As far as the boy was concerned, he had already decided the answer to his first question was going to be yes. Now taking it as a given, Jason continued on from there. “Do you think she’ll bring Tex with her when we go to the movies?”
“Another question you can ask her,” Steve told his son.
It wasn’t so much that he was buck passing as he was setting the stage for his son to interact with Erin. He had to admit that he liked seeing the two of them together. It reinforced his feelings that he was on the right track with this woman.
“Tex Jr. wants to talk to his dad,” Jason declared out of the blue.
Steve smiled to himself. He took that to be another sign of the progress he’d made in his son’s life—thanks to Erin and her dinosaur.
“That’s always a good thing,” he said. “Fathers and sons should talk. Oh, there’s her house just up ahead,” he pointed out.
Jason cocked his head as he regarded the two-story structure. “It looks like a regular house,” his son observed.
Steve heard the disappointment in the boy’s voice. “Well, that’s because it’s been disguised.”
“Disguised?” Jason echoed, perking up.
“Uh-huh. This way people don’t know that’s where the dinosaurs live and they don’t try to bother those dinosaurs. Otherwise, Tex and his friends would never get any rest.”
It took a moment for the boy to digest what he’d been told. And then he looked up as if everything all fell into place for him. He grinned broadly.
“Oh.”
My God, Steve thought, he was making things up on the spur of the moment. Maybe being around Erin was rubbing off on him. He found he rather liked the idea.
Steve had just barely pulled up to the curb when Jason began begging, “Undo me, Dad. Undo me! Quick!” he pleaded.
“Hold your horses, fella. I’ve got to come to a full stop first,” he told his son.
“The car’s stopped, it’s stopped!” Jason all but shouted excitedly. “Tex Jr. wants to see his dad, like now!”
Steve got out and opened the rear-passenger door and began to undo the restraints on his son’s car seat. Maybe he had somehow oversold this whole thing. He wanted the boy to be prepared—just in case.
“You know, we’re not sure about Tex yet, Jason. He might not be there,” he warned his son.
Jason’s face fell about as far as a small face could. “Where’s he gonna be, Dad?”
Steve said the first thing that came into his head. “Well, he might have gone to the park. Dinosaurs like parks,” Steve added for good measure, as if that would settle the dispute.
Working on the car-seat restraints, he saw his son’s eyes grow huge as he looked at something behind him.
“No, he didn’t, Dad!” Jason cried. “Look! He’s right there!”
Turning around, Steve saw Erin walking out of her house. In her arms she was holding the dinosaur. The woman had a sixth sense, he thought gratefully.
“Right on time,” Tex declared, nodding at his son and him. The dinosaur turned his head to look at the woman carrying him. “Told you they’d be here on time,” the T. rex said to Erin.
Erin inclined her head as she smiled at the duo. “I told Tex I thought you might be late,” she explained.
“Dad was being slow, but I made him hurry up,” Jason told her. Still strapped in, he leaned against the restraints, completely focused on the dinosaur in Erin’s arms. “Is Tex coming with us?” Jason asked hopefully.
“I sure am. Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.” Holding the toy, Erin had the dinosaur lean in toward the car. “And I see you brought Tex Jr. with you. Has he been behaving?”
“Uh-huh,” Jason answered, solemnly nodding his head up and down.
Erin’s eyes met Steve’s. The next moment, a warm feeling infused itself within her. “Just let me get my purse and lock the front door,” she told him. “I’ll be right back.”
The second she turned away, Jason bounced up and down in his car seat. “She’s bringing him, Dad. She’s bringing Tex! I told you she would,” Jason cried, pleased beyond words.
“That you did,” Steve agreed, seeing no reason to point out that Jason had voiced uncertainty about that outcome only a few minutes ago.
But Erin had that effect on people, he decided. Bringing out the positive in them.
In an incredibly short amount of time, she had become what amounted to a shining beacon in his son’s life and no matter what else transpired, he was always going to be grateful to her for that.
Even though he had decided to set his sights on more.
“All set,” Erin declared, returning back to his vehicle. Her hand on the shotgun seat’s door handle, she took one glance at the little boy’s hopeful expression and reconsidered her choice of seating arrangements. “You know, I’m going to ride in the back with Jason and Tex Jr. if you don’t mind,” she told Steve.
Getting in, she set Tex over to one side as she proceeded to rebuckle the straps on Jason’s car seat that Steve had previously begun to undo.
Steve had taken in the same hopeful expression on his son’s face, then seen the look of joy that had washed over him when Erin had said she’d decided to sit in the back with him.
She was one in a million, he thought.
“I don’t mind at all,” he said, then mouthed the words thank you to her.
The smile he received in return told him she’d heard him loud and clear.
Maybe one in two million, he amended silently as he started up his car again.
* * *
The movie lasted an hour and forty-two minutes but still seemed to just fly by. Before they knew it, they were filing out of the theater again.
Not wanting to see the date come to an end so soon, Steve heard himself suggesting getting lunch in one of the small restaurants that were scattered around the theater complex in the outdoor mall.
