He was startled when she suddenly gave a cry and said, “Oh, it’s ten o’clock! How did it get to be so late?”
“That’s not exactly the wee hours,” he teased.
She made a face at him. “No, but I have to work in the morning, believe it or not. Some of us don’t rest on Sundays.”
Alec was surprised himself to realize how reluctant he was for the evening to end. They’d hardly scratched the surface of each other’s lives!
Glancing at the check, he tossed bills on the table and stood. “Then we’d better get you home.”
Night had fallen now. The walk back to the car felt curiously intimate, only the two of them on the dark sidewalk. In the car he was even more conscious of being alone with her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so eager and awkward and nervous.
How would she feel about him kissing her? He hadn’t dated much; she hadn’t at all, apparently. Maybe she’d thought this was just a friendly dinner. Had he imagined the sparkle in her eyes or the warmth of her smile or the way she’d looked at him when she said, “I can’t believe you were ever a geek.” Maybe her apparent fascination with his life had been mere politeness.
She was quiet during the drive, responding with only a few words to his comments or questions. In the light of a streetlamp he saw that her fingers were knotted on her lap and she sat with her knees primly together and her back very straight.
Was she nervous, too?
Scowling ahead, he couldn’t decide if he was glad or sorry. He hated the idea that he scared her. But if she wasn’t nervous at all, then that would mean she didn’t feel the anticipation he did.
He pulled in right in front of her driveway, then turned off the engine. In the sudden silence, Helen gave him the look of a wild creature, cornered.
“I enjoyed tonight,” he said quietly.
“I, um, did too.”
“Can we do it again?”
Her look gave him hope. “That would be nice.”
He wanted to reach for her, and was terrified she’d shrink away. “I’ll walk you up.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
The night was still warm. A motion light above the garage came on, showing the way up the steps to the porch. Alec was grateful that the drapes were drawn, and even more grateful when she didn’t reach immediately for the doorknob, instead turning to face him.
“Thank you, Alec. It was a lovely dinner.”
He couldn’t help himself. He reached out and slid one hand beneath the heavy silk of her hair. A quiver ran through her, but she stood her ground.
He bent his head slowly, slowly, giving her time to withdraw. She only waited, eyes huge and unreadable, lips slightly parted, until he feathered a kiss across them. They felt plump and warm and satiny, and he tasted the mint she had eaten after dinner.
Hunger slammed into him, a fist to the gut. Fighting it, he kissed her again, still gently, a nip on her tremulous lower lip, a brush of mouth to mouth, a mingling of breath.
She sighed and swayed toward him. Triumph—or perhaps just relief—rose in him, headier than the wine he’d sipped with dinner. He deepened the kiss, letting his free hand rove up and down the bare flesh of her upper arm.
Finally he made himself let her go. “Good night, Helen. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She blinked, as if dazed, and took a step back, until she bumped the door. “Thank you again for dinner.” She said it as if by rote, a child taught to recite the proper thing.
He nodded and backed away, but he didn’t turn until she opened the door and slipped inside.
On the way down to the street, Alec counted the hours until he could talk to her again.
CHAPTER FOUR
SUNDAY AT WORK began quietly, thank goodness. Before the store opened, Helen set up a new display of back-to-school clothes. In the midst of a July heat wave, it was difficult to feel enthusiastic about a Shetland wool sweater and brown corduroy flare jeans, but when she stood back to study the ensemble, she was pleased with the effect. The curly-haired mannequin wore a forest-green crocheted cap and scarf over the green, brown and rust sweater. The book bag at her feet bulged convincingly, and she combined preteen chic with schoolgirl innocence. The autumn colors were a nice contrast to summer brights.
Perfect, Helen decided with a small nod.
When Nordstrom’s customers failed to pour into the children’s department at ten o’clock, she straightened tables of turtlenecks, poor-boys and embroidered jeans, all miniature versions of the clothes sold downstairs in the teen department. Once the half-yearly sale was advertised next week, they’d be too busy to tidy up.
