Page 35 of Playing for Keeps in Starr's Fall
“How was yours?” Zach countered with a smile. He was standing by the sink, a dishrag draped over one shoulder. Ben was at the table, spreading tomato sauce over a pizza base. The scene was so unexpectedly homey that for a second Maggie just wanted to stand there and savor it—the warm lighting, the music, some kind of mellow jazz, on the speakers, her son looking happy and Zach seeming relaxed and comfortable.
“My day was great,” Maggie said. “I now know how to make a heart in the foam of your latte. Or a fern, if you’d prefer.”
“You had to spend eight hours learning that?” Ben demanded as he started sprinkling cheese.
“And a few other things besides,” Maggie replied lightly. “I am proud to say I am no longer afraid of that big, shiny espresso machine downstairs.”
“Good thing,” Zach answered with a chuckle, “but to be fair that thing does look like a beast.”
“Yeah.” She smiled back at him, enjoying the warmth in his expression as his gaze rested on her, the way it made her tingle. “So tell me about your day.”
Zach glanced at Ben, waiting for him to speak. “It was pretty chill,” her son said at last. “We finished the bookshelves, and I got all my work done.”
“That’s great.” She turned to Zach. “Sounds like a good day.”
“Yeah.” Zach nodded. “Pretty chill.”
They both smiled at her, and Maggie smiled back. Even with everything seeming so relaxed, it was hard to let go of that hard clench of anxiety in her stomach that remained from having left Ben for an entire day. She glanced between him and Zach, as if testing the truth of their replies. Had it really been a chill day? She felt something unspoken in the air, but maybe it was just bro bonding.
Another beat passed and Maggie had to conclude that she was, as she so often was, being paranoid.
“So,” she remarked as she nodded toward the pizza base Ben had been liberally spreading with sauce and sprinkling with cheese. “You’re making pizzas?”
“Yep,” Zach confirmed. “I’m trying to get Ben to move out of his comfort zone of pineapple and black olive, because frankly that’s just so gross. We’ve got pepperoni, chorizo, as well as some peppers and broccoli to cover all our food groups.”
“Good luck with that,” Maggie answered on a laugh. “Ben has always been a creature of habit.”
“You know I actually like pineapple and black olive,” Ben told them. “Well,” he amended, “I’ve learned to like it.”
“And that is not something I’m going to do,” Zach replied as he started slicing a stick of chorizo.
“Maybe you should go out of your comfort zone of extra spicy,” Maggie challenged.
Zach slid her a laughing look. “The question is, why would I do that?”
“Just to show you can?” Maggie replied, trying not to let the teasing glint in his blue-green eyes affect her as much as it was and pleasurably failing.
“I’m perfectly confident in my capabilities in that area,” Zach assured her as he scattered the sliced chorizo over his pizza. “Butyourpizza is a blank slate—please don’t tell me you secretly like pineapple and black olive too because I won’t believe you.”
“I’ll take the broccoli and pepper, then. I actually like vegetables, and I have the sense they won’t get eaten otherwise.”
“You are probably right there.” Zach grinned at her, and Maggie laughed before catching Ben watching the two of them with an alert and eager sort of look on his face that made her mentally screech the brakes. Did her sonwanther and Zach to get together? She’d assumed that even the faintest whiff of romance would horrify Ben, but what if it was the opposite?
What if Ben got his hopes up that Zach might be in their lives forever, when, she had to face it, he most probably wouldn’t be? Zach would marry the love of his life that he did or did not find on Tinder, have a bunch of beautiful blond kids, and convert a barn into a gorgeous house where he’d brew his own beer and set up his own carpentry and craft store. Or something like that.
He was soyoung, she realized afresh, with his whole life ahead of him. Of course he was going to do those things, or any number of other things. Maybe he was in a bit of a tricky transition stage at the moment, what with the store and his sister and the way he seemed to both love and resent Starr’s Fall… but he’d figure it out. And when he did, he’d move on from their bedraggled little family. Understandably.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly as those realizations trickled through her. She’d been getting way too close to him, when she knew any romance that might have blossomed eventually couldn’t possibly last. And she could deal with that, she hoped, because she was an adult… but she could not—and would not—mess with her son’s emotions any more than they had been already.
“Sure, I’ll make a pizza,” she said briskly, and Zach gave her a thoughtful frown—somehow he seemed attuned to her moods and how they just abruptly changed—before handing her a baking tray with a pizza base on it.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
He rested his hip against the counter, watching her as she focused absolutely all of her attention on spreading the sauce, sprinkling the cheese. She sensed he wanted to say something, but he kept himself from it and she was glad as she finished making the pizza.
Once Zach had put them all in the oven and they’d both tidied all the ingredients away, he gave her a slow, considering look, the kind that made Maggie think he was going to say whatever he’d wanted to before after all.
