Caterina

by Patricia Paris

  She’d always have her sisters, true, and they always had, and always would support and cheer her on, but that was different. She wanted—no, she needed—more.

  Cat walked out of her own room and went down the hall, to Eliana’s bedroom. Was Liam the more she needed? The thought didn’t repulse her as it might have five months ago. Rather, she realized, the possibility that he might be the something, or someone, missing in her life to make her dreams complete made her very glad she’d agreed to go out with him.

  A flutter of butterflies took flight in her stomach. What if, after everything that happened between them, he turned out to be her Prince Charming—someone she could truly be happy with—but she’d botched it up?

  No. She wouldn’t hex the night before it started. Despite their past, he wanted to go out with her tonight. She wanted to go out with him. Something—attraction, curiosity…her dead aunt—had been corralling them toward each other for weeks.

  She needed to get out of her own way, let whatever it was take her where she needed to go to find out if Liam was the more she wanted, or if he’d turn out to be just another mistake in judgment when it came to the men she’d gotten involved with.

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE you picked this restaurant.” Caterina glanced around at the intimate dining room. White tablecloths over longer, floor-length dark gold ones covered the tables. Crystal glassware sparkled at every setting, winking beneath a gathering of chandeliers that danced across the ceiling, as if in invitation to indulge oneself. Ivory china, rimmed with gold filigree borders, waited in understated elegance for the culinary delights, yet to be revealed, that would be set upon them to tempt curious palates. Everywhere she looked, her eyes soaked in the stage that had been set to seduce the diners’ epicurean senses before a fork ever touched their lips.

  She looked at Liam in wonderment over his choice.

  “I hope it meets with your approval,” he said, his eyes searching her face as if looking for confirmation that he’d chosen well. “Nothing against the Spaghetti Castle. In fact, Riley and I both love it, but I wasn’t sure it would be the best place to take a chef on our first date. Someone told me if I wanted to impress, this would be the place.”

  “I’m impressed. Not only did you pick a wonderful restaurant, you managed to choose my favorite one outside of New York.” It touched her that he’d wanted to please her, and that he’d gone to the effort of asking around for suggestions. “You can tell whoever gave you the recommendation they couldn’t have suggested better if they knew me.”

  “They do know you. In fact, when I asked, all three of your sisters said, ‘The Silver Phoenix,’ in unison, without having to think about it.”

  “They would know.” She smiled lightly. As they waited to be shown to their table, she was filled with warm feelings that she wasn’t sure how to express. She felt embarrassingly happy. “Thank you, Liam,” she said. “It’s…it’s perfect.”

  His eyes glowed as he considered her, apparently pleased her sisters hadn’t steered him wrong. She would have been just as happy…well, no, she wouldn’t have been, but she wouldn’t have complained, if he’d taken her to the Spaghetti Castle. If they got along well and enjoyed their time together, it wouldn’t have mattered to her if they’d done it over pizza or prime rib. Not that she wasn’t looking forward to the divine meal she was confident she’d be enjoying here, but it was the man who most intrigued her tonight.

  “I am surprised you were able to get a reservation on such short notice,” she said, knowing how difficult it was to get into this restaurant, particularly on weekends.

  “I made it three weeks ago, but even so, they only had two openings left for tonight.”

  “Three weeks ago?” Cat gazed at him in confusion. “But you only asked me to dinner four days ago. Unless you were intending to bring someone else when you made the reservation, and they bailed on you.”

  “I wasn’t intending to bring anyone else.” He slid a hand around her waist as they waited to be seated and gave an affectionate squeeze, then left it there, resting on her hip. She didn’t object. She liked the way it felt, comfortable, right somehow, as if it belonged there.

  “So, you made a dinner reservation,” Cat said, wagging a finger between them, “for you and me three weeks ago and didn’t ask me until this week?”

  “Yeah. I was working up to it.”

  “Did you think I’d say no?”

