The New Man

by Janice Kay Johnson

When she hung up, Helen grabbed a pillow and hugged it. She wanted to believe she’d just enjoyed his company and was looking forward to seeing him again the way she might any friend. But she wasn’t good at lying to herself.

  Alec made her feel things she’d sworn she would never feel again. Not just the tingle of sexual excitement, although she couldn’t deny how much she was attracted to him.

  But that wasn’t what scared Helen. What she did not dare feel was this deep sense of connection, this hunger to know another person, to open her own heart and soul to him.

  She could not—ever—be so vulnerable again, or burden another person with love so needy, she couldn’t let him go when she should.

  And yet she was too weak to call him back and say, I’m sorry, I can’t do this.

  In a panic she wondered how, without her noticing, it had become too late.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ALEC WAS WAITING in the restaurant’s foyer. Dressed in a well-cut charcoal suit that emphasized his broad shoulders and athletic build, his shirt crisp and white, the tie a muted red, he was so handsome Helen had an immediate attack of shyness. He was the kind of man she had noticed from afar in the past. He couldn’t be waiting for her.

  But the moment he saw her, his expression warmed, and it was as if the two of them were alone in the restaurant. “You look beautiful today,” he said huskily.

  She’d known this morning when she got stood in front of her mirror that she looked good. Beautiful was never a word she thought in reference to herself. Prettier than usual was more like it.

  But, thanks to her Nordstrom discount and the need to look stylish for work, she’d built up a wardrobe of clothes she really liked. Today she wore an unstructured silk suit in a warm brown with matching pumps and a peach silk tank top. Simple and elegant. She’d had a meeting this morning with the owner of a fancy new day spa in Kirkland, and had assured herself she was dressing for that, not for Alec.

  Lies. All lies. The depth of her pleasure at the compliment and at the expression in his eyes exposed her self-deception.

  She answered with dignity. “Thank you.”

  The host seated them by a window looking over Lake Union and left them with menus.

  Alec didn’t reach for his. “I meant it, you know. I always think I can picture you, then when I see you I realize I’ve forgotten how exquisite your skin is, or how your smile lights up your face.”

  “I’m not…”

  “You are.” He grinned at her discomfort. “Trust me.”

  Did she? Helen didn’t quite know. She did believe he thought she was pretty. Why would he pretend? When Alec looked at her, she knew he wasn’t seeing anybody else. That kind of focus was seductive.

  “Sometime, I should show you a picture of me when I was a kid.” She made her tone light. “I was incredibly scrawny, with this wild bush of hair I hated to let my mother brush. We had wars over it. She so wanted to send me off to school with neat pigtails like the other girls instead of my rat’s nest.”

  His gaze lingered on her smooth chignon. “She’d approve of the way you wear it now, then.”

  Unlike Jo and Kathleen.

  “It has a will of its own. I like to keep it confined.”

  “I have this picture,” he said softly, “of your hair flowing around your shoulders.”

  Helen flushed at the way his eyes darkened. “Someday I’ll surprise you.” Then her cheeks heated even more at the assumption in her words: they would continue seeing each other.

  “I’ll look forward to it,” he murmured, then reached for a menu. “I suppose we’d better figure out what to order.”

  Flustered, Helen opened her own. “Yes, I can’t be late for work. The half-yearly sale starts this week.”

  “I suppose I should take advantage of it and drag the kids in to buy for school.”

  “You sound so enthusiastic.”

  “Devlin likes the skater look. Baggy clothes, a couple of faded T-shirts on top of each other, hair never brushed.” Alec grimaced. “Lily has taken to borrowing his shirts, presumably because she needs a bra.”

  Helen’s amusement faded in a rush of sympathy. “You know, the clerk would help her.”

  “She’s embarrassed. God forbid some clerk should want to measure her bust.”

  Helen couldn’t help laughing. “I love the way you say ‘bust.’ As if it were a hideous thing.”

  He growled something about Lily being his little girl.

