one night and told me I could choose to believe whatever I wanted to, but there was nothing I could do that would convince her that God didn’t exist.
“She said His miracles in her life had spoken for themselves, and then she named them. First Jonah, then me, and, finally, Ruth. I was questioning everything she held dear, and still she called me a miracle.”
Alex reached for the pitcher and poured more cola in his glass. “I’m surprised she didn’t say that you were a test from God.”
“I was a test, all right.” She shook her head, picturing that teenage girl she no longer was.
“If that isn’t ironic, I don’t know what is.”
“What’s that?”
“Compared to you—the PK—I must have been a piece of cake for my parents to raise. I turned the music down when they asked me to. I came home before curfew. I even went
to church every Sunday without complaining too much.”
His eyes took on a faraway look for a few seconds, and whatever he saw made him smile. “Karla used to torture me because her parents kept asking her why she couldn’t be more like me.”
“Boy, your folks did have it easy.”
His jaw tightened then, and his eyes took on a steel-like quality. “Even leaders in corrupt governments know that it’s easier to keep citizens in line if you keep them in the dark about their secrets. George and Edie had to know it, too. Maybe they wouldn’t have had such a cakewalk raising me if they’d told me about—” He shook his head hard, as if to cast away whatever he’d been about to say.
“About what?”
Alex blinked a few times, realizing what he’d almost said. “It’s nothing. Forget it.”
He hadn’t talked to anyone about discovering he was adopted except Karla and that private investigator. He’d told Karla the details when he’d found his birth records, but Alex had never told anyone about the betrayal he’d felt. Today he’d been tempted to share it all with Dinah, and he didn’t know what to think about that.
What was he so afraid of? None of it was his fault. His parents had made that decision not to tell, and they had died never having to face the consequences of their choice. Would Dinah see him as a victim here, or would she see what he saw when he looked in the mirror in the morning: a man who didn’t have a clue who he was anymore?
Dinah opened her mouth as if to ask the question Alex wasn’t ready to answer, but just then Chelsea and Brandon came rushing back to the table.
“Uncle Alex, we’re all out of tokens.” Chelsea held out her empty hands for effect. “Can we have some more money? Please.”
“Yeah, please, Alex,” Brandon chimed. “There’s this really cool race car game, and I’m this close to earning top score.” He held his thumb and forefinger about a half inch apart to demonstrate just how close he was to this amazing achievement.