  “The thought occurred to me. I decided to spend a couple of weeks charming you first to hedge my bets.”

  “Mr. Dougherty.” A tall, young man in black trousers, a starched white shirt, and a black bow tie addressed Liam. He held two menus resting in the crook of his elbow with one hand and extended the other toward the dining room. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your table.”

  Liam slid his hand to the small of her back as they walked across the room, past other tables with diners conversing over culinary delights, to a beautifully dressed table for two toward the back of the restaurant.

  Caterina shifted self-consciously in her chair a few minutes later as they waited for the waiter to return with their wine order. Liam sat with his chin resting on his joined hands, watching her intently, the corners of his mouth curled upward every few seconds, as if amused by some private joke.

  She wasn’t used to being scrutinized so openly. It made her wonder if he liked what he saw or, in such proximity, had zeroed in on one of her flaws. Her nose was too straight. Her face, perhaps a bit narrow. Her hair was at that in-between stage where she couldn’t decide if she wanted to grow it out or lop it all off.

  “I’m not sure what I want to order,” he said. “Everything on the menu looks good, but I doubt any of it will be as appetizing as you look tonight.”

  She beamed at him, her doubts scattering like autumn leaves in the breeze. “That was a corny thing to say, Liam, but thank you. I’m not opposed to corny flattery, and if we’re sharing honest observations using culinary terminology, I think you look positively delectable yourself.”

  He chuckled, a rich reverberation that rolled over her and tickled her nerves. And he did look delectable. He’d almost knocked her off her feet when she’d walked into reception and seen him standing at the front desk talking to Lucia.

  Dressed in a dark, charcoal-gray suit and a white dress shirt, with a black paisley tie, he could have walked right off the pages of a fashion magazine. None of the male models she and her girlfriends drooled over after they’d had a couple of glasses of wine had anything on Liam Dougherty dressed in a suit. Or anything for that matter, she conceded. He was hunky as hell in faded jeans and a tee shirt. This was just a different side of him. One that had surprised her because she wasn’t used to it. She liked them both.

  He’s probably even more gorgeous wearing nothing at all.

  Oh really? Did her dirty little mind have to go there?

  She looked away to avert her slutty thoughts from becoming obvious. But damn, her curiosity was killing her, and was it so wrong for her mind to travel that path? She was a healthy, curious, horny woman.

  “Should we decide what we want to order before the waiter returns with our wine?” Liam asked. He leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice. “I’m hoping I’ll be able to convince you to come over to my place for an after-dinner drink since Riley won’t be there. We could continue sharing observations then, in culinary terms if you like, about each other. Who knows where such talk might lead?”

  His eyes held a suggestion of where he’d like it to lead. Maybe his mind had joined hers on the same road.

  “I never pegged you for such a cornball,” Cat said, grinning. “And I’ve never had a guy warn me about his plan to talk me into going home with him, in the hopes of getting lucky.”

  “When a man decides to pursue a woman, his next decision is when and how to get her alone someplace in the hope of getting lucky. We can’t help ourselves. I’d tell you otherwise if I was a more selfish bastard who only wanted to get you out of that d
ress and have my way with you, but it would be a lie. I’d prefer to get you out of it and have my way with you honestly.”

  Their waiter returned with their wine. “Have you decided what you’d like to order?”

  “We need a few more minutes. The lady distracted me from deciding.”

  “No rush,” the waiter assured them. “Would you like me to bring rolls for the table while you’re deciding?”

  “That would be great,” Caterina said. When he walked away, she smirked at Liam. “I distracted you?”

  “You’ve been distracting me for about six months, sweetheart.”

  She shook her head but couldn’t hide the smile his admission raised. She picked up her wine and held the glass over the table. “To honesty. I like knowing it’s your preference. I don’t know if it’ll help you get me out of my dress tonight, but I do appreciate it.”

  “Does that mean I can stop wondering how to convince you to agree to the after-dinner drink and focus my thoughts on how I’m going to accomplish the other?”