  Taking pity, Helen said, “Would you like me to help her? Maybe we could make it kind of casual. I have to buy a few things for Ginny, too. I’ll steer them to the lingerie department and shoo you away.”

  Alec looked like a shelter puppy who’d heard the word “home.” “Would you?”

  Helen laughed again. “Yes, I would. And I suspect you were angling for the offer.”

  “It never crossed my mind.” With a smile in his eyes, he sketched a salute. “Scout’s honor.”

  “I won’t ask whether you were a Boy Scout.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw the waiter approaching, and quickly scanned the menu.

  After they ordered, Helen told him about her morning.

  “Most salons and day spas carry big-name products, but this owner is going to try our soaps as well.”

  “Good for you,” he said warmly.

  Helen took a deep breath. “I’ve decided to quit my job at Nordstrom.”

  His brows rose. “You’re serious?”

  “I think so. Yes,” she said more positively. “I know so. It’ll mean putting off my plan for Ginny and me to have our own place, but Kathleen and I both think we can make the business grow beyond local markets. She’ll need to invest more time in making soap—and maybe even hire some help—and I’ll have to travel more. Right now, we’re both limited by our jobs.”

  “Good for you,” he said again. “It’s scary, though, isn’t it?”

  She recognized the question she’d once asked him and made a face. “You know it is. Plus, in my case…” She hesitated. Helen’s personal finances weren’t something she usually talked about with anyone but her parents, Kathleen or Jo, and only guardedly with them.

  “Plus?” he nudged.

  This time she couldn’t talk to Kathleen, and she tried to avoid worrying her parents during their weekly phone calls.

  “In essence,” she admitted, “I’ll be financially dependent on Kathleen’s husband. This wasn’t a step we could consider until she married. Now we have another income. We’ve decided I won’t pay rent for the time being, I’ll just pay a share of the grocery bill. But, I feel funny about that.”

  Alec frowned. “You don’t think he’ll want some kind of payback.”

  Shocked, she exclaimed, “No! No, it’s not like that.”

  His frown relaxed. “You sound as if you’re all pretty close.”

  “We are.” Family.

  “Do you think he resents supporting you?”

  “No.”

  The idea was laughable. Logan, one of the most easygoing men she’d ever met, had been nagging the two of them to quit their day jobs since he first carried Kathleen over her own threshold. He had faith in them, he repeated often, adding with a grin, “I expect to be a man of leisure once Kathleen’s Soaps is a household name.”

  “No,” she said again to Alec, slowly. “I’m being silly, aren’t I? I was just raised to believe I should stand on my own two feet.” How sad, then, that she never really had.

  Their lunches arrived and Alec didn’t comment until the waiter had gone.

  “If you were unemployed and not trying very hard to find a job, that would be one thing. But you’re working your butt off to make the business a success. I think you can toss your scruples.”

  “Really?” His opinion meant more than it should.

  Alec smiled. “Really.”

  Helen’s sigh released some of the strain she had been feeling. “Okay. You’ve made me feel better. I can be a kept woman.”

  “You know,” he sa
id, picking up his club sandwich, “you may find the business expands so fast that you can handle the bills again in no time.”

  Helen reached for her fork. “That’s the spirit.”

  They talked idly then, about wind and water and where they’d grown up. Out the window they could see a windsurfer hopelessly waiting for a breeze to billow the scarlet sail of his board. Rows of white boats were moored at a nearby marina, masts like pickup sticks. That was one of the things she loved about Seattle: from almost anywhere you could see mountains, the lakes or Puget Sound. Seattle had a setting like no other city she knew.

  Alec had grown up in San Francisco, in an elegant pink town house not far from the Presidio and the Golden Gate Bridge. He talked about watching the fog roll in from the Pacific like a steamroller, inexorable and predictable, about the deep blasts of fog-horns and the clang of cable cars.

  “Maybe that’s why I chose Queen Anne,” he said. “I’m used to steep hills.”

  “We do have that in common with San Francisco, don’t we?”

