A Little Bit Engaged

by Teresa Hill

  “Allie, wait,” a woman inside called out.

  Ben looked up to see a woman sitting just inside the door. She had her hands full, a baby cradled against her shoulder and a toddler missing a shoe whom she’d managed to catch by the hood of his jacket.

  “You don’t want to leave your mom,” Ben said, moving to put his body between hers and the hallway, in case she decided to run for it.

  “She’s not my mom,” Allie said. “She’s my cousin. My mommy left, and her cousin has a little baby and a not-so-little one, and she’s trying to take care of me, too. Only, we’re a handful. I’m here to get a big sister. What about you?”

  “I think I’m too old for them to give me a big brother. What do you think?”

  She giggled. “You’re really old.”

  “And you lost your hair ribbon,” he said. “Let me get it.”

  Ben got down on his knees beside her, happy to have a problem he could solve for a change. He grabbed the ribbon, then didn’t quite know what to do with it. She really had a mountain of hair, and it was sticking out every which way. He wasn’t sure what he could accomplish by way of subduing it with one ribbon. Was it for show, or did it have a real purpose?

  “Looks like you two need some help,” a nice, soft, feminine voice said.

  Ben glanced to his right and saw legs, really nice legs. He looked up and saw a pretty blonde in a no-nonsense, dark-brown suit and a crisp white blouse. There was a brown satchel in her hand and an I-can-fix-this look on her face.

  Okay, so he couldn’t even get the hair ribbon thing right. Maybe it really wasn’t his day. Maybe he shouldn’t be out loose on the streets like this, even if he hadn’t committed any crimes yet.

  “This is my friend, Allie,” he told the pretty blonde. “She’s lost her ribbon.”

  “Again,” Allie added.

  “Again? Oh. Well, let’s see if we can get it to stay in your hair.” The woman put down her satchel and took the ribbon in hand, working what looked like magic with the girl’s unruly hair in a matter of minutes with nothing but her two hands, and then secured the ribbon. “Double knot and tight. That’s the key to keeping a hair ribbon in place.”

  “Really?” Allie bounced up and down and then stared out of the corner of her eyes, trying to find the ribbon.

  “It’s still there,” Ben told Allie, then let himself look at the woman again. She knew how to fix ribbons and hair, and she was kind as well. Seemed like she liked children, too. He wondered how she knew about the double-knotted-ribbon thing. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. She’s adorable.”

  “Oh…she’s not mine,” Ben said, happy to have an excuse to clear that up, just in case. “I’m just the official door holder.”

  “I’m here to get a big sister,” Allie said. “Are you gonna get a little sister?”

  Good girl, Ben thought, altogether pleased with the turn of events.

  He’d let Allie interrogate the pretty blonde, and then maybe he could casually work into the conversation the fact that he had no wife and no children and then… Who knew? He might even get a lunch date out of the deal.

  Ben couldn’t remember the last time he had a date.

  He checked to see if he had his clerical collar on, then remembered he didn’t. Mrs. Ryan, with a very disapproving look, had reminded him of that this morning, but he’d gotten distracted and hadn’t put it on.

  Okay. This was not a bad thing.

  The collar made people uncomfortable.

  Especially women.

  Not that he was all that good with women even without the collar.

  “I already have two little sisters,” the woman said. “Real sisters, I mean. But you can’t have too many little sisters, right?” She looked at Ben.

  “Right,” he said. Could he interest her in a pregnant fifteen-year-old?

  “So I came to get another one,” the woman said.

  “Oh, good. I pick you,” Allie said, then turned and yelled back into the office. “Miss Grace? I found one all by myself! See?”

  In the waiting room, a woman kneeling at the feet of the now completely shoeless toddler looked up and sighed. The little boy was trying to wiggle his way off the chair. A second woman was holding the baby, who was sucking on his fists.

