The sky was darkening to sapphire by the time Willow climbed out of the van for about the seventy-third time since morning. She hopped into the back to pull out her final delivery of the day and told herself, Nearly there. A hundred sixty-five dollars just for this. She’d put steel-cut oats into milk to soak for Brett’s breakfast before she’d left the house at six this morning, and once she’d arrived home tonight, had stewed some rhubarb with dark brown sugar, and prepared a mixture of tropical fruit and chopped, toasted pecans for him to sprinkle on top of the whole thing, together with a pitcher of light cream. Another dish that needed caramelized bananas to finish it, but she wasn’t going to keep running up here like a puppy looking for a belly rub. Once had been enough.
She saw him through the window, getting up and hopping forward on his crutches to open the door to her despite her telling him again and again that he didn’t need to. He’d said, “Good for me,” and nothing else, and he was moving more confidently, so maybe it was true.
“Hey,” she said when he had the door open. “You’re going well.”
“I am,” he said, closing it behind her. “Walked all the way around the house today, outside, three separate times. Tomorrow, I’m going down the driveway and coming back up. My physical therapist promised. Note the blase air with which I continue to pull off the PJs, also.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, laughing despite the length of her day, “you’re a natural.” His hair was a little long now, a lock of it falling across his forehead in a way that made him look so much more approachable than the man she’d first met, and the dark-gray knit PJ trousers and bare feet finished off the picture. His feet still looked terrific—as strong and disproportionately large as his hands—so that helped. “How did that go over for your meeting?”
“I couldn’t even wear a dress shirt. It would’ve looked ridiculous. I wore this. The T-shirt is black, though, if you notice. Formal wear.”
“In Byron, close enough.” How did he always make her laugh? “You must have had to wow them with your smarts, then. I’m guessing you managed.”
“More or less.” He eyed the cake tin she was holding. “I have a feeling I’m going to like what’s in there.”
She was already in the kitchen, peeking into the top of the stainless-steel slow cooker. “You didn’t eat any of this, though. Not appealing? Too rich?”
“Nope,” he said, leaning against the marble breakfast bar and watching her take a container of brown basmati rice mixed with fresh mint, grated lemon peel, and toasted slivered almonds from her bag and pop it into the microwave to warm. “I decided to wait for you. You said that food you cook yourself loses its appeal when you’re tired and too self-critical. I thought that something you put into the pot this morning might be more appetizing.”
“It does sound it,” she admitted. “Even the mini-pizzas I made for nibbles tonight didn’t quite work for me. Chanterelles and goat cheese drizzled with a balsamic glaze. One of my favorites, and they just . . . didn’t seem as good as usual, somehow.” She snapped her mouth shut on the complaint. She was still at work, and a chef didn’t disparage her own food. Had Julia Child taught her nothing? “Never mind. I did racks of lamb and a warm roasted veggie salad for the main, and they loved it.”
“Not a summer meal, surely,” he said, “though it sounds delicious.”
“No. But a traditional crowd. Fortieth wedding anniversary. They had cake and punch in the church hall at the wedding, originally, while he was on leave, and they wanted to do it up right this time around. The speeches would’ve made you cry. The best man at the wedding gave one of them. Forty years on, if you can imagine that. Lovely, really.”
“What did he say?” Brett actually looked interested, but then, he was a man who was interested in people, first and last.
She finished dishing up two bowls of stew and plating the watercress and radish salad and warm bread she’d prepared at home at the last minute, and asked, “Outside or inside?”
“Oh,” he said, “outside, surely. It’s nice out there, not that it isn’t always. I saw bats tonight, I think, on my last trip around the house.”
She took the plates out, then made another trip for cutlery, serviettes, and mugs of mint tea. By the time she had everything set up, he’d lit the three chunky candles on the table between the basket chairs. He’d also moved her plate around so she was beside him, facing out into the night. “Better,” he said. “So you can see the sky.” The soft, flickering light illuminated his face, his expanse of chest, the swell of biceps and corded forearms showing beneath the black T-shirt, and she sat down, arranged the skirt of her pale-pink sleeveless dress around her, allowed the warm night to enfold her, and tried not to let it feel like a date.
