Old Dog New Tricks

by Roxanne St Claire

  “Love at first sight?”

  He laughed. “I’ve heard it called that. You look at them, they look at you, and wham. Don’t even have to touch, but the connection is made. I just saw it with you and Goldie. You’ll think about her all night, I promise. And you’ll want to come back. Even if you know you can’t have her, you’ll care about her.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen it so many times.”

  “So have I.”

  He turned to her, surprised. “Really? You have?”

  “With you.” She smiled at his confused look. “And a girl named Anne Harper.”

  “Oh.” He exhaled the response, almost laughing, almost sighing. “Yeah. I guess that happened to us.”

  “It did, and I’m glad I was there to witness it.”

  They shared a long look and a smile, the single crossover of their history like a sweet connection no one could take away from them.

  Except it wasn’t the only crossover of their history, and Katie had to remember that.

  “So you’ve seen everything except the house,” he said, leading her out and holding the door for her. “But I get carried away when I show off our dog business.”

  “As you should. You’ve done an amazing job with this place, Daniel.”

  “Team effort.” He looked around, but Rusty wasn’t there. “Where did he go?”

  “I think he stayed with Goldie.”

  He gave her a surprised look. “That would be a first.” He whistled a four-note tune into the kennels, and almost immediately, they heard the patter of his paws on the tile. “He really is smitten.”

  “Goldie has that effect,” she said lightly.

  “Or he wants us to be alone,” he added. “Because Rusty knows what my kids don’t.”

  She stopped midstep and stared at him. “Which is?”

  “That you’re not here to, uh, change my life.”

  She felt a slow flush burn her cheeks. Oh yes, I am, Daniel Kilcannon.

  “Don’t let it embarrass you,” he said quickly, putting a light hand on her back. “They’ve all fallen head over heels in love over the past two years, so they seem to think it’s my turn. So I hope you can handle the ribbing and not-so-subtle hints that will be flung your way all through dinner.”

  Things would be flung her way before the night was out, but they might not be hints. “The only thing I heard is them crediting you for all their happiness.”

  He shrugged it off. “Nah. I did a little nudging. A bit of schedule changing here, a suggestion to attend a meeting there.”

  “It worked.”

  “My wife used to say, ‘You’re only as happy as your least-happy child.’ So I did what I thought would make them happier, and it worked.” He studied her for a moment. “Wouldn’t you do that for your kids?”

  “I have, but with exactly zero success.”

  “Maybe you need some advice from an expert,” he joked.

  “Maybe I do,” she volleyed back, holding on to the lighthearted moment. The laughter would be gone as quickly as that peach sunset fading over the hills when she made her confession.

  Was this the right time? This moment? Should she suggest they follow that picturesque path down to the lake and find a quiet place away from family where they could talk?

  Looking up at Daniel, she tried to imagine how he’d take the news.

  Would that strong jaw lock in anger? Would those blue eyes taper to disbelieving slits? Would he be hurt? Scared? Horrified or crushed? Because when Cassie had come to her house with the Bloodline.com paperwork that day a little over a week ago and announced that there was something very wrong and weird with Nick’s DNA results, Katie had felt all of those things.

  And a million more since then.

  “So are you looking for help?” Daniel asked. “Because I have to confess I’ve already got Cassie and my nephew Braden engaged in my head.”

  “What?”

  “Just kidding.” He winked at her. “Kind of. He’s on duty at the station tonight, so you can relax.”

  How could she tell him that that was the last—the absolute last—level of emotional complication they needed? She couldn’t, not until she told him about Nick.

  “I seem to recall you enjoyed a good setup back in the day.” Daniel smiled as they walked, the poor man utterly oblivious to the sledgehammer she was about to use on his heart.

  “I do, but…my kids and your…” Oh Lord. No.

  “Nephews. Not my kids. You’re too late for that, I’m afraid. Come on. I’ll show you through the front of the house so you can really see it, though no one ever uses this door.” He urged her toward the house. “Just think about it. Might be the right thing to do.”

  Was he talking about Cassie and Braden or which door to use? Who knew? Her heart was slamming against her chest, and her palms were actually damp.

  “That’s always guided you,” she said, seizing the last thing he’d said, because she actually couldn’t think straight. “I remember you’re a man whose life decisions are dictated by right and wrong.”

  “Can’t see any other way to live.”

  Then she should do what was right…right now.

  Just say it, Katie. Say it. There’s something I want to talk to you about, Daniel. Where can we go that’s private?

  She swallowed, felt the words form in her mouth, took a breath, and…nothing came out.

  “How about a glass of wine or a drink? Crystal should have dinner ready in about forty-five minutes.”

  A drink would be…perfection. Maybe two. Maybe six. “Crystal. Is that another Kilcannon I haven’t met?” Did her words sound as stupid and thick as they felt in her throat?

  “Oh, no. Crystal’s our housekeeper.” Daniel didn’t seem the least bit fazed by what she was going through. “She’s here on weekdays to help out with feeding the staff and any trainees we have and makes dinner most nights. Always Wednesday, when anyone who can make it comes to dinner. There could be anywhere from four to fourteen on any given Wednesday, depending on what’s going on.”

