Wishing and Hoping

by Susan Meier

  She crawled across the bed and looked down at him from the foot. “How am I going to get somebody transferred in? They might have hired me to groom me for the upper echelons, but I’m not in management now. In fact, I’m a peon. Nobody’s going to transfer somebody into my department just because I ask!”

  Drew held her gaze. “You’re supposed to be a smart girl. It’s all your parents ever bragged about. Now it’s time to prove it.”

  Chapter Seven

  When Tia arrived home the following Friday night, she felt far different than she had the week before. Instead of being upset and confused, she was focused and confident, brimming with energy and so darned happy she could have sung a number from the Sound of Music.

  “Drew!” she yelled, dropping her suitcase in the foyer as she had done the Friday before. “Drew, I’m home!”

  She glanced in the living room and didn’t see him, then trotted down the hall to the kitchen, but he wasn’t there, either. She froze, suddenly realizing that she expected him to be waiting for her like a real husband. All along, he’d said he didn’t want to have too much of a part in her life, but when he’d worked so hard to get her to talk the week before and had even helped her strategize, she’d thought he’d changed his mind. No matter how subtly, this week she’d been thinking about him, missing him, even looking forward to telling him about her job. With him nowhere to be found when he knew exactly what time she came home Friday nights, it was clear she’d made a mistake. He hadn’t meant anything personal the week before.

  “I’m here,” Drew called, jogging down the steps, and Tia’s lungs inflated again.

  Maybe she hadn’t made a mistake? If the spring in his step was any indicator, he was eager to see her and hear her news.

  “So? How did it go?”

  “It was great!” she said, impulsively grabbing his biceps and stretching to her tiptoes to kiss him, if only to thank him. “Thanks to you!”

  Drew beamed with pride. “My plan worked?”

  “Not a hundred percent,” Tia admitted with a grimace. “Glenn’s still being a horrible pain in the butt. But the HR office sent up a real gem from the stenopool.”

  Drew’s face twisted in confusion. “The stenopool?”

  “Yes!” Tia said with a laugh. “I’ll explain after I get something to eat. Is Mrs. Hernandez here?”

  Drew sighed. “Do fish swim? She’s been cooking all afternoon.”

  Tia squeezed her eyes shut in delighted anticipation. “Thank God. I’m starving.”

  “Good. We can eat together. I had a meeting tonight, so I missed dinner.”

  Drew put his arm around her shoulders and led her back down the hall to the swinging door into the kitchen. And suddenly Tia felt as if she was home. Really home. After all the years of living in an apartment, she’d thought the new house she had bought would satisfy her feeling of loneliness, but it hadn’t. Now she knew why. It wasn’t a house that made a home, but people. Here she had a friend in Mrs. Hernandez and she and Drew were becoming more than friends. She almost hated letting herself believe that he liked her. But his eyes had absolutely glowed with joy when she’d told him about her job. He’d run down the stairs to see her and she’d driven like a bat out of hell to come home to him. Now, he had his arm around her. Was it too much to hope that they really were falling in love?

  “There you are!” Mrs. Hernandez sang when Tia walked into the kitchen. She shuffled over and gave her a hug. “So, what are you hungry for?”

  “What did you make me?”

  “I was going to prepare a huge Mexican dinner for you,” Mrs. Hernandez said, pulling out the kitchen chair for Tia to sit. “But I realized that might be a bit spicy. So I decided on a nice pot roast, fluffy mashed potatoes, glazed carrots and red velvet cake for dessert.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Hernandez,” Tia said reverently. “That sounds fabulous.”

  “Do I get to eat, too?” Drew asked, walking to the chair across from Tia’s.

  “I suppose,” Mrs. Hernandez said. “But you know, Mr. Drew, you look like you’re putting on weight to me.”

  Drew laughed. “Not hardly.”

  “Really? Take a look at that belt.”

  Mrs. Hernandez walked away and Tia burst out laughing. Drew glanced down at his belt. “I’m not gaining weight.”

  Tia raised her hands in surrender. “Whatever you say.”

  Drew sighed as if put upon. “Let’s get back to talking about your job. What about the woman you got from the stenopool?”

  “Marian was divorced about eight years ago and she and her husband shared custody of her kids.”

  Mrs. Hernandez set a filled plate in front of Tia and Tia smiled up at her.

  “Anyway, since she had a lot of time on her hands while her kids were with her ex, she decided to get a degree.”

  Drew nodded as Mrs. Hernandez put an empty plate in front of him, then set a bowl of mashed potatoes and a platter of roast beef in the center of the table.

  “Remember, portion control, Mr. Drew,” she said when she brought the gravy.

  Drew scowled at her. Tia stifled a laugh, quickly getting back to her story. “She could only handle a few classes a semester, so it took her eight years to get her degree, but I’m telling you, it was worth it. With the experience she got working as a legal secretary and a secretary at a bank and secretary at an engineering firm, and then as a secretary with our ad firm, there isn’t much this woman doesn’t understand.”

  “So, with your brain and her experience you two are probably unbeatable.”

  “I don’t know about unbeatable, but we click. And we had ideas bouncing around all over the place last week.”