  Caterina picked up the burgundy, leather-bound menu and held it in front of her face. “I’ll agree to an after-dinner drink,” she said from behind creamy vanilla pages that were embossed in navy ink and full of tempting appetizers, soups, entrées, and desserts. “Beyond that, I’m not making any promises.”

  She settled on the petite filet of beef, rare, with parmesan-encrusted mashed potatoes, roasted asparagus bundles with dill butter sauce and cracked black pepper.

  They conversed over their meals, sharing stories about themselves—what they liked to do in their spare time, what places they’d visited, those they never had but wanted to someday, why they’d chosen the careers they did. They talked easily, laughed easily, flirted easily, and often.

  She’d settled on something else, she realized, after giving her order to their server. She would let the night play out. See where it led. Make no decisions until she needed to make them. And wherever it led, whatever she decided, it would be because that’s what she wanted.

  “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on

  the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.”

  Erma Bombeck

  Liam swung into his driveway after driving home from the restaurant. The beams from the truck’s headlights illuminated the front of a moderate-sized house with slate-blue HardiePlank shingle siding and buttercream trim. A small front porch, still big enough to accommodate the glider he and Riley often sat in on warm summer evenings to tell each other about their day, was centered beneath a large picture window.

  Two comfortably worn wicker chairs, which his mom had given him when she and Dad moved to Florida several years ago, bookended a sturdy little table. He and Riley had made it together with leftover scrap wood that he’d salvaged from a project. He’d let her pick out the paint, the reason he had a bright purple table with lime-green legs decorating the front porch.

  “It’s homier than I imagined it would be,” Caterina said a few minutes later, as they stood in the front room. Her eyes swept around the space, pausing a moment on the far corner, dominated by Riley’s play kitchen, her desk and bookshelf, and the open-top, canvas storage boxes he’d picked up at a home store, so his daughter could keep some of her toys in the living room without the clutter taking over.

  Caterina looked at him, a glint of humor in her eyes. “I guess I expected something…umm, more…”

  “Single dad without a clue?”

  “Yeah. A bit of that. Color me guilty of stereotyping,” she admitted with a sheepish nod.

  “My sister-in-law Becca is good at letting me know if things start to get too bachelor pad-ish here. I try to avoid leaving too many beer cans and dirty socks lying around for Riley’s sake,” he joked.

  “It can’t be easy. Being a single dad and raising a young daughter on your own.”

  Liam shrugged. “A wise woman once told me, ‘Have to is a good master.’ We do what we need to do. And as kids go, I’m lucky. Riley’s pretty easygoing.”

  Caterina glanced away, then back, as if wondering whether to ask the questions he could see in her eyes. If they were going to have a relationship, and he hoped that was where they were headed, she had a right to know about his wife.

  “It may be none of my business.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her right ear. “But what happened to Riley’s mother? I know she died. The day we baked cookies together, Riley told me she didn’t have a mom, that she had to go to heaven.”

  She angled her head, her gaze steady, but sympathetic. “Was she ill, or…” A shadow fell over her face, as if she struggled with some emotion of her own. “Was she killed in an accident?”

  Liam swallowed. The story never got any easier to tell. “She was hooked on OxyContin. OD’d when I was at work one day.”

  “Oh my God, Liam. I’m so sorry. That had to be horrible! Coming home to find the woman you loved—” She paused, seemed at a loss for words.

  “I wasn’t in love. I know that probably sounds cold,” he said tonelessly and then decided to explain. “We’d been dating for about six months when Sylvie said she wanted to get married. I knew I wasn’t in love, and I didn’t really believe she was either. She started putting on the pressure though, said she hated living at her folks’ house, that if I didn’t marry her she’d leave town. I told her I wasn’t ready. After fighting about it for several days, she let it drop. I figured she realized I wasn’t going to give in and gave up on the idea. Things seemed okay for a while, but after a couple more months I started to think she was biding her time, maybe thought she could change my mind if she was patient. Little things she said and did. I knew that it wasn’t going to happen, and my gut told me it was time to cut loose. We’d had some good times, but I wasn’t in love. I realized staying together at that point would be unfair to both of us. Unfortunately, I’d waited too long. By the time I decided to end it, Sylvie was already six weeks pregnant.”