  Small talk. Keep making small talk, Katie. “Your daughter-in-law said you do the same on Sundays, too.”

  “Sunday dinners are more sacred and set in stone. Sundays aren’t for work. That’s a family day that Kilcannons have had since I was a kid. The Wednesday dinners started around the time we began to build the business, mostly as a way to get everyone in one room and have an ad hoc staff meeting.”

  With every word, she felt…not ready. She wasn’t ready to tell him, not here, not now, not yet.

  “Let’s stop off for that drink in the living room,” he suggested. “If we go in the back kitchen door, they’re going to be all over you to get your version of what happened the night I met Annie. Then my time alone with you will be over.”

  Along with her opportunity to wreck his life.

  “My version wouldn’t be any different than your version,” she said. “No hard feelings, no jealousy, no ugly breakup so you could run off after another girl. They know that, right?”

  “They know everything.”

  Not…everything. Only she and Cassie knew everything.

  He brought her around to the front of the house, which faced the long, curved driveway and more manicured lawns and trimmed bushes. “We rarely use this door, though some guests might. Life at Waterford takes place on the other side of the house, as you just saw. But Annie liked to keep the front kind of formal. And over there, behind that gate?” He pointed to a section of yard closed off by thick bushes joined at the front by a small wrought-iron gate. “That was her garden, purposely separated from everything. But now it’s…” He shook his head. “I haven’t done a great job of keeping it up.”

  “Makes you sad to go there?”

  He gave her a smile and didn’t answer for a long beat. “You know what’s great about this, Katie?” he finally asked. “You get it. You know exactly what I’m feeling. You had a strong, healthy marriage, and you know what grieving feels like.”

  �
�I did and I do,” she agreed.

  “That’s the real reason I don’t date, but my kids, who think they’ve inherited the matchmaking gene, don’t get that.”

  She blinked at him, a little surprised by the segue.

  “All I really want to do is talk about Annie. All day, all night, all the time. Makes me the worst date.”

  She laughed, shaking her head. “I know what you mean. I’ve gone for coffee or lunch now and again, and the entire time, all I want to do is share a story, or tell them about my awesome husband.”

  “Guaranteed no second date,” he quipped.

  “You know it.”

  “Well, you are welcome to talk all night about Nico,” he said. “I’m so happy you had a great marriage, too.”

  She gave him a wistful look. “My marriage was…” What word could she use to describe the love and laughter, the connection and teamwork, the good times and the bad? The healthy, youthful days that somehow became sick, weak, incapable days. Through it all, there had been love. “Perfect,” she whispered. “I know it’s a cliché, but our marriage was perfect.”

  For a moment, she thought Daniel’s eyes welled up as he swallowed hard enough that she almost heard it. “That’s why you get it. And you see that garden?” He notched his head toward the hedges and gate. “Like falling on a bed of nails for me.”

  “Same way I feel when I go anywhere near Nico’s workshop or the kitchen of Santorini’s,” she confessed. “Even more than our bedroom. The places that were his are the hardest.”

  He nodded, taking her hand to lead her to the front door. “Oh, I get that. For Annie, it was her garden and the old kennels. And…” He opened the front door and led her into a wide marble-floored entryway and gestured toward an oversized formal sitting room to the left. “The living room. She loved that room, and now hardly anyone goes in there but me. We have Christmas in there, so it is ground zero in December. It’s great for entertaining and a party, too, but…no one uses it. Oh, and I’m trying to fix that discoloration in the hardwood floor and maybe do something to the furniture. I haven’t figured it out yet, because…” He laughed. “I don’t care enough, I guess.”

  She took a few steps into a wide arched entryway and onto worn wood, taking in the wing-backed chairs, the heavy drapes, the paint in a perfect shade of…2003. But she could imagine Daniel and Annie sitting side by side by the fire, maybe sharing a glass of brandy from a decades-old bar cart, or reading or talking about their days or the kids.

  She could feel the love in the room, the stability and permanence. She could breathe the sense of family and forever. She could understand why he didn’t care about how outdated the room was. It was home and comfort and a place to live in a happy past.

  “She decorated this,” he said, probably sensing that she was sizing up the colors and style. “Every room in the house, really. It’s all her.”

  Looking up at him, she searched his face. “And you don’t want to change a thing,” she guessed.

  He stared at her for a long time, reminding her that he never answered without thinking first. Nico, an emotional, passionate Greek, had rarely given a moment’s thought before replying to anything. But Daniel always considered his words.

  Exactly like Nick.

  “Are you asking as a fellow widow or a decorator?”

  She smiled. “Both.”

  Their gazes locked, and suddenly she remembered with crystal clarity that moment they’d stood in Bushrod Square and admitted they both had feelings for other people.

  “Let’s take the easy course,” he said. “What would a decorator change in this room?”

  Everything, but he probably wasn’t ready for that. “Have you ever heard of the concept of memory tags?” she asked him.

  “Why do I think that’s not something I can cut off and risk the penalty of law?”

  “It’s a risk, all right. But there is a way to save the tag in your memory and let go of the item it belonged to.”