“So you thought you saw bats?” she asked. “You were probably right.”
“I didn’t think so at first,” he said, taking a careful bite of tender lamb and rich brown gravy and pausing, whether because he’d burnt his mouth or to savor it, she couldn’t tell. She took her own bite. Yeah. Perfect. Cumin and coriander and cilantro, cinnamon and lemon and fennel, plum tomatoes and the plump, orange flesh of apricots adding their final touch of sweetness. The complicated, multilayered taste of home. “They were so big,” he went on. “I thought—I don’t know what I thought. Black cockatoos? Owls? Except that owls don’t hang around in groups, and they kept coming. I couldn’t figure it out, and then I got it. There must have been thousands, flying across the moon like a kid’s Halloween drawing. I expected a witch on her broom. Noisy, too.”
“Flying up from the river,” she said. “Talking about fruit, most likely. I love them. Their wee faces, and the way they chatter and fold their wings.”
“Surprising nobody,” he said. “Just another thing I like about you.”
With that, she’d gone awkward again. “I dunno,” she said, like the shyest fifteen-year-old boy there ever was. “Surely everybody likes flying foxes. They make a mess, but they’re gorgeous, aren’t they?”
“Mm.” His eyes were warm again, or it was the candlelight. The past two nights, she’d been careful not to get drawn into the seductiveness of all that understanding. Salesman, she’d reminded herself. Exactly as he told you. And couldn’t quite believe it. Maybe because she was too tired tonight, and maybe because he’d smiled at her that way when she’d come inside, and she’d felt . . . understood. Safe.
“Tell me about the toast,” he said now. “The one the best man made. What was special about it?”
She ate another bite of stew and, for once, forgot to be critical and just enjoyed all the depth of flavor in it. The silky textures, the sweet and spicy flavors, the contrast with the peppery bite of the watercress and the lightly salted dairy-fresh butter melting onto warm artisanal bread. She looked out at Sirius, rising again like the most faithful of dogs, the kind that would never leave you, and said, “It was short, and pretty blokey, as you’d expect, but he managed to say something anyway. Maybe men stop having to be so blokey at a certain age, d’you reckon? He’d lost his own wife recently, too.”
“That would probably do it,” Brett said. “The feelings can come out of that hard place, that’s for sure.”
She swallowed and did her best not to get carried away. He did something dangerous to her heart. “He said something like this, then, if I can remember all of it. ‘We were mates first and last. Army mates, rugby mates, and I thought there couldn’t be anything stronger than that. When you found Moira, though, you found something else. Watching you with her for the past forty years has been something to learn from. You built your house on rock, and there’s no shifting that. The good bloke I met along the road, always ready with a laugh and a hand, has turned into the best man I’ve ever known. Know what this fella did? Made me go out and golf every week when Pamela was ill, that’s what, while Moira went and sat with her. After she passed, he kept on with it. Made a blimmin’ nuisance of himself, the dirty so-and-so.’” She paused and told Brett, “That’s when he had to stop
to blow his nose, and everybody else started to tear up. They all knew the story. Then he said, ‘You kept me here when I wanted to go. Can’t say more for a man than that. So you two keep holding each other tight, mate. You both deserve it.’” She heaved in a breath. “Not a dry eye in the house. Including the caterer.”
“Sounds special,” Brett said.
“It was.” He’d nearly finished his stew, and she went to work on hers again, then said, “Do you ever wish you had it? Do you ever wonder if you can even do it, at this point?”
A long pause when all she could hear was the incessant, melodic hum of the cicadas, and he said, “I wonder that all the time.”
“Because we’re not married, if you notice,” she said, trying to make it light. “Either of us. Did you never want to try?”
He didn’t sigh, but something settled over him anyway, dark as those flying foxes folding their leathery black wings and settling into the enveloping shade of a fig tree. “I did try,” he said. “Or I thought I did. It didn’t work. Sometimes, you make mistakes you don’t even recognize. And some mistakes, there’s no undoing.”
