Page 15 of Love & Rockets

Chapter 4

“Seriously, Mom? You think he’s going to look inside the toaster?”

Darla blew an annoying curl from her forehead and shook another shower of crumbs into the open trash can before slamming the metal catch on the bottom of the appliance shut. “No, but I’ve been needing to empty the catch for a while and I figured since we were cleaning—”

“Because a boy is coming over,” Grace teased.

“—for your company,” Darla finished with a pointed look.

“Our company,” her daughter corrected.

“I’m not the one who wants to talk Klingon with dreamy Dr. Dalton.”

“I’m not the one who called him dreamy.” With a triumphant smirk, Grace gave the kitchen counter a final swipe then threw the paper towel in the trash. “Good thing you got CiCi to donate the sauce, otherwise your dream man would discover you have no skills.”

“I have plenty of skills,” Darla retorted as she lifted the lid on the bubbling pot. The scent of herb-laced tomatoes wafted up on a poof of steam. “Cooking isn’t one of them.”

“You turn our laundry pink at least once a month.”

Darla dropped the lid back onto the pot and lowered the heat. In another pot, tiny bubbles broke to the surface in anticipation of hitting a full, rolling boil. “I haven’t done that in years.”

Grace smiled her angel’s smile as she slipped past her and out of the kitchen. “Maybe not, but you did jam the disposal with a spoon last week.”

“Could happen to anyone,” she called after her, then tossed a dishtowel at the girl’s retreating back to drive her point home.

Sadly, her attempt fell well short of the mark, proving that throwing things didn’t rank high in her skill set, either. Unless throwing fits counted. If conniptions counted, she could have competed for a spot on the Olympic hissy team once upon a time. Thank God, Grace showed no signs of inheriting the talent from her.

And though little miss smarty-pants liked to mock her, Darla knew she could claim a number of very important skills she had in spades. Stubbornness. Determination. An independent spirit. Grace might not consider those skills as important as laundry or cooking at this point in her life, but one day she would understand these things made it possible for them to live the life they did. Their standard of living might not be luxurious, or even comfortable sometimes, but it was theirs and no one could tell them they were wrong.

Bending to check the loaf of crusty bread warming in the oven, Darla squinted at the clock on the microwave. Ten more minutes. He’d be prompt. She knew he would be. Jake Dalton was one of those men who believed in crossed T’s and dotted I’s. An engineer. A scientist. A man driven by reason and logic. One who would appreciate order. Definitely a creature of habit.

Straightening, she pulled the hem of her sauce-spattered T-shirt away from her body and made a face. The stretchy cotton read, “The sauciest slab in the South,” on the front, and “Hot and juicy in your mouth!” on the back might give a guy the wrong impression. Convinced she had everything under control, she dashed from the kitchen. Grace sat in her favorite chair, an ancient leather recliner she’d inherited from Harley. The chair was a relic from his first swinging bachelor pad—a clichéd glass and chrome accented man-apartment Darla told him made him look like a Hugh Hefner wannabe.

The apartment was nothing more than a memory now—or a nouveau riche nightmare, depending on your taste—but the recliner endured. Darla bit her lip as she surveyed the rag-tag collection of hand-me-downs they’d collected. A cream-colored couch left over from Connie’s Martha Stewart phase stood guarded by a set of yard sale end tables. The hideous black leather recliner claimed a place of pride in front of the flat-screen television they’d inherited on one of Harley’s numerous upgrades. There was another in her bedroom, and a state-of-the-art sound system in Grace’s.

As always, these eclectic reminders of her friends’ unflagging generosity never failed to move her. She was grateful to both Harley and his mother. At the same time, she was glad for her hard-won independence. She’d imposed on their largess for nearly five years, but when Harley’s business started to move faster, Darla and Connie found they were both craving a little permanence in their lives. For years, Connie, Grace, and she moved from one recently renovated property to another so Harley could pour those early profits back into Cade Construction. Another round of devastating storms generated a building boom and they moved three more times before Connie declared the pretty ranch house she’d moved into her own by plastering a big, bold ‘Sold’ sticker over the For Sale By Owner sign Harley’d planted in the front yard.

Darla decided the time had come to make a grab for her own independence and moved to her first apartment a few months later. It took six full months to put an end to Harley and Connie’s well-meaning entreaties and Gracie’s incessant cajoling. They’d moved twice more since then, and each time had been an upgrade, but looking at the place now, she couldn’t help seeing how far she’d fallen by standards of a St. Pat’s alum. The place was clean and the area safe, but also bland, boxy and more than a little worn around the edges.

“Aren’t you going to change?” Grace asked without looking up from her book.

Snapped from her thoughts by the realization that the steaming pots in the kitchen had most likely made her hair totally berserk, she bolted for her bedroom.

“Keep an eye on the stove,” she called over her shoulder, even though she knew Grace wouldn’t budge once she was absorbed in something. When it came to domestic skills, her little apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.

Three minutes later, she was in a cute top she’d picked up for a song at a designer consignment shop and clean jeans. She ran a little anti-fizz serum through her hair, smoothed the cowlick at her crown, then added a couple swipes of mascara. She was peering at the mirror, trying to decide if the rosy blush exertion had put in her cheeks made her look like a candidate for an EKG, when a no-nonsense rap on the apartment door jolted her like she’d been hit with the paddles.

“I’ll get it,” Grace sang out. The creak of worn leather seemed unnaturally loud in the tiny space.

When she didn’t hear the sound of the door opening, Darla stuck her head out of the bathroom and found her daughter lingering at the end of the hall.

“Come on. You don’t want him to catch you primping.”

The uneasy shift of weight from one foot to another hinted at the nerves Grace tried so hard to conceal. Like mother like daughter. Gracie bit her bottom lip and suddenly Darla was back on solid ground. Being Grace’s mother was her number one skill in life. Stretching her mouth into a wide smile, Darla stepped out of the bathroom and started down the hall, determined to make this night as perfect as possible for her brilliant, beautiful baby.

Looping an arm over Grace’s narrow shoulders, she steered her toward the door. “Let’s go blow his socks off.”

Still beaming with all the solar power she had, Darla opened the door to find Jake standing on the welcome mat, his fist raised to knock a second time. “Welcome!” Darla saw his eyes widen and the wattage of her grin increased proportionally. “Look, Grace Mary, the esteemed Dr. Jacob Dalton has come to dine at our humble table.” Withdrawing her arm, she swept a courtly bow. “Pray, do come in, your eminence.”

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