She wished she was too busy today. She was brooding. About Kathleen’s proposal that they both concentrate full-time on their business, about postponing her plan to make a home just for her and Ginny, about Alec and last night—and about the kiss.
After checking sizes on a rack of toddler dresses to be sure all were hung where they should be, she looked hopefully toward the escalator. A woman with a small child stepped off but walked briskly toward Linens.
Helen wandered through the department, straightening a pile here, reorganizing a rack there.
How would she feel about quitting this job? She loved the store and the quality of the merchandise, and took pride in her own department. As she’d told Alec, she enjoyed helping customers find just what they wanted.
On the other hand, her feet did hurt every night. And she wasn’t making enough money to give Ginny the luxuries other children seemed to take for granted or to even feel she had financial security.
Maybe, just maybe, Kathleen’s Soaps could change that. If she resigned herself to continuing as a guest under Kathleen and Logan’s roof. Which was not so terrible, of course, but lately she had become fixated on the idea of having her own place, however small.
She’d long held the suspicion that some of her terror of losing Ben had been fear that she wouldn’t be able to manage on her own. She had never had to earn a living. What if she couldn’t? What if she had to beg her parents for help, or she and Ginny ended up in a homeless shelter, or… Well, those were the worries that had tumbled through her mind at night, along with the schedule for Ben’s next treatment, the symptoms to expect or when his next appointment was; with the awareness that Ben had looked weaker today, or that he had said “I love you” as if it might be for the last time. She’d forgotten how to sleep during that last year before his death. She was always listening for him, always worrying. It had taken over a year after his death before she awakened one morning in shock to find that she had slept for nine uninterrupted hours.
Even though he’d been dead for almost three years, she still wasn’t sure she could really cope. She’d had so much help!
Helen frowned at an innocuous display of fleecy infant sleepers in angelic pastels. The very fact that Kathleen wanted her to commit fully to the business meant that she believed Helen was not just capable but a real businesswoman, didn’t it?
Unless it was only an excuse to keep her from moving out, because Kathleen didn’t think she could cope and wanted to shield her.
She let out a gusty sigh, turned and saw with relief that a tiny, bent, white-haired woman with a cane was shuffling into her department on the arm of a middle-aged man who was taking patient half steps to match her pace.
Helen greeted them. “May I help you find something?”
In a voice as wispy as her hair, the old woman said, “I need a baby present.” She straightened her hunched back. “For my first great-granddaughter.”
“A great-granddaughter! Wow. That’s something to celebrate.”
Her face crinkled in pleasure. “I didn’t think I’d see the day. Now that I have, I’m crocheting her a blanket, but I also wanted to buy something practical to wear. Maybe—” she peered around “—one of those fuzzy little suits with feet.”
“We have some very cute sleepers,” Helen assured her.
They discu
ssed whether she ought to buy a size for a newborn, which the infant girl might wear for only a few weeks, or a larger size that could be tucked away until the baby grew into it.
Helen wasn’t surprised when her elderly customer chose the latter—and several sleepers rather than just one. Helen wrapped them carefully in tissue paper and put a gift box in the bag while the woman slowly rooted through her purse, came up with a wallet and, with trembling hands, counted out bills.
“I don’t believe in credit cards,” she told Helen. “Spending money you don’t have…that’s just foolish.”
The son—or was he a grandson?—smiled but didn’t argue. Nor did Helen, who was inclined to agree. Credit was for those who didn’t need it except as a convenience, and for the truly desperate.
She stayed busy enough after that and was able to think about Alec and last night only in snatches, alternating with worries, which seemed to have become chronic. Keep looking for a rental, or be dependent on Kathleen and Logan for a while longer? Would she be able to find a job as good as this one, if Kathleen’s Soaps didn’t take off? She remembered with new astonishment Alec’s matter-of-fact comment that his company had taken several years to make a first sale of their turbines. Perhaps she didn’t have the nerve to be successful at business.