This hadn’t been his idea of how tonight would go. Not even close. Willow was wearing a sleeveless, flowered dress in pale pink that buttoned down the front and fell open over her crossed legs, and she looked terrific in it. Her hair was in its soft knot, begging your fingers to take it down so you could wrap your hands up in it, and the pale skin of her neck was luminous in the candlelight, asking you to kiss it. Surely a woman as sensitive as she was would shudder when you did that, and if you had her pressed up close and could feel it all the way through your own body when it happened—that would be something. Her slim fingers caressed her mug of tea, her deep-green eyes were shadowed and thoughtful, and every bit of her looked as fragile and pretty as a flower. A hibiscus, maybe, its petals paper-thin, making you want to pick it, to hold it and touch it and have it for your own.
Or maybe that was just him.
He was normally the most controlled of men, but he’d mentioned his marriage all the same, like she’d jarred the jagged memories loose. Or like he didn’t want to move on, wherever it was they were going, without telling her the truth about who he was. Or like he was an idiot. Could also be.
“You were married?” she asked, looking startled, as well she might. “Never tell me you cheated, or did something else awful, because I won’t believe it.”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t do that. I didn’t pay enough attention, though, which could be worse. There are sins of commission, and then there are sins of omission. The thing is—they’re both sins. I wasn’t a good enough husband when it mattered most. The bottom line is what counts, and that’s the bottom line.”
The darkness was nearly complete now around them, but the air still smelled sweet, and so did she. Like baking and flowers. She asked, “What was her name? What was she like?”
He didn’t want to think about this, not tonight, and he sure didn’t want to tell her. It was here anyway, though, and there must be a reason for that. “Nia Hernandez. What was she like? She was a lawyer. A prosecutor. She had the sharpest brain I’d ever seen. She still does, I’m sure.” He could have reconsidered saying anything more, but it seemed he was past that kind of rational choice. His mind had resisted opening, like a dusty old trunk with rusty hinges that held things you didn’t want to look at, but he’d forced it open anyway. No going back now.
“She was beautiful, too, I’ll bet,” Willow said. “How did you meet her?”
He smiled. “At a bar, though we made up a better story for our mothers. And, yeah, she was beautiful.” Nothing at all like Willow. Brunette and curvy. Or call it what it was. She was built. She’d been wearing a peacock-blue dress that hugged her curves, sitting on a barstool with her legs crossed and her hair down, and he’d gone right there. He didn’t share that. It was still a good memory, though, even after all this time. No caution back then, both of them confident and heedless and so sure they could make their lives wonderful.
“Oh, well,” Willow said. “It happens. Everybody’s twenty-five once, hey.”
“Nice excuse,” he said. “Except that I was thirty-two. Thirty-five when we got married, and I’d been around the block and back. We’d been dating for three years. I’d done my homework, that was for sure. I’d thought it through, and I was sure. She checked off all the boxes.”
“I can’t believe it didn’t go deeper than that,” she said.
He turned the mug of tea in his hand and stared down at the cooling liquid. “You know what? I’d like some of that wine you brought over. How about you?”
“I didn’t think you drank,” she said, uncrossing her legs with a flash of thigh and standing. Nothing like Nia at all, which was either a very good thing or a very bad one. He wasn’t even sure anymore. “Never even seen you crack a beer.”
“I don’t. Much. I don’t normally break my leg, either, so there’s that.”
A couple minutes, and she was back with a bottle and two glasses. “Small Gully Black Magic Shiraz. Recommended by my mate Kevin, who’s sommelier at a very posh place indeed in Melbourne these days. It’s right for the stew, but he won’t be happy that I didn’t decant it.” She twisted the cap off and poured two glasses with the same neat, economical motions she displayed when she cooked, and he watched her do it and appreciated the sight, and the break. When she sat again, she tucked a leg under herself, curled into the basket chair, touched her glass softly to his, and said, “Here’s to life, hey. Messy stuff. Tell me more about her. About Nia. She was brilliant, and she was beautiful. What else?”
