by Gina Wilkins
Knowing that anger wasn’t directed toward her, Meagan sighed softly, then turned to blow out the candles still flickering on her table.
Glittering in the softened lighting, water streamed from Meagan’s slender body as she climbed the steps out of the pool Friday evening. The red suit she wore fit like a second skin, molded around her wet curves. Seth lingered in the pool behind her, the better to watch her shapely backside as she bent to shake water from her hair. He watched in regret when she wrapped a thick towel around herself. Only then did he wade toward the steps, himself.
It was late, almost eleven, but he wasn’t particularly sleepy, despite a killer day at the office. The stress of work had started seeping out of him as soon as Meagan had opened her door to him a few hours earlier, and had dissipated further during a leisurely meal. The lovemaking that had followed that had left him loose-limbed and satiated. Because neither had wanted to sleep afterward, they’d agreed on a quiet swim, which he, for one, had enjoyed very much.
Somewhat miraculously, not once during the evening had a phone rang—neither his nor hers. They’d managed only an hour together last night before Meagan had been called to the hospital for an emergency surgery, which had made tonight’s uninterrupted time together even more special.
He ran a towel over his dripping head, swiped it over his chest, then looped it around his neck. “Getting tired?” he asked Meagan.
“I should be,” she said with a smile. “It’s been a long day. But for some reason, I’m not. I think I’d like a cup of tea. Do you want some?”
“Sounds good.”
Sliding his damp, bare feet into his shoes, he followed her into the house.
Meagan took a quick shower and dressed quickly in a loose T-shirt and dorm pants. She left Seth to shower and dress while she went to make their tea. Only a few minutes later, dressed now in a polo shirt and jeans, he leaned against the kitchen doorway, watching her puttering around the kitchen. Two steaming mugs waited on the counter while she put away the tea canister and rummaged in the cupboard, maybe looking for a late-night snack to go with the hot beverage.
He could end every day just like this, he thought in a somewhat wistful satisfaction. If only Alice were here, everything would be perfect.
“Meagan.”
She glanced over her shoulder with a distracted smile. “Yes?”
“Do you have plans for tomorrow?”
She shrugged and turned her attention back to the cupboard. “Nothing specific. I’m not on call, which doesn’t mean my phone won’t ring at some point, anyway, but I shouldn’t have to go by the hospital. I need to do some laundry and grocery shopping, run by Mom’s for a while, that sort of thing.”
“Do you want to go with me to meet Alice at the airport?”
Her hands went still. He knew she hadn’t missed the implications beneath the seemingly casual invitation.
“I’m sure you’d rather greet your daughter privately,” she said after a moment, her voice oddly strained. “You haven’t seen her in a month.”
“She’d love to see you, too. She’s asked about you several times when she called.”
“You haven’t told her we’ve been, um, seeing each other, have you?”
“No. I gave her the impression I’ve seen you in passing a few times. I didn’t think she needed to know more than that. Yet.”
She turned slowly, her expression troubled. “There’s no need for her to ever know. We’ve had some fun. Spent a little free time together while you were at loose ends for a few weeks. That doesn’t mean—”
He felt his eyebrows draw downward. “Are you suggesting I was using you to keep me from missing my daughter?”
“I never thought you were using me,” she assured him hastily. “I’ve had a great time, too.”
He didn’t like the way she was using the past tense. Or the implication that their good times ended tonight.
He supposed he couldn’t blame her for the way she had interpreted his actions during the past few weeks. Maybe at the beginning he had seen their evenings together as a temporary diversion. But the more time he spent with her, the more he wanted to be with her. He found himself wanting to believe they could still spend time together even after his life returned to normal.
“All I’m suggesting is that you come with me to get Alice.”
“I know.” She moistened her lips. “But I wouldn’t want her to misinterpret us coming together to pick her up.”
“Misinterpret in what way?” he asked, though he was pretty sure he got the idea.
“I don’t want her to think we’re a couple. Or even a potential couple. I want her to continue thinking of us as friends. Neighbors. Nothing more.”
“Look, Meagan.” He pushed a hand through his hair, wondering how to phrase what he wanted to say. “I think maybe I hurt your feelings a few weeks ago. I mean, we went out a couple of times, seemed to be hitting it off pretty well and then…well, I pulled back. I’ll admit it. I started having second thoughts.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he forestalled her with a raised hand. “I guess I got a little nervous. Alice was matchmaking, everyone kept saying what a great couple we made, everything was going so well…and then you went back to work. And things, well, things changed.”
He knew how awkward he sounded, but he didn’t know how else to explain his behavior of the past month. He was still struggling to understand it, himself. He supposed he’d panicked a little when he’d realized how hard he was falling for his pretty neighbor. But in the long run, he just couldn’t stay away. And the past three weeks had been amazing.
“Yes, things changed,” Meagan repeated quietly.
