As though sensing her frustration, Petey roused himself from his post-dinner nap, trotted across the kitchen and nudged Sarah’s ankle. She picked him up and hugged him close.
“I know. You want to know where she is, too. She was supposed to take you for a walk, maybe play a game of fetch in the backyard.”
The little mutt gazed at her, and she could see her concern reflected in his dark eyes, then his pink sandpaper tongue popped out and he gave her nose a swipe, and he was all but grinning at her.
She rested her cheek against the top of his head, fighting back tears. Puppy kisses, Casey called them. “Thank you, Petey. I needed that.”
JONATHAN STOOD IN the kitchen doorway, listening to Sarah’s conversation with the dog, wondering why the tap was running, thinking he could use a kiss himself, and not the canine variety.
“How are you holding up?” he asked.
She swung around to face him. Her tears, while perfectly understandable, whittled away at his already eroded sense of self-worth. Calling Georgette had been the right thing to do, but he still wished he hadn’t.
Sarah set the dog on the floor, turned off the tap, tore a strip of paper towel from a dispenser and used it to dry her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” He wanted to hold her, offer comfort, get some in return. Something held him back.
“How did it go?”
“As expected.” But he didn’t want to rehash Georgette’s accusations, the threat of her calling her lawyer. What was a lawyer going to do? “I finally told her that I have to keep the phone free so I don’t miss Kate if she tries to call, and that I’ll call her as soon as we hear from them.”
“And we will hear from them. I know we will.”
He knew she needed to believe that. So did he.
Sarah took mugs out of a cupboard and filled them with coffee. She handed one to him, apparently remembering he took it black.
“Let’s take these into the living room,” she said after stirring sugar and cream into hers. She pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket and checked it on the way.
They sat again, on either end of the sofa, coffee mugs in hand, phones on the coffee table within easy reach.
“Thank you for making dinner,” she said. “Again.”
“No problem.”
“So where did you learn to cook?”
He resisted the urge to tell her that making a sandwich wasn’t exactly cooking.
“I guess my mother taught me, although I don’t actually remember being taught. It was just the two of us, so I had to learn to be self-sufficient when she was at work.”
“Where was your father?”
For a long time, that had been the million-dollar question. “He moved out when I was eight. For quite a few years my mother never talked about it, but around the time I graduated from high school she told me he’d left her for another woman.”
“All those years and she never said anything?”
“Not a word.”
“Did you see him, talk to him?”
Jon shook his head. “Not once. He and his new wife moved to the east coast, had a couple of kids—”
“So you have siblings.”
“No. Parents and siblings are the people you grow up with. My father and his new family are strangers.” And it was strange to be talking about them now because he usually didn’t think about them at all.
“But you have your mother, and she taught you how to cook.”
“I do have my mother.” She’d also taught him the importance of having a home and a family. “She always said the kitchen is the heart of a home.”
Sarah laughed. “My kitchen is definitely not the heart of my home. Not even close.”
“I’ve never seen a cleaner or better organized kitchen than yours,” he said. More like the heart of a display home, though. Beautiful cabinets, a nearly empty fridge and a pristine stove that didn’t see a lot of action aside from keeping take-out pizza warm and burning slice-and-bake cookies. “But I’d have to say you are the heart of your home.”
“Nice save,” she said. “I wish I loved to cook but the simple fact is that I don’t. I grew up in a home where food preparation took up a huge amount of everyone’s time, especially my mom’s. When I left for college, I swore I wouldn’t eat another bowl of granola as long as I lived, let alone make it from scratch.”
“Fair enough,” Jon said.
“Luckily, Casey’s happy with cereal and frozen waffles, and the deli makes a great breakfast wrap with scrambled eggs.”
“Breakfast takeout?”
She shrugged. “When it comes to cooking, I’m more than happy to let someone else do the work.”