  “Allie, Miss Charlotte will find you a big sister. You can’t just grab one in the hallway.” Miss Grace grabbed the toddler by his left ankle, which kept him from sliding out of the chair, but he howled in protest. To top it all off, the baby started crying. The poor mother looked as though she might sit down and cry, too.

  Ben had seen that exhausted-mother look before and stepped in. “Ma’am, would it be okay if I walked you and Allie and the boys to your car?”

  She gave him a look that said she would have kissed his feet, if need be, to get help to the car with Allie and the two squirmy, crying boys. Allie came to his side and put her hand trustingly in his. Miss Grace handed him the toddler, whom he held against his shoulder.

  “Thank you so much. I’ll get the shoes, the baby and the diaper bag—”

  “I’ve got the diaper bag,” said the pretty blonde who was a whiz with ribbons.

  Ben, this might be your lucky day.

  If he could just get her phone number. And find the time to have lunch or something, and if she was willing… If he could sneak away from Mrs. Ryan for a few more hours, and if this woman actually liked him and wanted to see him again, he might manage to have a life outside the church.

  People said he needed one. They warned about getting completely caught up in his work and forgetting to have a personal life.

  Ben held the toddler, who was studying him with distrusting eyes. Grace had the baby. The blonde had the diaper bag. Allie was close by. They were ready.

  “Thank you both so much,” Grace said.

  “We’re having one of those days.” Allie sounded six going on twenty-six.

  After a few more moments of confusion over misplaced car keys, a lost sock and a small battle of wills with the toddler over his car seat, the little blue station wagon was loaded up and on its way, leaving Ben alone with the blonde and trying to remember how to flirt. He’d never been that good at it, and for the past few years, he hadn’t had time, even if he did remember how.

  She saved him by sticking out her hand and saying, “Sorry. It was so hectic back there, I didn’t have time to introduce myself. I’m Kate Cassidy.”

  He took her hand in his. “Hi. Ben Taylor.”

  “Nice to meet you. Are you going back to the office, too?”

  “Yes.”

  They turned and walked together.

  Kate said, “So, are you a big brother?”

  “No, I’m in the highly precarious position of owing the director a favor, and I’m not sure yet how she’s going to collect. I hear she can be brutal. I could have six little brothers by lunchtime.”

  “Charlotte does seem to know how to take advantage of every opportunity.”

  “She twisted your arm, too?”

  “No. I can’t say that. It was more like…” They’d gotten back to the office door, and Ben held the door open for her. Kate nodded in the direction of his hand. “…like opening a door in front of me and knowing I’d walk right through it. You know what I mean?”

  “Oh, yeah. Those get me every time,” he said, thinking the door metaphor could really be a sign. He believed in signs. And phone numbers. He had to get her phone number before she disappeared. He was trying to picture his calendar through the end of the week, to see if he had a day open for lunch, when they walked into the Big Brothers/Big Sisters office one more time.

  “Kate,” the receptionist said. “It’s so good to see you. I’ve been waiting to see an announcement in the paper, but I must have missed it. You and Joe have picked a wedding date, haven’t you?”

  Ben barely managed not to growl.

  Chapter Two

  “Not yet,” Kate told the woman, whose nameplate read Melanie Mann.

>   Was it Ben’s imagination or did she seem upset by the question? Ben stood behind her, eavesdropping shamelessly.

  “Oh. Well, I understand,” her friend said. “No time to plan, right?”

  “Right,” Kate agreed. “Not yet.”

  Ben thought if she really wanted to marry this man, surely she could find time to plan a wedding.

  “Sorry about your mom,” Melanie said. “I know you must miss her terribly.”

  “Yes, I do,” Kate said.

  Okay, so he was a cad. A truly terrible person. It sounded as if she’d lost her mother recently, and here he was, hoping there was something wrong between her and her fiancé, just so Ben could maybe have lunch with her.

  He sighed, then frowned, then found both women looking at him.

  “Sorry we were so rude,” Kate said.

  “No. It’s not that. I was just thinking of…a problem I need to address.” His own shortcomings.

