Season of Change(70)
The twins bounded down the stairs.
Slade dropped her hands. Christine continued to stare at him. When Faith said, “Ahem,” she snapped out of it, taking in the girls’ latest outfits with an avalanche of appreciation. “Awesome, unique, fabulous, wonderful, sweet-sweet-sweet.”
“I like this one,” Faith said when Christine stopped babbling. She wore a black ballerina tutu over a red-and-black striped body suit. Her black biker boots clunked across the floor. Sunday’s outfit.
“And I like this better,” Grace said. She wore a pretty pink sundress with white sandals. Saturday’s outfit.
They spoke!
Christine continued to muster a smile and general enthusiasm for their ensembles. “I like it when you wear different things. I can see your two personalities.”
“Grace is the girlier of the two. Faith likes to make a bold statement,” Slade said, marveling at the change in his daughters when Christine was around.
The twins stared at him as if he was a lion escaped from the zoo. Then they blinked and ran back upstairs. Their voices drifted down, excited but unintelligible.
Slade slumped against the sofa. “Please don’t push them.” Or me, he wanted to add, but he couldn’t. He liked it when he and Christine joked back and forth. But the tie...the tie was off-limits.
Except he wanted her to touch him. He wanted to know if he was salvageable, like the loaf of burned garlic bread.
Stupid. So very stupid. He knew the answer to that question.
“You could make it easy on me and ask them if they feel like they have to dress alike all the time. Then we could forget the tie.”
“They wouldn’t answer.” Slade focused on a crack in the ceiling, wishing, wanting, knowing nothing he wanted or wished for was going to come true. She’d see. And she’d leave, just like Evy.
“How do you know if you don’t try?” Stubborn. She was so stubborn. “What are you afraid of?”
“Nothing.” Everything. He was afraid she’d remove his tie and his arms would close around her, drawing her to him, close enough to kiss. “What are we doing here?” Slade’s gaze snared hers.
She looked like a rabbit caught in a trap, one who was only now realizing that the carrot she was pursuing wasn’t the carrot she’d originally been drawn to.
“Christine—”
“You take things too seriously. The tie, the shoes, the ring.” She pointed at the titanium ring on his finger. “Why can’t you just be yourself? Get out from behind this facade you work so hard at perpetuating.”
“Because I don’t think people would like what they see.” Understatement of the millennium. Underneath it all, he was a disappointment.
“You’ve got your guinea pig right here.” She was close enough that he could see her out of the corner of his eye. “What are you hiding under your collar? Tattoos? Burns? A third nipple?”
“You don’t want to know.” His was a relationship-killing secret. Not that they were in a relationship. But he needed her. He needed her to run the winery and to make fine wine. Anything else—he swallowed—anything else was off-limits.