“Unless you’re pressed for time,” he felt bound to add on, just in case she felt that she had more than done her duty in sitting through over an hour and a half of an animated movie about a wise-cracking hero with a magic carpet that always flew to his rescue. He wanted her to feel she had a way out if she wanted it.
Erin didn’t have to look down to know that Steve’s son was holding his breath, waiting for a positive answer from her. She didn’t want the boy suffocating himself, so she quickly responded, “I’ve decided to declare today a work-free day.”
The next moment, Jason did his best imitation of a jumping jack, all while shouting his mealtime preference. “Pizza!” Jason cried. “Me and Tex Jr. want pizza.” He looked from his father to Erin, searching for backup.
“Tex Jr. and I,” she gently corrected.
“You, too?” the boy exclaimed, delighted. “That makes three of us, Dad.”
Erin opened her mouth to take another stab at correcting the boy’s grammar, then decided just to go along with it for now. With luck, there would be another time when she could play the grammarian.
“Most likely four,” she told Jason, “because Tex likes pizza, too.”
“Hear that, Dad?” Jason asked, his eyes beaming as he turned toward his father.
“I sure do,” Steve answered, but he was looking at Erin as he said it. Looking at her and thinking that getting roped into Career Day had probably been one of the luckiest unplanned incidents of his life. “I guess that’s unanimous, then.”
“What’s u-nan-i, um, u-nan-i—that word, Dad?” Jason asked, giving up trying to pronounce the word.
“It means we all agree,” Erin told the boy. “And that’s a good thing.”
That was all that Jason needed. “Yeah!” he crowed. “Pizza for everybody!”
Without thinking, strictly reacting, Erin hugged the boy to her.
Jas
on glowed.
* * *
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him actually get completely worn out before,” Steve confessed some seven and a half hours later, his voice barely above a whisper. He was talking about Jason. His son had literally fallen asleep on the sofa midsentence, explaining something about a video game he and Erin were playing—a creative video game that tested the player’s memory rather than his reflexes to see how quickly he could eliminate an ongoing alien threat. The game, involving a group of friendly dinosaurs based on her creations, had been at Erin’s suggestion. Her company was thinking of marketing the game in the near future. Jason was thrilled to be her test subject.
“Well, considering that he’s been on the go from early this morning, I figured that eventually he’d have to run out of steam—even overactive kids get tired,” she told Steve. Then, seeing that her last comment didn’t draw any agreement from him, she asked, “Didn’t you ever get tired when you were a kid?”
Steve shook his head. “I really don’t remember much from back then.”
“Really?” She had just assumed that he would have been able to recall events and feelings he’d gone through as a boy.
“Really,” he assured her.
“That’s a shame,” she said. Without that to tap into, empathy for certain things his son was going through would be difficult for Steve. “Some of my fondest memories go back to my childhood.”
“I guess that’s pretty lucky for the rest of the kids,” he commented, thinking of the toys she’d created. “And me,” he added significantly, thinking of what she had managed to achieve with Jason. He looked down at his sleeping son now and smiled. It had been a good day for the Kendall men. “I guess that I’d better get him up to bed.”
“Would you mind if I helped?” she asked.
Steve watched her for a long moment, then smiled. “I think I’d like that.”
Preceding her on the stairs, Steve carried Jason up to the boy’s room and laid him down on the bed. Erin untied the laces on Jason’s sneakers and then slipped them off slowly so as not to wake him. She placed them next to the bed.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Steve taking a pair of pajamas out of the bureau’s top drawer. On impulse, she offered a suggestion.
“Why don’t you just cover him with a blanket? If you start undressing him, Jason might wake up.” She smiled fondly at the boy. “There’s nothing wrong with sleeping in your clothes. Waking up dressed is kind of fun at Jason’s age.”
“Something else you remember?” he asked her, the pajamas half in his hand, half still in the drawer.
She nodded. “That’s why I’m making the suggestion,” she told him.
“Okay, then leaving Jason in his clothes it is,” Steve declared agreeably, the corners of his mouth curving as he put the pajamas back and slipped a blanket over his son’s small body. The boy was going to get a kick out of this when he woke up tomorrow, Steve thought.
“Almost forgot the most important part,” Erin suddenly said. Before he could ask her what that was, she had slipped Tex Jr., his stuffed dinosaur, in under the covers with the boy.
Backing away from the bed, Erin took in the peaceful picture that they had created.
Her expression was unreadable, Steve thought. Prodded by his curiosity, he couldn’t resist asking, “What are you thinking?”
“Just that I thought I’d have a couple of these myself by now,” she admitted.
“You mean kids?”
She nodded her head. “Yes.” Smiling, she gazed up at him. “Short people.”
“You’re not exactly over-the-hill,” Steve pointed out.
She inclined her head. She’d heard all the excuses before. “I know, I know, but there are these pesky little details in the way.”
