Page 65 of The Calendar of New Beginnings
“Everything is fine, Dad,” she told him, something she’d been repeating to herself often enough.
“That Hale boy knows what’s going on,” he ground out. “I have half a mind to go talk to him.”
Great. Maybe Andy would blurt out that he’d finally gotten up the nerve to kiss her. They should call the newspaper, have Arthur run an article. “Leave him be. He has enough on his plate without you poking at him.”
“I’ll poke at him if I want, Lucy Lu,” her dad said. “You can keep your cards close to the vest for only so long, kid.”
That would only be true if she couldn’t drive, but Dr. Davidson had assured her she could. After all, people who only had vision in one eye did it all the time. She’d just have to find a way to be comfortable behind the wheel given her new reality. Maybe driving twenty miles an hour everywhere was the answer.
“I’m an adult, Dad,” she said, shoving her uneaten food away. “I need you to respect that.”
He was frowning as he stood up. “If I hadn’t said those same words to my father when I told him I wanted to bartend instead of going to college, I’d keep at you. But you’re tired, and I’m tired, so I’ll just go back to my sanctuary and hope you’ll trust me when you’re ready.”
Her heart broke, hearing him admit he was tired. “Oh, Daddy.”
He pulled her out of the chair gently and wrapped his arms around her. “I know part of what’s holding your tongue is worry about your mother. I wish I could promise you that I wouldn’t tell her the whole truth. I’ve watched you two knock heads all your life. She means well. She just has the courage of her convictions—rather like someone else I know.”
If she hadn’t been so tired, she might have stuck her tongue out at him. “Then we’re both stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
“I’m glad you have Andy to help you,” he said, letting her go and putting his hands on her shoulders. “But I swear to the Almighty that if you don’t let me help you if you need it, I’m going to…”
“I’m too old for you to paddle my butt,” she quipped.
“I never liked doing that,” he said with a heavy sigh. “All right. I’m going. You get some rest and text me tomorrow to let me know how you are. Your mother might fool herself, but I know this isn’t a hangover.”
She watched as he walked out of the kitchen. The front door opened and closed. Sitting back at the kitchen table, she reached for her Guinness. Part of her wished getting drunk would help her mood, but that would be stupid. She’d felt this same temptation before, after a massacre in Sudan. There had been so much misery and death and darkness around her, she’d wanted nothing more than to keep drinking gin and tonics with her peacekeeper friends until she passed out. But the tension in the country had been too taut for her to take the risk.
Closing her eyes again, she let herself fall into the blackness. As a child, she’d never been afraid of the dark. She’dlearned to fear it overseas—sometimes there were scary things in the dark, especially if the power went out because of an explosion. But not here. Not in this kitchen. It was just her, and the darkness felt comforting somehow.
She stayed that way for so long her left leg fell asleep, so she rose to shake it awake. A knock landed on the front door. She was reluctant to leave the blackness, but the person was persistent, which made her guess it was either Andy or her mother.
At the moment, it was a toss-up who she’d rather see.
When she opened the door, he seemed to fill up the space, rather like he was filling up the entire frame of a photo. He had on a suede coat over a dark T-shirt and jeans, and since he rarely dressed casually, she knew he’d selected the outfit intentionally. Was he hoping it would lighten the mood? Regardless of the reason, he looked good, and she felt her body responding to him.
His eyes scanned her face as if gauging her reaction to him post-kiss. Perhaps it was the fusion created by that kiss, but her brain sent a signal to her eyes—she knew about such things now—and she found herself looking at the sexy, soft lips that had covered her own earlier in the day.
His body suddenly seemed too big, too warm, and she realized her chest was tight with tension. But her belly was also soft and liquid—a sure sign she was aware of him as a man.
“You know I had to come,” he said after a long silence. “We both care about each other too much not to talk about what I did earlier. Can I come inside?”
That he would take full responsibility for the kiss didn’t surprise her. “I didn’t think you’d pretend it hadn’t happened or say you’d missed my cheek. Come on in.”
She detoured back to the kitchen because it seemedlike the smart place to have a tough conversation, and this one was going to be tough.
When he shrugged out of his jacket, she took in all the hard muscles of his arms and shoulders. Her mouth went bone dry with the desire to reach out and touch him.
“You look like I’m about to give you a root canal,” he commented, hanging his jacket all neat and tidy over the chair. “I’m sorry. I know it’s been a rough twenty-four hours.”
They were counting time now? “No, it’s best we get it out in the open. I…ah…knew you wanted to talk about it earlier…when you brought my car back with Matt. But I just couldn’t then.”
He turned the chair and straddled it—like it was a shield between them. “I know. It’s probably for the best. I had a nice, hard run this afternoon, and it helped me see things more clearly.”
Her stomach flipped over.Oh, no, here it is.
“I didn’t plan to kiss you like that,” he said, gripping the rungs of the chair like a man behind bars. “If I’d planned it, I would have done a better job. I mean, as a kiss, it pretty much sucked, and for that, I’m sorry too.”
Cripes, he was even apologizing for his technique. “Andy?—”
