Kiss Me, Tate (Love in Rustic Woods)

by Karen Cantwell

  The young woman placed the drinks on the table and retrieved a pad and pen from her apron. “Would you like to hear our specials?” she asked.

  “We’d especially love to hear the specials!” May exclaimed.

  May always added drama to a dinner table, Tate thought, smiling inwardly.

  Momentarily startled by May’s abundant energy, the waitress cleared her throat and gave her spiel. “Our soup of the day is Pastini in Brodo—that’s tiny pasta in chicken broth. We have Pesce Spada, which is a grilled swordfish filet seasoned with rosemary and thyme and served with mushroom risotto. And the chef’s special, which is Veal Limone—veal medallions sautéed with white wine and onions, and topped with a lemon sauce. That’s served with asparagus spears.”

  The girl readied herself with pen to pad. She looked at Willow. “Ma’am, what would you like?”

  Willow tipped her head back and forth a couple of times, thinking her options over, then snapped the menu shut. “I’ll have the soup of the day and the large Mediterranean salad.”

  “Ooo. That sounds good,” said May. “I’ll have that too. No onions though. Does that come with onions?” She waved her hand around. “Definitely no onions.”

  The waitress scribbled and repeated, “No onions.”

  “And the dressing on the side please,” added May. Then she pointed to Tate. “And he’ll have that swordfish dish because he’s neither old nor boring.” She and Willow laughed in unison.

  Tate frowned. “I never said anything about being boring.”

  “Will there be anything else?” asked the waitress.

  “No, that’s all,” he said. Tate noticed the girl didn’t wear a name tag. “And your name is?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “My name is Angela. I’ll be your server. I was supposed to open with that line.”

  Tate liked knowing the names of waiters and waitresses he dealt with. He’d been a waiter in college, and while there had been many good customers, the bad ones stuck out in his mind. He liked to address waitstaff by name and tip well for good service rendered. “Thank you, Angela.” He handed her his menu. “That swordfish—is it good?”

  “I’m not a fish person myself, so I haven’t tasted it, but the people at that table over there,” she indicated a couple just getting up to leave, “said it was exceptional. They were really happy with it.”

  May patted Tate’s hand as the waitress left to tend another table. “It’s okay, little brother. You can try new things.”

  “I try plenty of new things,” Tate said, still smiling. He held up his beer. “This beer is new.”

  “How exciting for you, blah, blah, blah,” May said, grinning. She turned to Willow. “Speaking of exciting. Tell me about this Charlie. Is he very cute?”

  Tate saw Willow’s cheeks blush and wondered what he was missing. “Who’s Charlie?” he asked, and then realized he was probably stepping into sensitive teenage girl territory. He wasn’t always quick on the uptake about these things. Of course, May shouldn’t have brought it up if it was sensitive.

  “Charlie Bergen. He’s the guy who was cast as Bill Calhoun. Sort of the love interest to my Lois.”

  “And he has an eye for our Willow.”

  “Aunt May!”

  “It’s okay,” May said airily. “He can know these things.” She turned to Tate. “She kinda thinks he’s cute too...”

  Willow buried her face in her hands. “Oh my God.”

  The name clicked in Tate’s mind. Bergen. A picture of Bunny flashed in his mind, not of the beautiful but self-conscious woman in the interview, but of the lovely girl he’d hardly known in high school. A girl he’d danced with just once. “Bergen. Is his mother Bunny Bergen?”

  Willow uncovered her crimson face. “I don’t know. I barely know him.”

  “They’re in the same photography class, but he’s a junior, and they talk, and she thinks he might ask her to prom.”

  “Oh my God, Aunt May. I’m never going to tell you anything again.”

  Tate noticed that Willow was obviously embarrassed, but not all that horrified. He was glad May had outed her. These on-the-verge-of-womanhood moments were the times that worried him most about being a single father to a growing girl. He wanted to know what was happening in his daughter’s life, and from the way she looked across the table, red-faced but smiling, he guessed that she wanted him to know as well.

  He sipped from his glass and offered a warm smile. “The guy would be crazy not to ask you.”