  Caterina observed him through somewhat narrowed eyes. It wasn’t hard to guess her suspicion. He’d suspected the same thing. When he’d confronted Sylvie, she admitted that she’d stopped taking her birth control pills a couple of months earlier. He did the math. The timing coincided too closely with his refusal to get married when she’d first brought it up to be an accidental coincidence. He’d been furious, but it didn’t diminish his responsibility. You play, you pay, his old man had said when he told his parents about the pregnancy.

  “Riley was only two when Sylvie died. She was home alone with her when it happened. I didn’t know about the pills. I never would have left Riley alone with her if I’d had any idea.”

  He swallowed back a wash of guilt. “When I got home, Riley was sitting on the floor next to Sylvie, playing with some dolls. I thought Sylvie had fainted or something. I rushed over and knelt beside them. Riley put a finger to her lips and shushed me. Mommy’s sleeping, she said. I knew as soon as I touched her, though. Sylvie wasn’t sleeping.” Liam pushed a hand through his hair.

  Caterina put a hand over her mouth. “Poor Riley. How did you—”

  “I told her that her mommy had to go away to heaven. She was too young to understand what happened. She doesn’t remember any of it now, not even her mom. Sylvie did what she had to when it came to Riley, but she wasn’t what you’d call a doting mother. We argued constantly because she accused me of giving more attention to Riley than her. It was a ridiculous argument. Riley was two, for God sake!”

  Liam felt the old frustration bubble in his gut. He hadn’t been able to conquer all the anger over what had happened when he discovered the truth about the life his wife had been living on the side. A life he’d known nothing about until it was too late to intervene. He’d found the evidence of her affair with Mitch Gregory—phone messages, emails.

  “I don’t believe Sylvie intended to kill herself. She was too selfish to take her own life. I think she took the pills to scare me. Get my attention. But she overdid it, and, well…by the time I got home, I was too late to
save her.”

  He sighed wearily. “Maybe if I’d tried a little harder to make things work, she’d still be alive. She might not have looked elsewhere for attention. Never would have gotten mixed up with—” Liam stopped short. He wasn’t sure he should tell her about Sylvie’s infidelity, or that his wife had been having an affair with Cat’s old boyfriend. Caterina knew he didn’t like Gregory, but Liam had never told her why.

  “I promised you an after-dinner drink at the restaurant, and we’re still standing here in our coats,” he said, slipping his off and then reaching out for hers.

  Caterina held his gaze, her rich, dark eyes penetrating. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said with unbridled conviction. “I don’t know her story, but people make their own choices. From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like she made very good ones. But, good or bad, they were her choices. You can’t own them.”

  “I understand all that but knowing something doesn’t automatically make it easier to accept.” The seriousness of the last few minutes had begun to cast a shadow over the evening. One he didn’t want to linger under.

  “This is getting a little heavy for a first date. Why don’t we move on to something more pleasant?” He tossed their coats onto the corner of the couch. “I’ll get us that drink, and then you can tell me more about your plans for the restaurant.”

  “What do you want to know about it?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me about the food.”

  “You want me to talk to you about food?”

  Liam grinned. “Yeah. I don’t know anyone else who talks about food the way you do. You make it sound very sensual. Sexy. You do things with your eyes and mouth when you talk about food.”

  “I do not,” she said in protest.

  “Oh, yes you do.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the kitchen. “It’s very arousing.”

  Caterina gave a delicate snort, but when he glanced at her, he caught the hint of a smile tugging the corner of her lips.