  “Did having her around force the other members of your team to come around and work with you, too?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  She shook her head. “Everybody’s coming around, but slowly. I think that’s normal, though. I realized this week that dealing with office politics is a reality of life. I got so accustomed to being praised for everything I did in high school and college that I forgot the real world doesn’t work like that.” She shrugged. “But I’m okay with it.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I mean, nobody said it was going to be easy.”

  “Well, good for you,” Mrs. Hernandez said, reaching between Tia and Drew to take the empty potato plate. She frowned at Drew, but said nothing.

  Tia laughed. “How did things go here this week?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Great. I got a new mare,” he said, so easily that if she hadn’t glanced up at him with sincere interest in her blue eyes, he might have continued. But she did glance up. She smiled into his eyes. Not like somebody forced into a charade with him, but like somebody who really liked him. He pulled in a breath and sat back on his chair. “It’s nothing.”

  “Sure it is,” she countered, again easily. They were behaving like two friends and though last week he had needed to talk so she would become comfortable enough to tell him her troubles, now that her problem had been fixed they didn’t need to be friends.

  “Just eat,” Drew said, turning to dig into his food. He focused his attention on the roast beef in front of him, refusing even to glance at Tia. He knew he’d see hurt in her eyes, but that hurt would be a lot worse if they got further involved and she got her hopes up and then they divorced anyway.

  He also hadn’t forgotten that they were about to become parents. Divorced parents. He didn’t think she’d use their child as a weapon against him. But he didn’t wish to endure an ugly scene every time he picked up or dropped off his little boy or girl. So, getting close was bad. Distance was good.

  When he finished eating, he rose from his seat. “There are a few things I need to see to in the barn.”

  “Great,” she said, dabbing her mouth with her napkin before rising, too. “I’ll come with you. I’d like to see the mare.”

  He didn’t even pause on his way to the door. �
�No. It’s late. You go upstairs and get your shower. I’ll see you when I’m done.”

  Drew managed to find things to occupy him for a full hour. When he returned to his house, it was dark and quiet. He breathed a sigh of relief, tossed his hat to the peg at the foot of the foyer stairs and tiptoed up the steps and down the hall to his bedroom.

  Though the room was dark when he opened the bedroom door, he could make out Tia’s small form, looking lost in his king-size bed. In order not to wake her, he didn’t turn on a light but tiptoed to the bathroom, then changed his mind, grabbed a towel and his robe and headed across the hall where the noise of the shower wouldn’t disturb her.

  When he returned to the bedroom, he rummaged for a pair of sweatpants that he’d cut into shorts and unrolled his sleeping bag. Just as he prepared to lower himself to the sleeping bag, the lamp beside Tia clicked on.

  “You can’t sleep on the floor.”

  He sighed. He didn’t want to sleep on the floor, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do it. “Sure I can.”

  She flipped back the covers of his bed. “This bed is huge. You know it is. We’re in no danger of touching.”

  He drew a quiet breath. She might be right about not touching, but he would smell her and then all his senses would be heightened and he’d get even less sleep than he got on this floor.

  “No.”

  “Okay, then I’m going to sleep in one of the spare bedrooms.”

  She edged her legs out of the bed, slid her feet into slippers and headed for the door. Drew stood staring. Not because she had the audacity to leave, but because of what she was wearing. Oversize pink print boxer shorts clung precariously to her hipbones while a solid pink tank top mercilessly caressed her breasts.

  He swallowed. “You can’t.”

  “Mrs. Hernandez suggested it last weekend. She won’t be surprised.”

  “No, but eventually she’ll be confused.” He sighed. “Come on, Tia. Go back to bed.”

  “No.”

  He knew from the stubborn set of her chin that she meant it.

  “Damn it.”

  “Your only alternative is to get into the bed with me.”

  Drew stormed to his bed. “Fine. I’m tired. I’m done arguing.”

  He fell into bed and Tia slid into her place on the opposite side. At least three feet of mattress separated them.

  “See,” she said, “plenty of space.”

  “Right,” he growled.

  “And lots of emotional distance,” she said as she flicked off the light.

  He took a breath. He wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot fiberglass pole.

  “Last week you were Mr. Talkative,” she said, her voice tiptoeing into the dark bedroom. “This week I explained that your advice had worked, now you’re done.” She paused only a second before adding, “I might have needed help with that problem because I was too inexperienced to see what was going wrong, but I’m not stupid. I figured out that for some reason or another it was important to our situation for that problem to be solved. That’s why you helped me. Now that it’s solved, you’re back to being grouchy with me again.” He felt her flounce onto her side. “Well, fine. I can be grouchy, too.”

  He sighed. Damn woman. “I don’t want you to be grouchy.”

  “No, you just don’t want to be my friend.” He felt her sit up, then the light flicked on again. “Damn it, Drew. We’re having a baby. For the rest of our lives we’re connected. We can’t be enemies.”

  Drew sat up, too. “Well, we can’t exactly be friends.”

  She frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because…” He paused, all his good reasoning going out of his head when he accidentally glanced down at her tank top. He jerked his gaze to her face again and forced the image of her perfect breasts out of his head. “Because men and women really can’t be friends.”