  “Melanie and I went to high school together,” Kate said. “This is Melanie Mann. Melanie, this is Ben Taylor.”

  Melanie picked up a tiny, yellow Post-it note. “Ahhh. That explains it. Charlotte just handed me a scribbled note that I think says, ‘Ben, ten-thirty, today.’” She turned to Ben, “That would be you?”

  “That’s me.” He held out a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too. But I’m afraid we have a problem. Charlotte didn’t check with me before scheduling a time for you to come in, and she already has a ten-thirty appointment. With Kate.”

  “It’s all right. I can wait,” Ben offered. He was already in hot water with Mrs. Ryan. Another few minutes away from the office wouldn’t matter. “Besides, I just called this morning. I’m betting Kate’s had an appointment longer than that. She looks like the organized type.”

  “Oh, definitely,” Melanie said.

  Kate hesitated, then said, “You don’t have to be somewhere?”

  “My morning’s clear.” So was lunch. Too bad he couldn’t ask her. Not if she had a fiancé.

  “Well, if you’re sure, I do need to go ahead. I have paperwork to look over and a lunch meeting and three clients coming in this afternoon.”

  “Go ahead,” Ben said, noting she’d said lunch meeting, not lunch date.

  No lunch date. No wedding date. Still, none of his business.

  Then he remembered she’d said she had two sisters. Maybe one of them would have lunch with him. If that didn’t work out, maybe he could start a singles group at church….

  Just so you can get a date, Ben?

  Okay, he was sleep deprived from sitting up late into the night with a distraught couple while their baby had emergency surgery, and he was getting a little silly now, thinking to solve his non-social-life problem in one single morning out on the town. It wasn’t as if the issue was urgent. He’d been here this long and not done a thing about it. The issue would still be there next week, next month, probably next year.

  He really hoped he didn’t wait until next year to do something about this.

  Kate was giving him a funny look. So was Melanie.

  “Sorry.” He yawned deeply, unable to hold back the motion at all, and then said, “I can be easily distracted, and I was out way too late last night.”

  Which made it sound as though he was partaking in some blatantly unministerly things. “Working,” he added. “I was working.”

  “Me, too,” Kate said, giving him a puzzled look. “But I wouldn’t have pictured you as the workaholic type.”

  “Which means what? That you are?”

  “Well…” Kate hesitated.

  “She most definitely is,” Melanie said.

  “What do you do?” Ben asked.

  “Kate has her own mortgage brokerage company. She’s the youngest person in our class to own her own business,” Melanie said, sounding proud.

  “It’s not much,” Kate claimed. “Me, a desk, a phone, a fax, a computer and an assistant. That’s it.”

  “Still, it’s all yours. I wish I had the guts to start something like that and make it work,” Melanie said.

  “It wasn’t guts,” Kate said. “You know how I like to do things my own way. Starting the business was the only way I could earn a living and not have someone else telling me what to do all the time.”

  She laughed when she said it, but Ben thought he must be right. A well-organized, ambitious workaholic who couldn’t find time to plan her own wedding?

  Not for him at all.

  So why had he taken such an instant liking to her? Why did he feel as if someone had just opened a door and he wanted to walk through it?

  The phone on Melanie’s desk rang. She excused herself and picked it up. Ben and Kate took seats in the small waiting room and smiled politely at each other. He tried to think of a way to bring up the fiancé thing without being too obvious and then gave up on the obvious part.

  “So,” he said, because he felt the need to have it drilled into his head, “you’re engaged?”

  A pained look crossed her face. She hesitated way too long over her answer, then said weakly, “Yes.”

  That was interesting.

  “Sorry.” Ben frowned. “I’m being nosy, but…you don’t sound too sure about that.”

  “No… I mean…” She frowned, too. “Honestly, I don’t know what I mean.”

  He didn’t know whether to feel guilty or happy. He really did try to do the right thing. He didn’t succeed all the time, but he felt it was important to try.

  So what was the right thing here?

