Second Time Around

by Nancy Herkness

  He sat back against the banquette. “Now I’m looking forward to the party.”

  “You don’t have to flatter me. I’ve agreed to go.” But she couldn’t stop a smile of gratification from curling the corners of her mouth.

  “You might begin to have second thoughts.” He pulled out his cell phone. “May I get your number so I don’t have to track you down at the Carver Center?”

  He tapped at the phone’s screen as she rattled off her phone number.

  “Do you still have my cell number or did you chuck my card?” he asked with that self-deprecating smile that always charmed her.

  “Just text me and I’ll have it on my phone.”

  “So you chucked it.”

  The disappointment in his tone surprised her. “No, it’s at my apartment.”

  His fingers flew over the keys of his phone.

  A ping sounded from her back pocket, indicating she’d gotten his text, and she started to reach for her phone.

  “Read it later,” he said with a roguish glint in his eyes. He placed his empty glass on the tray. “My apologies, but I have to go. Overseas business makes for odd working hours.”

  “I guess CEOs don’t get paid for overtime.”

  “Actually, we do. A great deal, in fact.” He stood up.

  She followed suit, picking up the tray to use as a barrier between them. Her comment seemed to have triggered a shift into executive mode because the lines of his face hardened and his chin took on an arrogant upward tilt, making him look less like the Will she’d known at Brunell and more like the formidable businessman he was now.

  “Thanks for the invitation,” she said, awkward now that they had returned to their current roles in life.

  “Thanks for the drink.” He leaned across the tray to give her the barest brush of his lips on her cheek. Even that made her want to close her eyes to savor the shiver of delight it sent scudding over her skin.

  As he strode away, she watched the women’s heads turn as they had at Ceres, some blatantly, some more subtly because they were with a date. But almost every female looked. And she was going to a party with him.

  “The text,” she muttered, shifting the tray to one hand so she could grab her phone and thumb her way to the message.

  I would not wish any companion in the world but you.

  Chapter 4

  Monday afternoon, Kyra slotted dirty plates into the ancient industrial dishwasher in the Carver Center’s kitchen, a task so mechanical that her mind was free to wander to Will, as it had all weekend.

  She had spent the rest of her shift at Stratus trying not to interpret his gratifying text too literally. He was just continuing their Shakespearean exchange. Yet she couldn’t stop a little smile from curling her lips every time she thought of it.

  Then she had debated how to answer it. It had to be another line from the Bard, but she needed to dial back the overblown emotional content. Finally, she typed in, Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow.

  Friendly. Noncommittal.

  That was before she closed out her electronic server book, and the club’s computer system showed that Will had left her a one-hundred-dollar tip for his free drink. Although she was accustomed to large tips—that was why she worked at Stratus—she’d felt awkward about how to respond. Should she thank him? Should she pretend it was all in a day’s work and accept it without comment? In the end, she texted a casual Thank you for the generous tip. His response was a simple You’re welcome.

  She couldn’t help wondering if he intended for her to use it to buy an appropriate outfit for the Spring Fling. She might have given away her lack of wardrobe by how closely she questioned him about what to wear. The thought made her close her eyes in mortification.

  “Hey, Ms. Kyra.” Diego’s voice pulled her out of her reverie and back to the kitchen of the Carver Center. “Ms. Emily say . . . says you got the dog food ready to try.”

  She pivoted to see Diego and Felicia standing by the counter, the thin little girl dwarfed by Diego’s height and breadth.

  “Sure do.” Kyra opened one of the motley collection of donated refrigerators and retrieved a plastic container. “Let me warm it up a bit to make it more appetizing,” she said, plopping two tablespoons full of shredded boiled chicken, pumpkin, and brown rice into a glass bowl and popping it in the microwave.

  “If Shaq thinks we going to warm up his dinner every day, he got another think coming,” Diego said.

  Felicia giggled in her high-pitched voice. “Shaq don’t . . . doesn’t care whether his food be hot or cold. He just loves to eat.”

  “But you can’t give him treats all the time,” Diego said sternly. “It ain’t good for his health to get overweight.”