He was a fool to tell her. He needed to do it anyway. He twirled the glass in his hand, then took a sip. Velvety rich, deep, dark, and complex, the wine swirled down into him like secrets and smoke, softening the aches and smoothing the way. Black magic indeed. “As ambitious as I was, too,” he said, “or more so. She wasn’t counting on getting pregnant so soon, but she turned out to be as efficient about that as she was about everything else. It happened barely six months after the wedding.”
“Oh.” Willow had paused with her glass halfway to her mouth. Now, she set it down. “Wait. You have a kid?”
“No.”
“Oh,” she said again. Faintly. “You didn’t want it.” Wondering, as clearly as if it had been printed in a bubble above her head, Why would you tell me this? Very good question.
“I did want it. We both did.” He took another sip of wine and steeled himself to say it, now that he’d started. “Our little girl died.”
“Oh.” Her hand was over her heart. “Oh, Brett. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.”
Silence for a long, long minute. Why had he told her? He didn’t talk about this. Maybe it was the bats. When he saw something like that, he’d flash, for one heart-stopping instant, on swinging somebody up into his arms to look at them. Somebody sweet and smart and his. Somebody who’d be thrilled to see real bats, and who wouldn’t be scared, because he was right there, keeping her safe. His daughter.
“Tell me,” Willow said, “if you want to. There’s a reason you mentioned it. It’s on your mind. Tell me how in the world that could be your fault, because it’s so hard for me to believe that you wouldn’t take care of anybody you loved.”
“It’s not, of course,” he said. “Not logically. Nobody’s fault.”
He stopped, and she didn’t say anything, so he took another swallow of wine and plowed ahead. Once you’d committed, you had to see it through. “Nia got pregnant, and I did what I thought I should do. I doubled down, work-wise. After my dad died, things were . . . hard. I didn’t expect them to get any easier, then or ever. Knowing I was going to be a dad just made that feeling stronger. I knew something could happen to me, and I needed to make sure they were both taken care of. Nia was going to keep working, and I’d already done very well, so it wasn’t logical to feel so much pressure, but I did anyway. Chalk it up to testosterone, or to whatever you like. I was putting
together my biggest project yet at the same time, up in Bellingham. High-growth city in north Washington state, on the coast,” he explained at her blank look. “Just starting to grow then, and I knew it would be big. Outdoor recreation, active retirees, escapees from California. I had it all on the line, biggest risk of my career—until then, anyway, because I keep doing it—and I was traveling a lot to make it happen.”
“So she fell pregnant, and you were working too much,” Willow said when he paused again. “And she felt neglected? And by the way, you’ve said ‘logical’ twice. I don’t think feelings are always so logical. At least mine aren’t.”
He had to smile. “You’re right, of course. And, no, I don’t think that was it. She was working long hours herself, feeling like she needed to leave everything in good shape and worried about losing her spot. She felt as pressed as I did, because she came from the same kind of place. Her parents were immigrants, and she’d fought hard every step of the way and earned every promotion. It was our priority, work. We had that in common. We didn’t see past it, either of us, not then. Especially me. Sins of omission. Not paying enough attention. Not seeing what mattered.”
He could hear Nia’s voice, as he had for months after it had happened, playing and replaying in his head. He’d been on the fifty-seventh floor of the Columbia Center, just starting a meeting with an investment group. Eleven-fifteen in the morning when he’d felt the buzz of the phone in his pants pocket, been distracted for a split second, and then resumed his presentation. He’d forgotten about it until an hour later, when he’d shaken hands all around and been escorted to the elevator bank with the barely-damped-down fizz of triumph coursing through his body. He’d sold them. He knew it. He felt it. He was riding high.
He was headed to the lobby when he pulled out his phone to call her and saw it. Three missed calls from Nia, and two from his assistant Brenda.
Sexy as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 3) Page 16