  Willow avoided eye contact, playing with her fork. “Thanks,” she said after a pause. Her cheeks reddened again. The smile stretched more broadly across her face. “I’ll be seeing a lot of him now, so I guess if he’s crazy, it will become apparent pretty fast.”

  Tate watched his daughter, proud of the beauty she carried on the inside, sad that her mother couldn’t see it, too. Willow was so much like her.

  When the food arrived, the three of them chatted about Willow’s classes at school, about May’s new art piece for a show in Alexandria, and about the unusually warm late-February weather.

  Tate had Samuel and his phone number on his mind, but decided he should not bring it up. This was a celebration dinner, and he didn’t want to ruin Willow’s excitement by possibly upsetting May by bringing up the brother who had deserted them.

  Tate paid the bill, adding more than twenty percent for Angela, the waitress, and the three of them rose to leave. “So, you’ll stop by to see Morton soon, right?” he asked his sister.

  “Absolutely, love.” She put her arm around his. “I have things going on tomorrow, but I’ll find time on Sunday. Tuesday at the latest.”

  Willow walked just in front of them toward the front of the restaurant.

  “Kilbourn! Hey, man. How’s it goin’?” Tate followed the sound of the voice, and spotted his buddy, Colt Baron, standing with a group of people at the hostess podium.

  “Hey,” Tate said smiling. “Good, thanks. You?”

  “Tate, these are my friends Howard and Barb Marr.” Colt looked at the woman with the curly hair. “Barb, this is Tate Kilbourn—the guy you did the research for.”

  Tate winced, feeling a disaster coming on and not knowing how to stop it.

  Sure enough, Colt’s friend Barb, the one he had heard the crazy stories about, opened her mouth. “Oh, the Kilbourn case. Right.” She smiled at Tate, then her face brightened and eyes popped as if she’d had an epiphany. “Tate. You’re Tate.” She nodded while giving him a definite once over, as if he were a new car she might want to purchase. With her husband standing right there, too. Man, she was as bizarre as he’d heard.

  “Nice to meet you, Tate,” she said with a slow nod.

  Well, at least she didn’t mention Samuel in front of May. He was relieved about that at least. He just wished the Marr woman would stop staring at him. He could see Willow contemplating what Colt had said about research, her eyebrows doing that thing they do when she was getting ready to question him. Tate jumped into a conversation with Barb quickly before Willow could open her mouth and ask what Colt was talking about.

  “Nice to meet you as well, Barb. I’ve heard a lot about you.” He introduced Willow to Colt and his friends. “And this is my sister, May,” he continued. When May giggled like a school girl, he realized she was giving Colt some very obvious doe eyes. He suppressed an eye roll.

  Colt reached out to shake May’s hand. “Hi May,” he said. “Tate never mentioned he had a beautiful sister.”

  The door of the restaurant opened, triggering a bell. Tate watched two boys enter. One had dark hair and looked older than the smaller blonde boy. Almost immediately, the older boy’s face lit with a wide smile, and Tate noticed he was looking at Willow.

  A quick glance at Willow’s red face made him wonder if this was the boy in the play, but the answer was following just on the boy’s heels—Bunny Bergen. She looked different than she had at the interview. With a jolt, he realized it was her hair. It was brown now. Nice.r />
  She was stunning. Clear, fair skin, statuesque. Eyes that seemed to tell a story. Eyes that locked briefly onto his, causing his gut to churn and his palms to sweat. She dropped her gaze as if embarrassed.

  Tate was shaken by his reaction. He hadn’t felt that kind of attraction to a woman in a long, long time.

  The Marr woman broke his trance. “Bunny!”

  Bunny locked eyes with Tate again before turning to Barb, who was waving her over.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BUNNY THOUGHT ABOUT TATE KILBOURN all weekend long.

  After seeing him Friday night at Fiorenza’s, how could she not? They’d had a short exchange—he’d been surprised to find out she’d been hired by the Nature Center. Bunny couldn’t tell if it was good surprised or bad surprised. That worried her, since she’d be seeing him daily from now on.