  Kyra smiled as she watched the two kids. “Did you tell your mom how much everyone liked the taco macaroni, Felicia?”

  The girl nodded, her braids swinging and her huge brown eyes warm with pleasure. “She say she going to send in another recipe for next week, but I tell her I got to spend time with Shaq, so someone else will help you.”

  “I’d love the recipe,” Kyra said. “Although I’ll miss having you as my sous-chef.” However, she was touched by how much the girl cared about her dog.

  “I really want this food to work,” Felicia said, “’cause then Shaq can come home with me for a slumber party. But Mama don’t . . . doesn’t want no barf or diarrhea in our apartment.”

  Kyra choked on a laugh. “I can’t blame her for that.” The canine slumber parties were the center director’s latest brainstorm. With the participation of parents or guardians, the kids were allowed to take their K-9 Angelz home with them for a night or a weekend. Emily Wade believed it made them feel as though they truly owned the dogs.

  When the microwave dinged, Kyra pulled out the dog food and tipped it into the gleaming stainless steel dog bowl Diego had brought. She handed the dish to the boy. “Let’s see what Shaq thinks of my recipe.”

  Felicia poked it with her finger. “He’s gonna love this.”

  “Since I think it looks good, he’ll think it’s lit,” Diego said, sniffing the experimental dog food.

  “That’s good, right?” Kyra asked.

  Diego grinned and nodded as he led the way downstairs to the “kennel” on the ground floor. When he reached the bottom of the steps, a glossy black dog leaped up from a dog bed by the wall and raced over to the boy.

  “Hey, Mario,” Diego said, kneeling to ruffle the dog’s ears with one hand. Diego’s dramatic rescue of the black dog had become a Carver Center legend. He’d interrupted Max Varela’s first visit to the center and prompted Emily to commandeer Max’s limousine to get the injured dog to the vet. That was before she and Max were even dating. “This ain’t . . . isn’t for you, though.” He gave a hand signal, which made the dog look at him reproachfully before he turned to walk back with dragging steps to the bed.

  “Mario doesn’t have to go lay down. He and Shaq be cool with each other,” Felicia said.

  “We don’t want Mario distracting Shaq. This is called a controlled experiment,” Diego said, satisfaction shining in his eyes because he knew the terminology from his science classes.

  The dogs’ crates—at this time of day empty except for Shaq’s—were lined up in what had once been a storage room. Now the formerly dingy walls were a warm cream, and the two windows at the back sketched rectangles of spring sunshine on the pale gray paint of the cement floor.

  Emily had wisely laid down strict rules about where the dogs could eat, sleep, and play. They were always fed in the kennel area, although Kyra had seen the kids slip their adopted K-9 Angelz a treat or two upstairs in the main lounge. However, Diego obeyed all the rules, even though Mario lived with him and not at the Carver Center. The boy felt strongly about setting a good example.

  Felicia walked to the giant crate at the end of the row and unlatched the door, signaling that Shaq could come out. Under the pit-bull mix’s beautiful brindle coat, massive muscles rippled
as he rose and walked out into the kennel area, his thick tail wagging. Kyra couldn’t help thinking that Shaq would be a more appropriate dog for Diego than for skinny little Felicia, but the girl knelt and hugged him while Shaq gave her doggy kisses with his long pink-and-black tongue.

  “How do his front paws stay so clean and white?” Kyra asked.

  “I wash them every week,” Felicia said, standing up to lead Shaq over to Kyra. “Gotta keep him looking fine.”

  Kyra reached down to stroke the huge head Shaq had shoved against her thigh in search of attention. He sighed in bliss when she scratched behind his ears.

  Diego took the bowl to Shaq’s feeding station and fitted it into the steel stand. At the sound of metal hitting metal, the dog’s attention swerved to the food.

  “Okay, boy, you get a special snack today,” Felicia said, making the gesture that gave him permission to eat.

  The dog waddled to the bowl with his distinctive muscle-bound gait. He put his nose in the dish and finished the food in one gulp. Wagging his tail, he swung his gaze between Diego and Felicia with a hopeful expression.

