“I meant to tell you, I’m coming Friday night to your restaurant opening,” he said. “Brodie invited me to join him and Evie.”
Something wild and a little panicky flickered briefly in her gaze and he was sorry he brought it up.
“Great,” she said in an overly cheerful voice. “The more the merrier, right? Oh, and you’ll have a chance to meet Claire and Maura and their husbands. We were just talking about it when they were here. They’re all sitting with Brodie. Are you taking anyone?”
The question came out of nowhere and it took him a moment to process it. A date? Did she really think he wanted to date anybody else while this inconvenient heat bubbled and seethed between them?
“I hadn’t planned on it, no.”
“You really should. You wouldn’t want to be the only one at the table without a date. Awkward.”
Evie and Brodie struck him as very warm and casual. He doubted anyone would make him feel like a loser for showing up alone at a social event like a restaurant opening.
“My wife has been gone for two years. It won’t be the first time I’ve spent an evening without a date. I’ll survive a little social anxiety.”
“Have you met my friend Charlotte yet? She runs the candy store in town. I think you would really like her.”
He glanced at Ethan, who was too busy trying to pick out constellations to pay them any attention. “Are you really trying to set me up with one of your friends?”
She tossed that mischievous strand of hair behind her ear again. “If you want to look at it that way.”
His rough laugh sounded strained, even to him. “How else am I supposed to look at it?”
“I just thought the two of you might get along, that’s all. Charlotte is really wonderful. Warm and kind and a little bit shy. She doesn’t date a lot. She’s made some amazing changes in her life lately and I’d like to see her go out a little more.”
“With me.”
After everything between them, she really wanted him to date one of her friends. If he needed further proof that she wanted to ignore this attraction, she had just handed it to him, served up as prettily as she arranged food on a plate.
He knew he shouldn’t find that so damn depressing.
“Forget I said anything. It was just a suggestion.” She sounded defensive, flustered, and he didn’t know whether he wanted to shake her or kiss her.
Okay, yes, he did. Kissing would always be the clear winner.
“I have no problem going by myself but if it makes you feel any better, I understand Brodie’s mother will be part of the party. She can be my unofficial date.”
“Katherine?” She laughed, looking enthralled by the idea, and he decided he would never understand her. “You might have competition there. Both of them try to play it cool but she and Charlotte’s dad, Dermot, have this funny little unspoken thing going between them.”
He could certainly relate to that. “Good to know. I’ll try to keep her from breaking my heart.”
“Well, if you change your mind, I can still give you Charlotte’s number.”
He just barely refrained from rolling his eyes. “Good night, Alexandra.”
“Good night, Samuel. See you, Ethan.”
His son waved cheerfully at her, then slid his hand in Sam’s and the two of them walked down the sidewalk toward home.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FOR THE FIRST TIME she could remember, her snug little house didn’t surround her with a calming peace when she arrived home Thursday night.
Usually any tension of her day started to seep away just from pulling into the driveway and seeing the warm welcome of those burnished logs.
If she had known how much she would love owning her own place, she would have purchased one years ago. Somehow it had always seemed so much trouble, with the yard work and home repairs and property taxes. She had managed to convince herself she enjoyed the freedom and flexibility of apartment living and didn’t need anything else.
Since buying this house, she had come to appreciate so many little things. The smell of fresh-mowed grass, the thwack against the door of the newspaper she rarely had time to read but still faithfully subscribed to, the satisfaction she found in fixing something inside the house herself instead of calling someone else to do it for her.
This time, as she turned off her engine and opened the door, that sense of welcoming peace remained hauntingly out of reach. The logs still glowed honey-gold in the porch light, and the night air smelled of the sweet lilac hedge just beginning to bloom and the tart pines rising into the night, but her mind was too tangled up to properly appreciate it.
In less than twenty-four hours, Brazen would open its doors for business. She was alternately consumed with excitement that this moment had finally arrived—everything she had dreamed of for so long within reach—and paralyzed by fear that she would fall on her face in front of her family and friends and everyone she held most dear.