She wondered if he really would call. Did she want him to? It scared her a little, how much she’d enjoyed last night. The hours had slipped by so fast. He was entertaining, intelligent and seemingly as interested in her stories as she was in his. The part that amazed her was how much they hadn’t yet talked about. She wasn’t sure that in all those hours she’d even mentioned Ben’s name, or heard his wife’s. Having experienced the tragedy of losing a loved one to a terrible illness was what they had in common. And then what did they do but not even talk about it!
During her lunch break, Helen opened the newspaper and began her daily search for new rental listings. While she absently ate a bagel with cream cheese, she read the ads in the Seattle Times, the tip of her pen pausing at possibles.
One bd w/lrg closets. Well, the price was within her range, but she read the meager text again dubiously. Were large closets the only good thing to say about the apartment? Would Ginny have to sleep on a pullout sofa in the living room? Or would she? Nonetheless, she circled the ad, and several others.
Lg 2 bd, all applcs, fenced yd & gar. The price made her wince, especially with the insistence on first and last month’s rent as well as a deposit. She could never come up with that much money. Nonetheless, she thought wistfully of having a house with a real yard, a garage—maybe even with an electronic garage door opener so she could drive straight in—and two bedrooms, so she and Ginny could each have their own. Ginny probably wouldn’t mind a sofa sleeper or a futon, but still…! Ginny was used to having the privacy of her own room since Joe got married and moved out.
Helen sighed but didn’t circle that ad.
Cute cabinlike 1 bd, fresh paint inside & out. Oh, dear. She could interpret that. Forget large closets; this rental was a closet.
Ginny loved having the extended family. With no siblings, she had declared Emma her big sister. She called the original two housemates Aunt Kathleen and Aunt Jo. Teasing her last week, Logan had asked if he didn’t deserve to be an uncle.
Helen hadn’t heard her daughter’s reply. Perhaps his status was elevated to family now, too.
Would she be doing Ginny a disservice by removing her to a small apartment and maybe even after-school care instead of Emma’s company?
She hadn’t really asked Ginny what she wanted, only told her what she, the adult, planned. Ginny had nodded in her usual grave way and said, “That would be nice.”
Ginny never truly argued with her mother. She was too compliant, too anxious to please. While Ben was ill and in the months after his death, Helen had cried sometimes in front of her young daughter. She was haunted as much by the fear in Ginny’s big eyes as she was by the sight of his waxen face. For at least the year after his death, Ginny had stuck close to her mother’s side, her hand often creeping out to squeeze her mother’s as she whispered, “Are you sad, Mommy?”
Helen tried never to give Ginny reason to ask any more. As she found her way out of the thick fog of grief and saw how desperately her daughter needed her, Helen had marshaled the self-control to cry only at night, in the dark kitchen after others went to sleep, or in the privacy of her bedroom, her sobs muffled by her pillow.
She would ask Ginny what she preferred, Helen decided as she tucked the folded newspaper into her tote bag. Helen didn’t want to treat her solemn daughter like another adult, but she was mature for eight and deserved to have her wants heard.
The day remained slow. July was too early for serious back-to-school shopping, and Seattleites were taking advantage of the rare eighty-degree weather to hike, go to the beach or windsurf on Green Lake rather than wandering the mall.
It was nearly six o’clock when she got home, grateful to smell dinner cooking.
“Hi, I’m home,” she called.
Ginny exploded out of her bedroom and raced downstairs to hug her mom. “Guess what we did today?”
Her cheeks were flushed from the sun, her nose pink.
“Went swimming?” Helen ventured.
“Rollerblading!” her daughter announced with deep satisfaction. “I went with Emma and Uncle Ryan and Aunt Jo and ’Lissa. I kept up and everything! We went all the way around the lake!”
“Cool.” Helen smiled down at her daughter. “That’s at least three miles! I’m not sure I’d have made it.”