  “He liked it,” Diego said, scratching the dog’s head.

  “How would he know?” Kyra asked. “He swallowed it without tasting it.”

  “Told you he loves to eat,” Felicia said.

  “Now we got to mix it with his other food, and give him a bigger portion at every meal until it’s all the new food,” Diego said. “That way his digestive system will adjust to it easy.” He looked at Felicia. “You come to me when it’s feeding time. I’ll help you with the mixing.”

  Kyra eyed Diego with new respect. The boy knew a heck of a lot about caring for dogs. Not only that, but when he spoke about it, he sounded like a trained professional.

  “The container is in the green refrigerator with a label that says ‘Shaq Only,’” Kyra said. “I put the calorie count per cup on it, too, so you can calculate how much he needs to eat every day.”

  “How’d you know we’d need that?” Diego asked.

  “By reading dog food labels. The serving size is determined by the age and weight of the dog.”

  “Course we don’t know exactly how old Shaq is,” Felicia said, scratching down Shaq’s spine to the dog’s obvious delight. “He’s a rescue like all of them.”

  Kyra found herself petting the pit bull’s big head again. “What do you guess?”

  “Doc Quillen thinks about four,” Diego said.

  Shaq let out a sigh of pleasure when Kyra bent slightly to scratch his chest. A startled look crossed Felicia’s face. “Shaq don’t usually take to people the first time he meets them,” she said. “But he be down with you. I mean, he likes you.”

  “He just smells the food on my fingers.” Kyra had not grown up with pets. Her mother had doted on a teacup Yorkie named Starlight, but the little creature had been a one-woman dog. When a young Kyra had tried to pet Starry, the little dog growled at her, so she left the Yorkie alone after that.

  Shaq let out another happy sigh and leaned against Kyra’s leg, making her stagger. “What a sweetheart!” Kyra surprised herself by saying, “Not your typical pit bull.”

  A frown drew Diego’s dark brows downward. “Pitties aren’t aggressive by nature. They get trained that way. They want to be loved just like any other dog.”

  “We all just want to be loved.” Kyra ruffled his hair as usual. “It’s how we go about it that can be the problem.”

  Diego smoothed his black hair back, but he was smiling.

  “Shaq’s righteous,” Felicia said with great emphasis. “He don’t bother nobody . . . anybody who don’t want to be bothered.” She surprised Kyra by throwing her arms around Kyra’s waist in a hug. “Thank you for the food. I can’t wait for Shaq to come home with me. It’ll be almost like Mario living with Diego.”

  Kyra gave Felicia a squeeze on the shoulder. “Happy to help, sweetie. But we still don’t know if the food will help his digestion.”

  “It will,” Felicia said with a confidence that made Kyra’s heart twist.

  “You can take him outside now,” Diego said. “Min-joo’s waiting in the doggy playground.”

  “Is Min-joo Shaq’s junior kid?” Kyra asked. Each dog had two children, an older and a younger one, assigned to it. The idea was to give the dogs continuity as the older kids aged out of the center.

  Diego nodded. “And she’s even smaller than Felicia.”

  “That must be a sight,” Kyra said. She watched the kids go out the back door before she headed up the stairs. She’d been thinking about Will the whole time she’d worked on the dog food, so maybe she should tell him about its success. Pulling out her phone, she typed in: Chicken, pumpkin, brown rice combo passed taste test. But will it pass digestion test?

  She hesitated as her thumb hovered over the send button. It was Monday afternoon. Will had more important things to do than text about dog food. She shrugged and hit the button. He didn’t have to answer it.

  She had gotten five steps farther down the hallway to the kitchen when her phone pinged. That couldn’t be Will.

  “Pass” being the key word, I assume.

  She grinned, both at his joke and at the fact that he had responded to her instantly.

  Not sure if it’s been passing too fast or too slow, she typed back. This time she waited for the ping.

  An important distinction. You need to study your test client more thoroughly.

  Think I’ll let someone else handle the scatological research. She leaned against the wall, staring at her phone. She wasn’t disappointed.

  Can’t believe we’re discussing this shit, came right back.