  She certainly shouldn’t marry the guy if she didn’t love him….

  They looked at each other again, her waiting to see what he said, him not knowing what to say but wanting to know more.

  “Want to tell me about it?” he tried. He’d had a lot of success with that particular phrase. A lot of times people thought about it and decided they wanted to talk, and there he’d be. Maybe she wanted to talk.

  “Maybe,” she said, frowning. “Maybe it would be easier with a stranger. I mean, if I just brought up the idea that Joe and I might not get married to one of my siblings, all three of them would hear about it within seconds, and they’d have questions that I just couldn’t answer, because…I don’t know what to do, and I hate that. Don’t you hate not knowing what to do?”

  “I find myself quite often not knowing what to do,” he admitted. Like now. Right now. What did he do now?

  “But don’t you hate it?”

  “I don’t like it, but…I guess I just think that’s mostly what life is—stumbling along, not knowing what’s going to happen, a lot of times not knowing what I should do but hoping I can figure out the right thing to do.”

  “It’s awful. Life should be simpler,” she argued. “We should always know what we should do. We should always be able to figure it out.”

  “And you can’t figure out what to do now?”

  “No,” she complained. “Honestly, I’m not even sure if I’m engaged anymore. The date when we were supposed to be married has come and gone, and we’re not married, and neither one of us has said a word about rescheduling. We just kind of…left things up in the air. Which is really not like me. But I just don’t know what to do. If I did, I’d do it. But I don’t, so I haven’t done anything, and I’m really not good in situations like this.” She frowned again. “You know?”

  “I think so,” he said, thinking that if she didn’t even know if she was engaged anymore, who did? Thinking that a good next question would be, Do you love this man? Does he love you? When what he wanted to say was, If you weren’t engaged, would you give me your phone number?

  He blamed the impulse, again, on lack of sleep and acute loneliness. Apparently, he was in worse shape than he thought.

  “You’re very easy to talk to,” she said, as if she didn’t quite understand why.

  He shrugged easily. “Years of training. I guess some of it took. And in my entirely professional opinion, I can tell you that most people get confused on a
regular basis. It’s perfectly normal.”

  Kate frowned. “And then they just don’t do anything, because they’re afraid they’ll do the wrong thing? Or because they think maybe something will happen at some point, and then they’ll just know what they’re supposed to do?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I hate that, too,” she said. “I mean, how can we expect to get where we want to go, without figuring out what we want and making a plan for getting it?”

  “So, you don’t know what you want?” he asked cautiously, thinking he knew exactly what she was like. Tough on herself. Focused. Driven. Ambitious. Baffled by how difficult some people found life.

  Obviously, she needed help. And it was possible he was helping her clarify her feelings. That was good, right?

  “Maybe.” She looked even more troubled and, sounding doubtful said, “But this is supposed to be for the rest of my life. This is not a decision to mess up.”

  “No, it’s not,” he said, striving for an absolutely objective tone. One should be absolutely sure when choosing someone to marry. He’d give that advice to anyone who asked. Not just possibly engaged women he wanted to date.

  “Maybe it’s just cold feet,” she suggested.

  “Maybe,” he agreed. He could be really good at this objective stuff.

  “But it would be awful to lose the right man, just because I’m nervous about making that commitment or waiting for…well…”

  Oh, yeah. What did she want from this relationship that was missing? What could he possibly say that would be unbiased here?

  She just looked sad then. “I don’t know what I want.”

  “I think you do,” he said, then could have kicked himself.

  Still, not bad advice, he told himself.

  He’d learned from experience. People knew. They just didn’t want to admit to themselves that they knew, because then they’d have to do something about it. If they could just pretend that they didn’t know, they didn’t have to do anything.

  “Tell me what to do?” she asked.

  “I can’t. You’re the only one who knows how you really feel.” Then, because he felt guilty, he added, “Kate, if you really don’t know, it’s okay to let things ride for a little while until you figure it out. That’s just being careful.”