Wanted A Real Family(20)

“Amy’s in bed, and I’m just about finished cleaning up her toys.” She put the armload in a plastic bin, then turned back to him. “I don’t have wineglasses, but I do have juice glasses.”

“They’ll do.” He opened the screen door and carried the bottles to the coffee table. “I even brought a corkscrew. Just in case you didn’t have one.”

“Good thinking, or your wine tasting would have fizzled.”

He gazed into her eyes and felt that elemental attraction again. So elemental that he reminded himself he was here to talk to her.

After Jase removed the banding around the bottle caps and used the corkscrew, he poured a sample of the first bottle of wine into two of the four juice glasses. “How long were you at the day care center?”

“We finished around three.”

He picked up one of the glasses and handed it to her. “I’m terrifically impressed with The Mommy Club. After I left there today, I had an idea about promoting it more, to get more people involved.”

“What’s your idea?” Sara’s fingers brushed his when she took the glass. She was looking at him as if what he had to say was more important than taking a drink.

Damn, but he wanted to kiss her.

“Try your wine,” he said, his voice husky.

She took a whiff of it first and then a small sip. He could tell she let it linger on her tongue a bit. This wine tasting might have been a very bad idea, especially if they didn’t just gulp it right down, which a good wine connoisseur never did.

“It’s drier than I like,” she said honestly.

“Okay, then let’s try the next one.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me your idea?”

“I want to get you set up with the right wine first. But if you want a really sweet wine, I should have brought a dessert wine.”

“You have those, too?”

“Sure. We make a raspberry that’s great over ice, but in the meantime, try this.” He poured from the second bottle into the other two juice glasses.

This time, after she took a sip, she smiled. “Perfect.”

“You mean you might have more than a sip?”

She took another swallow and smiled again. “Yep, I could probably drink two glasses of this.”

“Just two?”

“I don’t drink much, so when I do, it goes to my head.”

He was going to have to remember that because if he ever kissed her, he wanted her totally sober. He cut that thought off and reverted back to his idea about The Mommy Club. “If there was more publicity about The Mommy Club, good publicity, more people would volunteer, right?”

“That makes sense. I know Kaitlyn tries to get the word out, but that’s not always easy.”

“Exactly. The organization needs more than a website or flyers placed at strategic places. So I was thinking about going to Cal Hodgekins at the newspaper and pitching a series of articles on The Mommy Club.”

“That’s a wonderful idea! I would think any newspaper would be glad to print something you wrote. You won a Pulitzer. What more could any newspaper want?”

Sara’s words brought back the award-winning series of articles he had written, the photo layout that had gone with them. Unfortunately, he remembered all too well why he’d stopped writing and stowed away his camera. The assault that day on the aid workers had been bloody, brutal and deadly for some. He’d been lucky. For some reason, his life had been spared. But the pictures in his head of what had happened that day would haunt him forever.

“Did I say something wrong?”

He brought his gaze up to hers. “No, you didn’t. It’s just been a long time since I’ve considered writing or photographing anything.”

She looked as if she wanted to reach out to him, but maybe she was afraid to. Maybe her troubled marriage prevented her from reaching out to men. Or maybe Jase’s lack of response when she’d told him about her husband had affected her.

With a small shrug, she suggested, “If you came up with this idea, and it stirs your journalistic instincts, maybe it’s time to start again.”

Perhaps that was true. Perhaps enough time had passed. Could the same be true for his libido, which had been in deep freeze since he’d confronted Dana about her infidelity?

Bringing Sara here had stirred it all up again. “I suppose avoidance isn’t a viable strategy for living.”

“Avoidance? Or denial?” she asked in that straightforward manner that he appreciated. “Because I’ve done both and neither helps. The more you bury the pain, the more it hurts.”

“I never thought about it like that,” he admitted. “Burying the pain seemed like a good idea, especially when my physical therapy was over. I don’t know if I could have lived with it on a daily basis.”