“It was fun.” Ginny wriggled with satisfaction. “And I helped make dinner, too. Guess what we’re having?”
This was Ginny’s favorite game. Guess! she always insisted.
Helen sniffed again. “It smells good. Spaghetti?”
“Close.”
“Ravioli?”
“Tortellini! And garlic bread and cauliflower.”
“That sounds wonderful.” She kissed the top of Ginny’s head. “Just let me change. I’m starved.”
In the kitchen, Logan began to sing something vaguely operatic as he often did when he was cooking. Ginny danced into the kitchen while Helen trudged upstairs, her feet pinched in her pumps.
Who had she been kidding? she thought. If she and Ginny lived on their own, would Ginny have been able to spend the day with a bunch of people who loved her?
Well, maybe. Helen suspected they would go fetch Ginny, wherever she lived. Sometimes. But maybe she wouldn’t be included as often. She was glowing today, an extraordinary contrast to the pinched, clingy child she’d been when she and her mother first moved into this house. She was still too serious, but Jo and Ryan and his children, together with Kathleen, Emma and amiable, down-to-earth Logan, wouldn’t let the youngest child in their midst stand shyly on the sidelines. As Helen paused at her bedroom door, she heard Ginny’s thin, childish soprano join Logan’s deep tenor.
In the bedroom, Helen pulled the folded newspaper from her bag. She weighed “lrg closets” and “fresh paint” against the wonderful aromas from the kitchen, the enthusiastic impromptu concert and her daughter’s delight in keeping up “and everything.”
It was no contest.
She dropped the newspaper into her trash basket, kicked off her pumps and squirmed out of her panty hose.
What the heck. She had lived timidly until she got the idea of marketing Kathleen’s soap. What was the good of going into business at all if they didn’t take the risks required to achieve real success?
And, darn it, she’d tried. It was Kathleen’s own fault if she and Logan were stuck with housemates!
Comfortable in jeans, fuzzy slippers and a sweatshirt, she went downstairs to have dinner with her family.
IN A PARTICULARLY GOOD MOOD, Alec got up later than usual Sunday morning and didn’t, for once, think about the empty side of the bed or the fact that, not so long ago, he would have smelled coffee brewing and wandered downstairs to discover Linda, al
ways an early riser, putting pancakes on the griddle. Instead, his first waking thought was of last night. He saw Helen’s face, heard her laugh, remembered her soft, trembling mouth against his.
This morning, Dev’s bedroom door remained closed—the kid could sleep fifteen hours at a stretch, Alec swore—but tinny laughter came from the family room. Smiling, Alec stopped in the doorway.
“Good morning, Sunshine.”
Lily, who had her father’s dark hair and blue eyes, sat cross-legged on the floor with her back to the couch, her cereal bowl on the coffee table in front of her. She still wore her pajamas.
She turned her head, although her gaze lingered on the television screen. “Morning, Daddy.”
“We should do something fun today.”
Her gaze finally left the TV to pin hopefully on him. “Really?”
He had a pang of guilt. What with work, keeping the house up, grocery shopping and chauffeuring the kids to swim lessons, soccer practices and counseling, he must seem like a drill sergeant to them. Alec was very much afraid that his most frequent words to them were “Aren’t you ready?”
“I can’t think of anything that needs doing today. Let me eat breakfast, and then we can rouse your brother and see what he wants to do.”
She made a horrible face. “He won’t want to do anything with us. He never does.”
Alec was afraid she was right. “Then we’ll make him,” he said heartlessly.
“Do we have to?”
Alec was optimistic enough this morning to believe that, away from his friends, Dev could be persuaded to be the funny, sweet kid he’d once been, protective of his little sister and certain his dad was the coolest guy ever.
Alec grimaced. He’d settle for funny and protective. A few carefree hours away from home were not going to be enough to make his sullen teenage son think Dad was even remotely cool.
The New Man Page 6
