She glanced up and noticed T.J. at the far end of the store. She’d been too busy with her class to notice his arrival, which made her uneasy. The way the man was always glowering at her, she was more comfortable when she kept tabs on him.
Without giving herself time to second-guess her decision, she walked toward him. As she approached, she once again noticed he was tall—she barely came to his shoulder. Lean, but with an edge about him that spoke of power and determination. Nice looking in a way that made her hungry for something other than food.
“You can stop scowling at me,” she informed him. “Or assuming the worst. My grandmother and her friends know everything about my past. And before you ask, I didn’t tell them because of you. I told them because I wanted to.”
His gaze never left her face. “Anything else?”
She squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “Yes, there is. I appreciate all you’ve done around here, taking care of Eleanor and her friends.”
He raised his left eyebrow. “You asking me to leave?”
“Would you?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not asking.”
“What’s your point?”
She smiled. He sounded both defensive and accusing at the same time. Quite the trick. “I meant what I said. Thank you for taking care of them.”
His eyes narrowed. “And?”
She laughed. “And that’s all. They’re the only family I have. I missed them and should have come home sooner. I appreciate knowing you were here for them.”
He seemed to be waiting for something else. She’d never seen T.J. off guard before and found she really liked it.
Finally he cleared his throat. “You’re welcome.”
Now that was behind them, she had another item to discuss. “Obviously they’re important to both of us,” she said, nodding to where Marion, Adeline and Eleanor chatted with the students. “For their sake, we should try to get along.”
“I can do that.”
“Good.” Her gaze dropped to his Western-style white shirt. “You’re not really a cowboy, are you?”
He flashed her a grin. “No.”
The transformation stunned her. He went from angry stranger to handsome, appealing man in a matter of a heartbeat. Speaking of which, hers was doing an odd fluttering dance in her chest.
“Even though you look like a cowboy,” she said, pleased she didn’t stutter.
“You like cowboys?”
“Not especially.”
“Good to know.”
T.J. opened the boxes and pulled out armfuls of soft, colorful yarn.
“I love getting deliveries,” Eleanor told him as she took the yarn and placed it on the shelves in the back room. “They hint at possibilities. Speaking of which…”
He glanced at her. “Yes?”
“You need to stop hanging out with a bunch of old women.”
T.J. chuckled. One of the things he liked best about Eleanor and her friends was their ability to always speak their minds. In his world, too few people said what they really thought.
“Maybe I like old women,” he said, and winked.
“Stop that.” She shook her head. “I’m serious. You’ve been hiding from your real life for long enough. Not that we haven’t enjoyed the company.”
Her insight shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. Insightful and wily. A dangerous combination. Too bad most of society dismissed women “of a certain age.” There were plenty of smarts, talent and determination to be had. The country was losing a valuable asset.
He wanted to protest that he hadn’t been hiding, but what was the point? They both knew the truth.
“When did you figure it out?” he asked.
Her expression softened. “Since the first day you walked in here. You were so broken and sad. Our hearts went out to you, but we knew better than to fuss. You had to heal in your own time.”
She assumed he’d finished healing but he was less sure. There were some things a man simply couldn’t get over. Some things that once broken could never be mended.
“Not that we didn’t do our best to trick you into living again,” she added.
“You didn’t trick me. Did you think I wouldn’t know you were behind me working with those football players?”
“Coach said he wouldn’t tell you!”
“He didn’t have to.” He stepped around the box of yarn and hugged her. “Did I ever thank you?”
“Nearly every day.”
“Now I know you’re lying,” he teased gently. “I haven’t said it nearly enough.”
“You don’t have to say it,” she told him. “You’re living your thank-yous, which is the best way, in my opinion.”
He released her. “You’re too smart for your own good.”
“It’s a curse I have to live with.” She grinned as she spoke, her blue eyes sparkling behind her glasses. “You’re always welcome here, T.J., but I meant what I said. You need to stop hiding out here.”
What she didn’t know was he had nowhere else to go. He’d done a fine job of cutting everything else out of his life. Even his company didn’t need him on a day-to-day basis.
The sound of conversation from the shop drifted back to them. Eleanor sighed happily. “Robyn’s doing well.”
“You’re pleased she’s back.”
She looked at him. “Don’t sound so surprised. Of course I am.”
“She hurt you by being gone.”
“No. I missed her. There’s a difference. You young people have to follow your dreams. That’s the way of things. But she’s back now and staying.”
Her mouth curved into a slightly wicked smile. T.J. knew enough to brace himself for whatever was to come.
“I’ve seen you watching her,” Eleanor said pointedly. “Are you waiting for permission?”
A perfect hit, he thought, refusing to let her know that Robyn had been occupying his mind far more than he liked. At first he’d told himself it was because he didn’t trust her, but after she’d come clean to Eleanor, he’d run out of excuses.
“I’m not interested,” he said flatly.
Her smile never wavered. “You go to hell for lying, same as stealing.”