  Helen’s parents had retired to San Diego, but she had grown up in a suburb of Portland. “I met Ben in college,” she said, “and when he got a job up here, I never looked back. By the time he died, my parents had moved. It never occurred to me to return to Portland. I pretend I’m a native now.”

  Alec laughed. “At least you’re not a hated Californian, like I am.”

  “True,” she agreed, only half kidding. “We Oregonians know what rain is like, too.”

  “It’s supposed to be dry next weekend,” said Alec, motioning to the waiter for the check. “Any plans?”

  “There’s a small fair up in Snohomish County but we’re skipping it. We did it last year, but didn’t make that much, so this summer we’ve decided to take a few down days.”

  Helen told him about last summer’s crazy juggling act, when family members and friends helped keep the balls in the air. “It was awful. We’d suddenly realize that, thanks to a snow day back in February, Emma really had two more days of school and wouldn’t be available to work the fairs. Jo’s dad had a heart attack so she had to fly to California. Kathleen’s one of the most honest people I’ve ever met, but she told work she needed time off for a family emergency. Well, I suppose it was.” She laughed. “Each time we did a show last summer, we had to be sure to pack food and not drink too much pop, because we hardly ever had backup. No wandering the fair for us, or even galloping to the bathroom, unless a day was really slow.”

  “So, are you busy this weekend?” he repeated, producing his wallet.

  “No. Do you want to take the kids shopping?”

  “If you can, I’ll fall at your feet in gratitude.”

  She looked around at the elegant dining room. “In here?”

  He grinned. “I was speaking metaphorically.”

  As they walked out, he put his hand on the small of her back. For some obscure and utterly feminine reason, she loved the feeling. Of course, his hand was warm and solid and the sensation was sexy, but she thought it was more. Some innate response to a man being proprietory, probably. Ridiculous, but nice nonetheless.

  In the parking lot, Alec waited until she unlocked her car, then said, “Helen?”

  When she turned to him, he wrapped that same hand around her nape, tilted her face up and kissed her, as if he had a right. She grabbed for his lapel when her knees became jelly. His mouth was searching, gentle, but assured. He knew what he wanted, and it seemed to be her.

  An instinctive zing of panic mingled with her body’s response to the kiss. His confidence scared her.

  Alec released her with the same reluctance he’d shown the other night. He stroked his fingers down her cheek, said roughly, “I’ll call,” then got in his car and drove away.

  She all but fell into her car, exhilaration and anxiety flip-flopping in her stomach. Darn it, the first date had felt like just that—a tentative, getting-to-know-someone outing. Harmless, except perhaps for the kiss at the end. But lunch today had felt different. People made time in their day to meet someone for lunch because they were having a relationship. They kissed goodbye in the parking lot, in broad daylight, when they were a couple. She was very much afraid she’d given him the impression that they were. Or at least, could be.

  Gripping the steering wheel, she closed her eyes. She liked him! She didn’t want to say, Forget it. She wanted…

  Helen didn’t know what she wanted. To have her cake and eat it, she supposed. To enjoy his company and his kisses without fearing either of them would fall in love.

  It was funny, when she thought about it. The single women at work grumbled incessantly about commitment-phobic men, how they all wanted sex but had no interest in helping wash the dishes or chauffeuring a kid to soccer practice. The very idea of a wedding ring and the promise of forever was enough to send the average bachelor running, if her co-workers were to be believed.

  But she, Kathleen and Jo had all been uninterested in finding husbands. When Jo met Ryan, she was the one terrified of permanence, not him. Kathleen had had her qualms about Logan.

  And now, Helen thought, here she was, dreadfully afraid she’d met a wonderful, marrying kind of man. Instinct told her Alec Fraser wasn’t a playboy.

  In the beginning, all she’d wanted was to have a chance to talk to someone else who’d experienced the loss of the person they loved most in the world. She had kept so much of her tangle of sorrow and guilt and longing to herself, she didn’t know how much of what she felt was normal.

  With a sigh, she backed out of the parking spot. How the heck had it happened that she’d had a second date with the man, and they still hadn’t talked about the deaths of their spouses or the painful aftermath?