  Then Barb had pulled her aside and whispered, “OMG, he’s so hot!” Barb’s husband, Howard looked like George Clooney, so Barb was someone with obviously high standards. And Barb was right. Tate was hot. Steamy hot. He’d grown a beard that he kept trimmed close to his strong jaw, and the slight peppering of silver hairs made it especially sexy, she thought. His brown eyes were so intensely dark that she felt like she was looking into a well with infinite depth. And he was tall. Taller than Bunny by three or four inches, which was especially sexy since she fell just an inch short of six feet herself. Tall men weren’t easy to find.

  Monday morning, Bunny was a mess. She’d tossed and turned most of the night, worrying about her first day on the new job. At five a.m. she decided to give up and got out of bed to start her day with a strong cup of coffee.

  She got on the computer and looked up the theater teacher’s name at Rustic Woods High School. The woman’s name was Ms. Steffler.

  Bunny sent her an email offering to help with the play in any way needed. She told Ms. Steffler in the short but sweet email that she always “supported the school in any way she could,” and asked the teacher to please reply and let her know “what sorts of volunteer positions are needed for the production of Kiss Me, Kate. Sincerely, Bunny Bergen, Charlie’s mom.”

  Truthfully, Bunny hadn’t volunteered in her sons’ middle and high schools the way she had when they were in elementary school, and she felt badly about that. She’d let her divorce and the child custody fight overwhelm her ability to give back to the community. Now was the perfect time to get involved again. It felt good to have something to be involved in.

  Bunny showered, made lunches for her boys and got them out of the house in time for their buses. By the time she’d eaten a slice of toast and half cup of yogurt—more for energy since nerves had cut her appetite—and packed her own small lunch, it was still only seven a.m. She didn’t need to be at the Nature Center until nine.

  Oh well, maybe she could just take her time dressing, blow drying her hair, and putting on her makeup. She’d take it nice and slow.

  She had asked Barb to assist her on a shopping trip over the weekend to select some Nature Center appropriate work attire. She’d come away with two turtlenecks—white and black—a teal fleece vest, two pairs of fancier-style jeans—black and khaki—a nice, but subdued flannel shirt in tones of brown that she could wear over either turtleneck, and, of all things, a pair of hiking boots.

  The wardrobe was so vastly different from anything Bunny had ever worn that even Barb expressed concern about Bunny’s choices. “You only want to dress a little more conservatively than you’re used to, Bunny,” she’d said. “Not transform into a poster girl for Forest Service recruitment. I mean, those boots. They’re kind of chunky.”

  But Bunny had made up her mind. She wouldn’t lose another job for dressing incorrectly. She’d do this one right. She’d fit right in. She’d dipped into the severance money Dr. Page had given her to cover the cost, but she knew she couldn’t afford the extravagance, so later that day Charlie helped her put several pieces of her porcelain Lladro figurine collection up for sale on eBay to replenish her bank account.

  It hurt her heart to do it. She loved her Lladro, but she also loved putting food on the table for her growing boys and keeping their house heated. Something had to give.

  Finally, with time moving at a glacial pace, Bunny arrived in the gravel parking lot at the Rustic Woods Nature Center twenty minutes early, looking like she was ready to hike the Appalachian Trail with Grizzly Adams.

  Barb was right, the boots were chunky. They felt like weighted moon boots. She met a young woman on her way to the entrance, who introduced herself as another naturalist. As Bunny walked alongside her new co-worker, she was mortified when she tripped over her own feet.

  The young naturalist was apparently the first employee besides Bunny to arrive. She unlocked the main door to let them both in, and, unsure of quite what to do, Bunny decided to take her place at the reception desk while waiting for the frizzy-haired Abigail to arrive.

  New boss, new job, and Tate Kilbourn. Her nervous energy was revved so high, she was probably burning a thousand calories a minute. She tried to keep busy by taking note of her new station. The phone system was similar, but not identical, to the one at Dr. Page’s. Hopefully she’d learn it easily. Computer monitor. Much larger and newer than the one that Dr. Page had supplied. That was nice. She put her fingers on the keyboard. The fit was good.

  She opened the top drawer on the right-hand side of the desk. It was a disorganized mess of rubber bands, paper clips, sticky note pads, scissors and more. The second drawer contained a gem—operating instructions for the phone system. She was reading the “Getting Started” chapter when she heard footsteps in the main hallway.