  He frowned, considering that. “Okay. And does that apply to pictures?” He gestured toward a solid wall jam-packed with framed photographs, a few canvas portraits, and at least six collages, all featuring dozens of smiling faces and captured moments. In the middle was Daniel and Annie’s wedding photograph, which looked like it had been taken at the bottom of the stairs in the entryway.

  “That’s an amazing collection,” she said, choosing her words carefully.

  “But it’s a hot mess.”

  She laughed at that. “It’s…a…” Decorator’s nightmare.

  “Annie called it her ‘wall of fame.’ She kept adding to it and adding to it.”

  “It could be beautiful.”

  “How?” he asked.

  She’d actually seen worse and had come up with some creative ways to streamline family photographs before. “I’m not sure, but the solution would be to have the actual people in the room as the focal point, not the two-dimensional pictures on the wall. They’re a testimony to a lovely past.”

  A slow smile broke on his face, and his expression looked a little…astonished. “She sent you,” he whispered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know if you get these feelings about your husband, but sometimes I can’t help thinking that things happen, or people show up, and it’s Annie’s hand in the process. Like she can guide fate from beyond. Do you think that?”

  “Sometimes,” she admitted. “It’s impossible not to imagine them as angels, although I’m not sure it works that way.”

  “Well, I think it does. And I think she sent you to help me.” He took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

  She opened her mouth to answer, but behind them, someone cleared their throat noisily, making Daniel and Katie automatically inch apart in surprise and turn to see who it was.

  “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “Oh, Liam. Come on in.” Daniel put his hand on the shoulder of a man who looked to be about forty, with dark eyes and hair, but everything else was a carbon copy of Daniel. “Liam, this is Katie Santorini, a very dear friend from my college days. Katie, this is Liam Kilcannon, my oldest son.”

  She looked up at him, automatically taking the hand he extended, not sure if she trusted her voice. She swallowed first and attempted a smile. “Hello, Liam.”

  “Katie. It’s great to meet you. Let me be the first of about eighteen people who are going to thank you for introducing our parents to each other.”

  Oh, no, Liam. You are not going to thank me when you find out you are not your father’s oldest son.

  “I have a feeling you’re going to have to tell that story whether you like it or not,” Daniel said to her.

  She wouldn’t mind telling that story. It was the one that had begun a few nights earlier that she was dreading.

  After dinner, Katie. After dinner.

  Chapter Six

  Daniel had forgotten one very, very important thing about Katie Rogers.

  He liked her. Yes, that easy friendship and undeniable attraction had disappeared like a wisp of smoke when Hurricane Annie blew into his life. And time had dimmed his memory of Katie to little more than a person who’d played an important, if fleeting, role in his life’s history.

  But sitting at this table, watching her navigate the personalities of his family, amused and interested in every one of them while letting her pistol of a daughter add color and humor, he remembered she’d been a very easy girl to like.

  There’d been a gentleness he’d admired in young Katie that had developed into a gracefulness that he found very attractive. She listened closely, far more guarded than Cassie, and when she gave her attention to someone, there was no one else in the room.

  More and more, he wanted that attention directed at him, thinking about how quickly dinner would end so they could get a chance to talk again—about their past, about their losses, about anything, really.

  He understood why he’d been drawn to her in college and how easily she’d become a friend, a confidant, and…
a lover.

  Holy hell.

  He shifted in his seat, taking a drink of water as the thought hit him, a little embarrassed that he hadn’t even remembered that until this moment. But yes, they’d had one, maybe two, rather awkward—but pretty sweet—nights in her dorm room all those years ago. And if he hadn’t met Annie, there probably would have been more. But once he’d fallen under Annie Harper’s spell and into her bed, any woman who existed before or after paled in comparison.

  But nothing about this woman was…pale.

  “Maybe we should make Dad leave the room for that,” Molly said, pointing to him with a tease in her eyes, dragging him back to the conversation.

  He answered with a slight frown he hoped didn’t give away that he’d been thinking about nights in dorm rooms and not whatever they were talking about.

  “No, all witnesses have a right to hear the testimony,” Shane quipped.

  Liam rolled his eyes. “Always the lawyer.”

  “Oh, no, let Dad add the color commentary,” Garrett said.

  “But we want every single detail.” Darcy leaned toward Katie. “Because to hear our parents tell it, the heavens opened and angels sang the night they met.”

  Katie shot Daniel a sideways look that was sweetly conspiratorial and a smile that enchanted everyone at the dinner table. Including him.

  “Were those angels singing?” she asked. “I thought it was Fleetwood Mac on the jukebox in the bar.”

  “It was the seventies,” Daniel agreed. “Best music ever.”

  The comment elicited a big laugh and a lot of eye rolls from the kids. “I was ten before I knew the Bee Gees weren’t modern music,” Garrett said.

  Liam turned to Daniel and shot him a warning look. “Don’t.”

  Daniel chuckled, remembering the time he’d mortified his son by sharing the fact that he’d been conceived to the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. But the rest of the table were still making seventies-music jokes, so Liam’s secret was safe.

  “Well, that sounds familiar,” Cassie joked. “Although my dad was more into heavy metal, so we were raised on Black Sabbath and Aerosmith.”