  Worse yet, how was it that she didn’t even think of talking about Ben while she was with Alec?

  “BACK-TO-SCHOOL shopping Saturday,” Alec announced at dinner on Wednesday evening.

  They both gaped at him with identical expressions of dismay.

  “I don’t need anything,” Devlin said. Then, “Can’t I go with Evan or Kyle?”

  “The way you’re growing, nothing from last year will fit. And what about basketball shoes?”

  “I don’t need you there.”

  “But you do need my money.” He paused. “Unless you want to buy clothes with the money from your summer job?”

  He could see from his son’s face that the answer was, Hell, no.

  “Can’t you just give me money?”

  “You know,” Alec said conversationally, “I feel terribly parental, but I’d like to see what my money is buying.”

  Glowering, the teenager said, “Anyway, it’s July! Why do we need to go shopping now?”

  “Because there are sales on, and I want to take advantage of them.”

  “Kyle and me were doing something Saturday.”

  Alec raised his brow. “Something?”

  Dev muttered, “Hanging out.”

  Alec thought. “Here’s the deal. You can bring Kyle with you—” He held up a hand to forestall argument. “We’ll buy the shoes, check out a few other things, then I’ll give you some money and you two can go off on your own. On the condition that you show me what you’ve bought later.”

  Devlin grumbled a little more but finally agreed.

  Alec turned to Lily. “Helen and her daughter, Ginny, are coming with us. I know you’ll be shopping in the junior department, but I hope you can be patient while Ginny and Helen look at clothes, too.”

  Dev shoved back his chair and got to his feet. “You’re bringing her?”

  Alec felt familiar tension grip his shoulders and neck. “And that would be a problem…why?”

  The fourteen-year-old’s face was twisted in rage. “I don’t want to meet your girlfriends!”

  “I have never asked you to meet any woman I’ve dated before. In fact, I have hardly dated. Your mother has been dead for two years now.”

  “Don’t talk about Mom!” he yelled.

  Alec pu
shed back his chair and stood, too. Voice rough, he asked, “Why not?”

  Devlin flung the chair to one side, where it crashed to the floor. “You’ve forgotten her!”

  “I have not and will never forget your…”

  Not listening, the teenager stomped from the room.

  Torn between anger and a sick sense of failure, Alec stared after him. Finally he remembered Lily was in the room, too. He turned his head to see her sitting completely still, her head drawn in as if she were a turtle. She looked petrified.

  He swore under his breath, righted the chair Devlin had thrown down and sat beside his daughter, massaging the back of her neck gently.

  “Hey, it’s okay. He was just throwing a temper tantrum.”

  Tears ran down her cheeks. “He scared me,” she whispered.

  “You know he’d never hurt you. Dev may be a big, tough teenage boy, but he loves you. You’re not the one he’s mad at.”

  Lily lifted her head for the first time, her eyes huge and wet. “But why is he mad at you?”

  Question of the day. Or the year.

  “I have no idea,” Alec admitted. “Maybe he isn’t really. Teenagers rebel against their parents. Maybe he’s mad at fate, or God, for taking your mom, and now he’s got these hormones racing around in his body letting him know he should become a man and why the heck is his father still giving him orders.”

  She gave a tiny giggle. “He doesn’t like it very much when you leave us notes. You know. Telling us what chores to do.”

  “I’ll bet he doesn’t.” Alec wiped her tears and smiled. “Better?”

  Lily nodded. “Will you ground him?”

  Should he? His instinct said no.

  “You know, he was just telling me what he felt. I don’t think he deserves grounding for that.”

  Her mouth pursed. “He threw the chair.”

  “We’ll pretend he knocked it over accidentally, okay?”

  Looking disappointed, his daughter nodded. “He’s lucky,” she pronounced.

  “Not so lucky. This means he still gets to go shopping with us on Saturday.”

  She thought about that. “He might not be nice.”

  “If he’s not, then he’ll be grounded.”