  She gave a crack of laughter. She had always loved the way Will would switch from highbrow to earthiness in an instant.

  Me either. Don’t you have balance sheets to analyze?

  The pause was longer this time. She started walking again. But the ping came right as she strolled through the kitchen door.

  Nothing so interesting. I have a meeting in five.

  So he was filling a few free minutes on his schedule. She was fine with that.

  “Kyra, you wanted some help?”

  Kyra jerked her gaze away from her phone to see Emily, the center’s dynamic young director, sitting at the kitchen’s long island with a mug of steaming coffee in front of her. Her dark hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, and she wore tailored trousers, a silk blouse, and a blazer. She always dressed in business attire because she felt all the adults at the center were role models for the kids. Kyra got a pass on dressing up because cooking was messy work.

  “Oh God, yes. Thank you so much for coming down.”

  “Happy to,” Emily said. “First, I want to thank you for helping Diego with the dog food project. I know that’s not exactly your job.”

  “I enjoyed the challenge,” Kyra said. “We just did a taste test and Shaq approved. Now we have to see if his digestion improves.”

  “It’s amazing how much time we spend discussing the dogs’ poop,” Emily said, making a comic grimace.

  Kyra laughed, her text exchange with Will fresh in her mind. “Since they can’t talk, that’s one way to judge their general health.”

  Emily took a sip of her coffee. “I’m intrigued to find out what you need my help with.”

  Kyra hurried to the pantry and plucked a garment bag off the apron hook. On Saturday she’d gone shopping at her favorite deep-discount clothing store and found three possible dresses for the Chases’ Spring Fling. The owner of the store trusted her enough to bend the “no returns” policy, so Kyra could bring back the two frocks she wouldn’t need after her consultation with Emily.

  She carried the bag to the kitchen island. “I need your advice on wardrobe since you hang out with billionaires.” Emily’s fiancé had recently sold his cutting-edge chemical company for a massive amount of money.

  Emily laughed, her brown eyes soft. “Only one billionaire.”

  “That’s one more than I spend tim
e with.” Kyra unzipped the bag and pulled out the dresses. “So I’m going to the Chase family’s spring garden party in Connecticut. It’s outdoors under tents on Sunday afternoon. Will is wearing khakis, a button-down shirt with no tie and the sleeves rolled up, and loafers. Which of these do I wear?”

  “Whoa! That’s a lot of information to process. Who’s Will?”

  Kyra left the dresses lying on the bag and plopped down on a stool across from Emily. “You know the Ceres café chain? He’s the CEO of that . . . and several other companies, according to Google. I knew him in college, and we ran into each other at my favorite Ceres last week.”

  “And he invited you to a party already? You must have been good friends in college,” Emily said. “Have you stayed in touch?”

  Kyra shook her head. “He was my suitemate’s boyfriend so we spent a lot of time together, just talking.” She gave Emily an off-center smile. “Which didn’t stop me from having a huge crush on him, but he was off-limits. Not that I could have competed with Babette anyway.”

  “Seems like he might have had a crush on you, too, if he asked you out after seeing you once.”

  Kyra sighed. “No, he just wants a buffer between him and his family. He and his parents don’t get along. Since he told me all about it in college, I make the perfect fake date.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re a bright, beautiful woman.” Emily got that soft expression again. “You know, billionaires are human beings just like us.”

  “Seriously, it’s not like that. I’m from blue-collar Pennsylvania and, to compound the problem of all his money, he’s Connecticut aristocracy.” Kyra stood and picked up the dresses, not sure if she was trying to convince Emily or herself. His text had fanned a tiny flicker of ridiculous hope. She shook her head and held up the first dress. “Option number one.”

  It was a ruffled floral in soft pinks and greens. Emily tilted her head and considered it. “Maybe.”

  “Number two.” She held up a print sheath that swirled with brilliantly colored flowers.

  Emily shaded her eyes. “It’s . . . lively.”

  Kyra laid it aside. “Not really my style either, but I figured Will’s mother probably has a closet full of Lily Pulitzers and it kind of looks like one.”