  “That’s a crock.”

  “Okay, how about this? We can’t be friends because I learned from my failed relationship that the better we get along as a married couple, the happier we are, the worse our divorce will be.”

  Her frown deepened. “Really?”

  “Why does that surprise you?”

  “I think it’s the fact that you were ever happy that surprises me.”

  He glared at her. “That’s my point. Had I never been happy with my ex-wife, I could have walked away with my sanity.” He paused to grimace. “I still would have lost all my money, but at least I wouldn’t have been hurt.”

  “So what you’re really saying is that you’ve decided that if you go into a relationship expecting it to fail, you won’t get hurt.”

  He stared at her. “This isn’t a real relationship.”

  She laughed. “You think not? Maybe it’s time for me to tell you not to kid yourself. We are not going to live together for eight long months without forming some kind of bond.”

  “Guess again.”

  She sighed. “You’re impossible.”

  “Yet another one of my points. The fact that I don’t want a relationship with you has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. I am impossible. My expectations are always high. I expect nothing but the best from myself, nothing but the best from my horses, nothing but total commitment and loyalty from my friends.”

  “And you don’t get that back from women?”

  “Isn’t that what I’ve been saying all along?”

  “So it is personal.” She flicked off the light.

  Getting angry now, because she was twisting everything he said, he turned on the lamp on his bedside table. “No. It is not personal. And even if you can somehow manipulate this to the point that you think it’s personal, it’s about me. My expectations.”

  She rolled to her side and pulled the cover over her shoulder. “That’s a delicate way of saying no woman can ever meet your expectations. I get it, Drew. No need to insult me.”

  Drew stared at her. It was too late. He’d already insulted her. He could see it in the tightness in her shoulders and the way she held herself so rigid she looked as if she would crack if he touched her.

  That caused a tightening in his chest that he didn’t like. Mostly because it reminded him of his marriage. It brought to mind the one argument he remembered having with Sandy when she’d made him feel guilty for spending so much time at work, though he was earning the money that she happily spent.

  He took a quick breath. Geez, there was a trip down memory lane he hadn’t needed to take. This was why he didn’t get involved with women. They reminded him of the other woman in his life and, frankly, he did not care to revisit that failure.

  He turned off the light. No matter what Tia thought, he had made the right choice in forcing them to keep their distance.

  He ignored the twisting feeling in his heart, the one that kept reminding him that he had hurt Tia. In the end she would thank him for not letting them get involved. They would leave this relationship as emotionlessly as they had entered it. He wouldn’t lose a dime or spend any time wishing he’d done things differently. She wouldn’t spend a year getting over him. Once he was out of her life, she’d probably find somebody who really could love her.

  His gut twisted again, but this time it was with jealousy. He didn’t like thinking of her with another man, but he had to be a realist. She was a beautiful woman. Smart. Funny. Somebody was going to snap her up. He squeezed his eyes shut at the unexpected pain that shot through him when he thought of her with another man.

  No matter which road he took he was going to get hurt.

  Drifting off to sleep, with her floral scent reminding him of how soft she was, how sweet she was and how much he genuinely liked her, he began to wonder if there was any way to protect them at all.

  And if they were going to get hurt, anyway, if he was going to miss her when she was gone, get jealous when she found another man and spend a year getting over her…

  Then why wasn’t he taking advantage of having her with him now?

  Chapter Eight<
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  In the barn, things were simple and easy. So easy that as Drew strode past the stalls, listening to the noise of horses impatient to be outside and hands taking care of the morning routine, he forgot all about Tia. The surrounding sights and sounds blocked out the nearly sleepless night he had spent, holding himself rigid and hugging his side of the bed until he could legitimately escape.

  For the next few hours, he buried himself first in barn chores, then telephone calls and accounting. But at noon, Tia showed up at his office door.

  Wearing jeans and a T-shirt and smiling, she sauntered into his office. “Daddy called.”

  He tossed his pencil to his desk. Of course she was smiling. She’d gotten a good night’s sleep. He’d heard every inhalation and exhalation of her deep, even breathing. Rested and relaxed, she had no idea how difficult the night had been for him.

  She needed sleep, though. She was carrying his child. And he also couldn’t be angry with her for being attractive. Sexy. So sweet-smelling that every time he breathed, his hormones sighed with delight.

  He sucked in a quiet breath and tried to smile. The smile didn’t work, but at least he sounded accommodating when he said, “What did your dad want?”

  She grimaced. “He needs a favor. The party’s hosting a chicken dinner at the fire hall tonight. He was supposed to speak, but he’s got the flu.”

  Afraid of the worst, Drew asked, “Is he okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s fine. It really is just the flu, but that’s part of the problem. He needs somebody to assure his voters that he really is fine and somebody to give his speech.”

  Drew’s eyes widened. “Oh, no.” No matter how much he wanted to do his fair share, this was the line he refused to cross. He was not speaking in front of a crowd. “I’m not filling in for him. I do not give speeches. It’s why I won’t be a best man for anyone. I can’t even give a thirty-second toast!”