He couldn’t read her expression, and that made him uneasy. “It was my fault. I guess I started having flashbacks to my disastrous marriage with Colleen. We were a couple of workaholics who had no clue how to compromise. We were too young, too inflexible and too poorly suited to make it work out anyway. But it wasn’t just career conflicts that broke us up—hell, we should never have gotten married in the first place. One failed attempt with the wrong woman doesn’t mean I can’t ever have a successful relationship with the right one, even as a single dad, as long as I keep Alice’s welfare a top priority.”
“The last thing I would ever want is for Alice to be hurt.”
“You would never hurt Alice.” That was one statement he could make with total certainty.
“No. I wouldn’t.”
“So, there’s really no reason you and I can’t keep seeing each other after she gets home. I mean, I know it will be even trickier to coordinate our schedules when we add her calendar, but—”
“There is one reason.”
He hesitated, not sure he wanted to ask, but knowing he had to. “What?”
“I don’t date men with children.”
He blinked. “Uh—what?”
She grimaced in what might have been apology. “It’s been a rule of mine for a long time. I sort of broke that rule when I went to the charity thing with you and I’ve broken it with you a few times since. While Alice was away, it was sort of a nonissue, but now that she’s coming home—well, like I said. I don’t date men with children.”
“But these past few weeks…”
“I thought we were just having fun. Filling time.”
“Filling time.” He didn’t like the way the words felt on his tongue.
“We can still be friends, of course.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Let’s avoid the clichés, shall we? I thought you liked Alice.”
“I’m very fond of Alice. I think she’s a great kid.”
“But you won’t go out with me because of her.”
“I think that’s for the best.”
Her hands were clenched in front of her, her knuckles white. Had he not seen those signs, he would have thought she was perfectly at ease judging from her tone when she said, “You were right to pull back when you did, Seth. Now that Alice is coming home there’s no pla
ce for me in your life now except perhaps as a friend. I understand that, and I agree.”
“I don’t agree,” he insisted. “We’ve got a good thing going between us, Meagan. You and Alice already get along great. I know it won’t be easy, considering everything, but…”
She was already shaking her head. “I’m sorry. This is just a bad time for me. I’m still catching up from my time off, my family’s going through a difficult time and a new rotation will start soon with new residents and med students for me to teach. Summer brings vacations, which means extra work and call for everyone. There’s just no time left for anything else.”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past thirteen years, it’s that it’s possible to make time for the things that are truly important to you,” he said quietly. “Your work is important—so is mine, for that matter—but there is more to life than work.”
“If it were just the two of us, I would probably risk it,” she admitted, her hands still clenched in front of her. “If we tried and failed to make it work between us—because of our schedules, or whatever other obstacle might crop up—one or both of us might get hurt. I could deal with that. But I won’t risk hurting Alice.”
Her adamancy was beginning to shake his own optimism. Was he letting the pleasures of the past three weeks cloud his judgment about his daughter?
Alice was already paying the price of having a mother who was obsessed with her career. And no matter how hard he tried to prevent it, there were still times his own job interfered with things Alice wanted to do. Was it really fair to bring another workaholic into her life?
He still thought it was possible to make this work—though it would take an extraordinary amount of effort on everyone’s part. If either of them wasn’t willing to make that effort—whether for fear of hurting Alice or just due to doubt that it was all worth the trouble—they had no chance of success. That was the ultimate lesson he had learned from his failed marriage. And Meagan was making it pretty clear she wasn’t that strongly invested.
“Maybe—” He sighed, pushing a hand through his drying hair. “Maybe I’d just better go. Sorry about the tea.”
She glanced at the now-cooling mugs without interest.
He moved toward the doorway. Meagan remained where she stood.
One foot out of the room, he looked back at her. “Three weeks ago, you invited me over for a swim, even though I’d been kind of a jerk to you. My first thought was to say no, because I had convinced myself it wouldn’t work without even giving us a chance. But you looked me in the eye, and you told me that if I changed my mind, the invitation stood.”
He could still picture her standing there on his walkway, her expression warm and unguarded as she had risked yet another rejection. “Well, I changed my mind. And I’m damned glad I did.”
She didn’t speak, merely looked at him, hands still locked, as was her expression.
Feeling like a proper idiot now, he shrugged. “All I’m saying is—if you change your mind, the invitation stands. To give it a try, I mean. Good night, Meagan.”
He thought he should leave before he made an even bigger fool of himself.
Meagan didn’t try to stop him.
Chapter Eleven
Twenty-four hours after Alice’s return from Europe, she was still full of stories to share with Seth. She babbled almost endlessly, showed him what seemed like a million snapshots and souvenirs, demonstrated some of the foreign phrases and customs she had learned on her trip. She’d had a wonderful time, but she said she was very glad to be home.
“Waldo’s grown like a foot!” she marveled, her arms wrapped tightly around the wiggling dog’s neck Sunday afternoon. She’d beelined straight to the dog the moment she’d walked into the house yesterday, and had hardly left him since. Seth had begun to wonder only half-humorously if she’d missed Waldo as much as she had missed him. She had been playing with the dog again for the past hour, and Seth had just come out to join them. “Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking care of him for me, Dad.”
