Mallory led the way into her shop, shaking her head like he was a lost cause. And maybe he was. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut and his lungs still wouldn’t fill with air. What was happening to him?
“Sit,” Mallory told him, pointing to a little booth near the counter, the furthest one from the big front window. “Come on, Walt, let’s pick something out for you. Annie, do you want to help him?”
“Of course, Mal,” Annie Williams said, hurrying out from behind the counter to crouch by the glass front with Walt and quietly tell him about each item that was inside.
“What just happened out there?” Mallory asked Aidan, sitting down opposite him.
“She’s in the coffee shop with her partner,” he said flatly. “He wants her to come with him, to live with him, somewhere far away.”
“Are you sure about that?” Mallory asked, raising a brow.
“It’s what he said,” Aidan said, shaking his head and wondering how the woman could be in such denial. Didn’t it make perfect sense that a beautiful woman like Kenzie would want to be with a beautiful man like that?
He’d always thought of her as an old-fashioned girl, not the type to live with someone before marriage. But he had clearly seen what he wanted to see.
“Well, BeeBop is buzzing locally about their conversation right now,” Mallory said. “My phone kept going off because Kenzie is tagged in it. One of the kids from town was listening in and it sounds like Dmitri Volkov is here to offer her a position as co-artistic director at a ballet company he’s founding. There’s nothing romantic happening at all.”
“Oh,” Aidan said, stunned. He tried to put together what he’d heard in a different way and suddenly the word partner took on a new meaning.
“But I could see it getting romantic,” Mallory went on.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Aidan demanded, the slight relief he’d felt going right out the door.
“Kenzie grew up in the theatre,” Mallory said, tucking a runaway strand of her red hair back up in her ponytail. “And so did Volkov. The two of them were raised up on romance. They don’t know anything different.”
“What is the point of this conversation?” Aidan demanded, his blood beginning to boil again.
“The point is that right now Kenzie has never thought of Dmitri as anything but a friend,” Mallory said. “And she probably doesn’t even realize you’re jealous. She just wants a happily-ever-after, just like in all those ballets.”
“A wedding,” Walt said suddenly.
“What’s that, buddy?” Mallory asked, turning to him.
But Aidan gazed at his son, wondering how the four-and-a-half-year-old was able to piece things together so quickly.
They had checked out a storybook of the famous ballets from the library this week, and he went through them mentally.
“Like Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker,” he said to himself.
“Cinderella,” Walt sang out.
Even Don Quixote, a book Aidan had read, that he knew didn’t have the happiest of endings, ended happily in the ballet version—with a proposal and a great big wedding.
“Oh yeah,” Mallory said. “Half the ballets are one act of romance and one act of wedding.”
Aidan thought of Kenzie in a wedding gown, her face lit up with that radiant smile that went straight to his heart.
“I need to talk to Kenzie,” Aidan said, half leaping out of his seat.
“Well, you’ll have to do it during intermission,” Mal said. “The two of them already headed to the theatre. Do you want to walk over together? Valerie and Ana are meeting me there.”
“Already?” Aidan asked, looking at his watch.
“You can’t be late,” Mallory said. “The theatre is too small, and they always start on time.”
“Do you want to go see the ballet?” Aidan asked Walt. “Or would you rather go home?”
“Ballet,” Walt said before he’d even finished the second option.