“Fine. I’m not interested in her that way.”
“Still lying.”
“I don’t know what I want.”
“That I’ll believe. Although you really do owe her, for thinking so badly of her when she first came home.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. There was no point in asking how she knew. Eleanor was, as always, a mystery to him.
“I’ll take her out to dinner to make up for what I thought,” he grumbled. “But I won’t like it.” Eleanor laughed.
T.J. had the uncomfortable feeling that she was laughing at him, rather than with him.
Robyn locked the front door of the store and turned out the main lights. Marion had left early to have dinner with her fiancé and his college-bound grandson. Adeline had taken Eleanor home. Robyn’s grandmother’s knee had been especially painful that day.
After finishing closing out the cash register, Robyn locked up the receipts, checked to make sure the alarm was set, then left through the back door. She’d barely made it halfway to the sidewalk when she saw a man standing by a truck.
Before she could jump or scream, she recognized T.J. He’d been noticeably absent for the past couple of days. As much as she’d wanted to ask her grandmother why, she’d held back. She didn’t want anyone thinking she was interested in T.J.
Now, as she watched him watch her, she was conscious of the slight elevation in her heartbeat and how her breathing seemed to quicken.
Her reaction wasn’t about him, she told herself firmly. It was due to the long drought that was her social life. Her body would have done exactly the same around any other single man under the age of sixty. At least she hoped it would.
“Have you taken to hanging out in back alleys?” she asked as she approached.
“I
was waiting for you.”
Why? was the obvious question but for some reason she couldn’t seem to speak.
He’d been leaning against a truck. Now he straightened and looked into her eyes. His were especially dark and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. So what he said next was completely unexpected.
“Would you like to go out to dinner with me?”
If she’d been given three days to come up with possible questions he would ask her, that still wouldn’t have appeared on the list. The need to turn around and find out if he was talking to someone else was powerful, but she resisted.
“You don’t like me,” she blurted. “Why would you want to have dinner with me?”
“I like you fine.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You spend half your time glaring at me.”
“Maybe I’ve changed my opinion of you.”
“Oh.”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “Was that a yes?”
She nodded.
“Tomorrow?”
He was asking her out for a Friday night. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a date on a Friday night.
She nodded again.
“Seven?”
A third nod.
The other corner of his mouth finished the smile. “Think you’ll be talking by then?”
“It’s entirely possible.”
“I can’t wait to find out for sure.”
Then he turned and sauntered off.
She watched him go, thinking that it took a Texas-born man to saunter really well, and that she’d missed that and so much more while she’d been gone.
Five
“You want to wear something romantic,” Marion said, standing in front of the meager contents of Robyn’s closet. “Flowy.”
“Forget flowy,” Adeline said with a sniff. “Wear a push-up bra and then show it all off. Trust me, when you get to be our age, no one wants to look anymore.”
“Stop it, you two.” Eleanor spoke from the chair in the corner, where she had her leg propped on a footstool and ice on her knee. “Robyn is perfectly capable of getting herself dressed.”
Robyn appreciated the advice, but wasn’t so sure she was up to the task. “I haven’t been on a date in a long time,” she admitted. Besides, the man in question was T.J. and she had no idea why he’d asked her out. There was something about him that compelled her, so saying no hadn’t exactly been an option.
If they were in New York, she would whip out a little black dress. Simple, classic, elegant. But she had a feeling T.J. would show up in jeans and she didn’t want to look as though she was trying too hard. She settled on a navy pencil skirt that came to a few inches above her knee, a silvery blue twin set in a whisper-soft knit, open-toed high-heeled sandals and her favorite pair of silver earrings.
When she was finished, she twirled in front of her audience. “Well?”
“Lovely,” her grandmother told her.
“He’ll be dazzled,” Marion promised with a sigh.
“You clean up good,” Adeline said. “Don’t have sex on the first date.”
Robyn felt herself blush. “Thanks for the advice.”
She had no idea why T.J. had asked her to dinner, but she was pretty confident he wasn’t looking for sex.
“Hurry,” Eleanor said. “He’ll be here any second. The three of us are going to wait back here until you’re gone.”
“Thanks.”
Robyn kissed each of them in turn, then went into the living room to wait.
Fortunately her grandmother was right—T.J. arrived exactly at seven. Robyn opened the door to find that she’d been wrong about what he would wear. Gone were the jeans and Western-style shirts. Instead he wore black pants and a hand-knit sweater in graduated shades of green. The expert fit, the complex stitches and the choice of material told her he hadn’t bought the sweater at a department store. She would guess a present from either her grandmother or one of her friends.
Information that was meaningless, but a nice distraction to keep her from getting lost in his dark eyes.
“You ready?” he asked by way of greeting.
“Yes.” She grabbed her small purse and followed him out.
He drove a silver pickup, the kind that had a step to get in. What with her slightly fitted skirt, she had to use the step and had a bad feeling she’d flashed the neighborhood as she climbed up.