  A moment later, Abigail appeared with a large, flowery tote thrown over one shoulder. She stopped and gave Bunny a queer look. “Can I help you?”

  Surprised by the woman’s reaction, Bunny froze. For a panicked moment she thought maybe she’d misunderstood the call on Friday. “Today was supposed to be my first day, right?”

  Abigail’s spine straightened, and the creases on her face relaxed. “Ms. Bergen?”

  “Yes...”

  The woman shook her head and continued moving toward Bunny. “I remembered you as blonde from the interview. My mistake.”

  “You weren’t really mistaken. I was coloring my hair before, but now I’m going back to my natural look to fit in with the nature theme, you know.” Bunny smiled, thinking her own little joke would ease the tension.

  Abigail didn’t crack a smile. She stared at her for a moment, then slapped her hand on the counter. “Yes. Well,” the woman said with an abruptness that made Bunny jump. “Need to set my things down. Back shortly. Lots of paperwork to fill out.” Abigail slumped again and, pointing her nose like a dog on a scent, walked with brisk determination down another hallway behind the reception desk.

  Bunny turned to watch her new supervisor stride away. It was hard not to wonder how they were going to get along. Right now, Abigail felt like vinegar to Bunny’s oil.

  She returned her attention to the phone system user manual, but soon enough, she had the odd feeling she was being watched. She looked up again to find herself being inspected by a set of eyes staring through round wire-rimmed glasses. It was the small woman from the interview, whose name she’d forgotten.

  Bunny was surprised to see that the woman wasn’t just short, she was more like a miniature person. Her bulbous nose and round glasses hovered just above the tall countertop of the reception desk.

  “I’m sorry,” Bunny said. “I didn’t hear you come up.”

  “That eez okay. People say I’m like stealth Russian spy drone. It eez dee shoes.” Without a hint of a sound, she was scooting around the desk to show Bunny her feet. “You like?”

  Bunny smiled to be nice. “Mm. Yes. They’re very...white.”

  “Nurse shoes. Get dem online from nurse’s site. You know—they have the scrubby clothes. And the shoes.”

  Actually, they did look very comfortable, so Bunny wasn’t lying when she told t
he little woman that she’d like a pair for herself. The hiking boots were killing her feet at the moment. “I’m sorry,” Bunny said, “I know we were introduced at the interview, but I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Olga.” Olga looked Bunny up and down in two swift shifts of her head. “You look different.”

  “I put a brown rinse in my hair. I’m going back to my natural—”

  “No. I mean, yes, this ees obvious with the hair, but...you have different clothing choices. No pretty rings in your ears.” The woman wiggled her own naked ear lobes to illustrate. “I always weeshed I did the holes for the rings.”

  “I wanted to dress appropriately. For the job, I mean.”

  “Why like this? You answer the phones, not climbing the mountains.” She eyed Bunny’s boots, winced, then leaned against Bunny’s desk, settling in like an old buddy. “Me, I tell Abigail hire the blond lady. She dress up the place.”

  “Thank you.”

  Olga stepped over Bunny’s attempt to express appreciation, waving her hand dramatically. “But she say she not hire bimbo. I say, ‘Abigail, she not bimbo. That ees sexism, yes? Just because woman has blond hair, she ees bimbo.’ But no, Abigail try to hire others first.”

  “Which others?”

  “All others.” She placed a hand on Bunny’s shoulder. “All. But none willing,” she rolled her eyes and blew out a hefty breath, “or able, to take dee job. One already have better offer, one decided to go back for the master’s degree, and one—get thees—one come up on the search of criminal histories as being offender.”

  “Offender?”

  “Sexual offender.”

  Bunny thought of the grimy man. “The man who wasn’t dressed so well?”

  Olga shook her head. “Woman with brief case. She was high school teacher who had much sex with many boy students. Bad lady. That man—he took good job with National Zoo.”

  “So I was the last choice?”

  “Yes. I hate to break the news. But me, I like you. Think you bring color to the place. But not...” she made a sweeping motion in front of Bunny, “not dressed like this. Be yourself, yes?” She pushed herself from the desk where she’d been leaning and patted Bunny on the arm. Silently, Olga tore off down the same hallway as Abigail.