Leaving the light on in Jason’s room, Steve eased the door closed behind them. His curiosity further aroused, he continued their conversation in the hallway. “Pesky details?” he repeated.
“Yes, finding someone, falling in love with him—having him fall in love with me,” she enumerated. “Then, of course, there’s that last really big, scary step to take.”
Intrigued, he just kept feeding her questions as they went down the stairs. “Which is?”
She even took a breath before saying the answer. “Getting married.”
“It doesn’t have to be a scary step.” It hadn’t been in his judgment. To him it had just been the most natural progression of things.
“Easy for you to say,” she scoffed. “You’ve already gone through it.”
“I wasn’t exactly born married,” he countered. Then a thought suddenly occurred to him. “Haven’t you ever been in love, Erin?”
Erin pressed her lips together, again debating not saying anything. He’d probably think she was some sort of a freak if she told him the truth.
Stalling for time until an idea came to her, she asked, “Honestly?”
It had never occurred to him that she could be anything but. “Sure.”
With a sigh, she murmured, “Then no,” as she looked away.
Or tried to. With the crook of his finger beneath her chin, Steve turned her head until she was facing him again.
“Never?” he questioned incredulously.
She was right. He did think there was something wrong with her. She tried to turn it into a joke. “Does Batman count?”
“How old were you?” he asked.
“Almost eleven,” she told him.
At that age, she was forming the woman she was going to be in a few short years. No one believed in comic-book superheroes at that age.
“Then no,” he said, suppressing a laugh. Then he said a touch more seriously, “Maybe you just never went out with the right person.”
She glanced away again. “And maybe I never went out at all.”
That really brought him up short. For a second, he was certain he hadn’t heard her correctly.
“What?”
How did she explain this without coming off like a complete dork? She decided just to admit the truth, without any embellishments or excuses. Just the facts, ma’am, as they used to say by way of a joke in some program or other she’d seen.
“After I got well and left the hospital, I felt as if I had fallen hopelessly behind socially and every other way. I tried to catch up but, well—” she raised her shoulders again in a helpless gesture “—I wasn’t exactly stellar at mingling or getting along with other people my own age for the most part. Somehow, the experience I’d had made me out of sync with the world. That’s probably another reason why I got involved with making more copies of Tex and the other dinosaurs that came after him. Doing that helped to fill a real void in my life. The dinosaurs were like my alter egos, my friends, if you will. I’d wind up talking to the dinosaurs and pouring out my heart to them when no one was around,” she confessed.
He didn’t understand. The woman he’d just spent the day with was warm and giving and, above all, fun. He’d seen her interacting with the people she worked with and there was no sign of the socially awkward woman she claimed to be.
“But what about those people you work with? You said they were your friends in college and I’m sure you get along well with them. If I was a betting man, I’d say they would all gladly go to the mat for you. That’s a wrestling term that means they’d do anything for you,” he explained.
She smiled. “I know what that means. And as for the way we get along, it’s because they’re my friends that we get along so well. I never dated any of the guys. That was just a given. We care about each other like family.”
He approached what she was claiming from another angle. “Okay, while I can accept that all of you are just really good friends, nothing more, I’m finding it very hard to believe that someone as beautiful as you never got involved
with anyone.”
“I’m not beautiful.”
“Yes, you are,” Steve insisted. When she opened her mouth to protest, he stressed, “Inside as well as out.” Because his emotions felt as if they were all colliding within him, he experienced a moment of weakness and allowed himself to caress her face. “If I had met you under different circumstances...” His voice trailed off as he struggled with a very real frustration.
“What?” Erin whispered, her eyes held prisoner by his. “If you had met me under different circumstances, what?” she asked him.
“If I had met you under different circumstances, I would be very tempted to kiss you right now. But you’re my client,” he told her, forcing himself to drop his hand to his side, “so I can’t.”
But she wasn’t so ready to back away. Something was going on inside of her, something that she didn’t want to back away from just yet.
“Would kissing me jeopardize my case?”
The words felt dry on his tongue. “No, but—”
She’d wondered on occasion what she was missing, but she’d wondered only in the absolute sense because there had never actually been anyone she had wanted to kiss or be kissed by.
Until now.
Drawing her courage to her, she heard herself saying, “Then what’s stopping you?”
“It’s a matter of ethics,” he said, though it was growing increasingly difficult for him to remain steadfast to those principles. Not when she was here like this before him, tempting every fiber of his being. Making him remember that he was more than just a father, a son, a lawyer. That beneath it all, he was still a man with a man’s desires.
“But if I said it was all right?” she asked, her voice barely an audible whisper. “Then would you kiss me?”
Technically, with or without her permission, it wasn’t all right. But there was more than just technicalities at play here. There was a connection he’d all but given up hope of ever finding or having again. A connection that seemed to have evolved of its own accord, through no effort on his part.
If he let this moment, this chance to explore what could be, pass, he might never be able to go back and recapture it. Recapture what he felt was something rare and precious. Something filled with such endless possibilities.
Dating for Two (Matchmaking Mamas) Page 15