Standing on the patio near the door, he smiled. “You’re welcome. You’ll have to thank Jacqui tomorrow, too. She’s had to take care of him during the days. She’s worked with him quite a bit, too. Walked him on the leash to keep him in training. Kept him entertained during the daytimes so he wouldn’t get too lonely for you.”
“I will thank her.” Taking the dog’s grinning face between her hands, Alice dropped a kiss on top of his head. “I’ve got five whole weeks before school starts again, Waldo. We’ll spend every day together now, I promise.”
Waldo wagged his tail as if he understood and approved every word.
Straightening, she lifted her hair off her neck, her skin glistening with a sheen of perspiration after her strenuous play with her dog. “Wow. It’s hot.”
“Still in the nineties,” he agreed, feeling the stifling, humid air pressing through his T-shirt and cargo shorts. “You’ve gotten used to that milder, European summer. Forgot what July can feel like in Arkansas. You’ve got two weeks to get used to it again before we get into the August inferno.”
“That’s what pools are for,” she said, waving a hand expressively at their sizeable backyard.
He chuckled, amused by her persistence. “Next year.”
Though they couldn’t see it from the back yard, she glanced in the general direction of Meagan’s house and he had little trouble following her line of thought. She’d asked about Meagan several times already since he’d met her at the airport the day before. He’d told her only that yes, he had seen Meagan a few times during the month Alice was gone, and that she was fine.
“I want to take Meagan the scarf I brought her from France. Is it okay if I call her now to see if she’s home?”
“She said you’re welcome to call any time. If she’s busy, she’ll let the call go to voice mail and you can leave her a message asking when would be a good time.”
“She’s probably not working on a Sunday afternoon.”
“She could be,” he said with a shrug. “Trust me, Alice, she works a lot. When she’s on call, she has to be prepared to rush to the hospital at any moment to do surgeries. When she’s not at the hospital, she’s often in meetings with her partners or professional organizations or spending time with her mother who is taking care of Meagan’s very ill grandmother.”
Yet with all those responsibilities, she had made time to be with him during the past month, he thought somberly. Which only showed that they could have worked things out, schedule-wise, had their relationship progressed the way he had begun to hope it would.
“Dad.” Alice tucked a curl behind her ear, and not for the first time he thought that Waldo wasn’t the only one who’d matured during the past month.
He’d noticed subtle changes in his little girl since she’d returned from her European adventures. He couldn’t put a finger on what those changes were, exactly, but she seemed a little more self-possessed, a little less childish. She’d cut her hair again while she was gone, and he was still getting used to seeing her without her cute little round glasses. Her mother had bought her practically an entirely new wardrobe of age-appropriate but more fashionable clothes, but there was more to the transformation than outward appearance. Perhaps it was just a new confidence born out of traveling so far from home by herself.
“Dad,” she repeated, snapping him out of his wistful musings.
“Sorry. What?”
“Did you and Meagan go out while I was gone? You know, on dates?”
He hesitated a moment before answering lightly, “We had dinner together a few times when neither of us had other plans. I think she was trying to keep me from being too lonely for you.”
“You like her, don’t you?”
“Of course I like her. She’s a very nice person.”
Alice frowned at him in censure for the prevarication. “You know what I mean. You really like her.”
He shrugged and tried to change the subject. “What do
you want for dinner tonight? I was thinking maybe we could go out, if you want. You’d probably like a good old American burger or Arkansas barbecue after all that fancy European food.”
Alice refused to be sidetracked from her interrogation. “Are you going to have dinner with her again? Just the two of you, I mean. A date.”
He sighed. “What did I tell you about matchmaking? Meagan and I are just friends, Alice.”
“But you would be more, wouldn’t you? If it weren’t for me, I mean.” Looking troubled, she rested a hand absently on Waldo’s head when the dog pushed against her for more attention. “You don’t have a personal life when I’m here because you think you have to be here all the time for me.”
Scowling, he took a step toward her. “I spend time with you because I choose to, Alice. I don’t consider it a sacrifice to be with my daughter. If your mother said anything to you—”
“She didn’t,” Alice assured him a little too quickly. “I mean, maybe I mentioned that we’d met Meagan and that you and Meagan seemed to hit it off—and maybe Mom said it’s got to be tough for a single dad with a busy schedule to find time to date—but she wasn’t criticizing. She said some really nice things about you, in fact. She said she’s happy you’re such a good father. She said she wishes she were more like you—you know, content to stay here in Arkansas and lead a settled sort of life with your daughter.”
A settled sort of life. He could almost hear Colleen saying the words—and they weren’t quite the compliment Alice took them to be.
“Your mom doesn’t really know what’s going on in my life,” he said carefully, trying to keep any measure of censure from his tone. “I’m very happy to have you back home again. Don’t ever doubt that.”
“I don’t. I just want you to know you don’t have to spend every minute with me. I’m thirteen years old. I have a life, myself, you know. Tiff wants to have a sleepover party next weekend and I’m going to be pretty busy this week catching up with my swim team and telling all my friends about my trip and everything. I thought maybe I could have Casey over one evening? Her grandma would bring her. I want to show her all my pictures and souvenirs and stuff.”