T.J. waited until she’d reached for the seat belt before closing the door and going around to his side.
“You look nice,” he said as he climbed in.
He wasn’t looking at her as he spoke, so once again she had to stop herself from glancing around to see if he was actually talking to her.
“You do, too,” she murmured.
“Steak all right?”
“Um, sure.”
“Good.”
And that ended the conversation until they arrived at the restaurant.
T.J. surprised her by using the valet and then telling the hostess they had a reservation. She hadn’t expected him to think that far ahead. Not that she had been talking any more than he had on the way over. She sighed, wondering if the evening was going to seem endless. At least she would get a steak out of it, she reminded herself.
They were shown to their table right away and handed menus. Robyn scanned the offerings and was thrilled to see a twenty-two-ounce Porterhouse. As always, she was starving. She pored over the list of side dishes, made her choices, debated soup versus salad and wondered if ordering a glass of wine would be out of line. She glanced up to find T.J. studying her.
“Enjoying the menu?” he asked.
Wow—they were talking now? “It’s a nice selection. Do you eat here often?”
“A couple times a month. They know how to cook a steak. Do you want to share a bottle of wine?”
“Sure. You’ll have to pick. I don’t know much about wine.”
“I thought you were a waitress in New York.”
“I worked the lunch shift. It was more soda and cocktails than bottles of wine. Although I can do five minutes on the virtues of eighteen-year-old Scotch rather than twelve-year-old Scotch.” She smiled. “I took a class.”
“On Scotch?”
“The restaurant’s liquor distributor offered it and no one else was interested. I didn’t have much of a social life, so I thought it might be fun.”
“Was it?”
“I got buzzed during the tasting.” She grinned. “Plus, once I could talk knowledgeably about Scotch, I sold a lot more and that upped the tips.” She tilted her head. “Want to say something snide about me only being in it for the money?”
“Isn’t that why most people work?”
“Yes, but you do like to assume the worst about me.”
“Maybe I’m over that,” he said, leaning toward her. “I asked you out to dinner.”
“A confusing turn of events.”
“What if I want us to start over?”
He was close enough that she could inhale the clean scent of him and see the long dark lashes that framed his eyes.
“Will you let me know when you make a decision?” she asked.
“About what?”
“You said that maybe you were past thinking the worst about me and maybe you want us to start over. Obviously you haven’t made up your mind yet. I’m just asking you to let me know when you do.”
He surprised her by laughing. The sound was warm and appealing. It made her want to laugh, too, and maybe to lean in a little farther so that he would kiss her and…
Robyn stiffened in her chair. Kissing? There wasn’t going to be any kissing. She didn’t kiss on the first date and if she did, it wouldn’t be with a man who had, until recently, disliked her.
“Fair enough,” he said, smiling at her. “I want to start over. Will you give me a second chance?”
“You don’t deserve it,” she told him. “But I will because it makes me the better person.” She paused, not sure exactly how they woul
d start over. “Tell me about yourself.”
He leaned back. “Not much to tell. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma.” The smile returned. “One you’ve never heard of. We were farmers, mostly.”
A farmer? She wouldn’t have guessed that. “You didn’t go into the family business?”
“I couldn’t get away fast enough. Left when I was eighteen and a day. I was headed just about anywhere that wasn’t there. Ended up here. Never left.”
“What about your family?”
He shrugged. “My parents live in Florida. I see them every couple of years. I have a sister who has two kids. They’re in Florida, too.”
Their server appeared and T.J. ordered the wine without consulting the menu. She asked for the Porterhouse with salad and a baked potato with everything. T.J. chose the twelve-ounce fillet. The server left and a busboy appeared with bread and water. He’d barely had a chance to put down the basket when she dove in and took two slices.
After setting both on her side plate, she scooped up some garlic butter, spread it on her first piece of bread and took a bite. The flavors exploded on her tongue, nearly making her moan. Talk about heaven.
She finished the entire slice only to realize that T.J. was staring at her as if she were some kind of science experiment. She reached for her napkin and carefully wiped her mouth before asking, “What?”
“For a skinny thing, you sure enjoy food.”
“I’ve been hungry for a long time.” She motioned to her body. “This isn’t my natural weight. I’m going to put on about twenty pounds and I plan to enjoy every bite. I am so over being something I’m not. In my world, a little jiggle in a girl’s thigh is a good thing.”
Something flashed through T.J.’s eyes, something like appreciation and interest. “In my world, too.”
His reaction surprised her so much, she put down her second slice of bread. “Why, sir, are you flirting with me?”
“Maybe I am. Is that a problem?”
“I thought you didn’t like me.”
One of his eyebrows went up. “I invited you to dinner.”
“I figured that was just a guilt thing. You felt bad about assuming the worst, then being wrong.”
“I think you’re complicating the situation,” he told her.
The Knitting Diaries Page 13
