“All right. I have to be at work by seven-thirty tomorrow morning, so Daryn and I get up pretty early.”
“That’s okay. I’ll probably head back to Springfield in the morning. If Julian won’t let me bunk with him for a few days, maybe I can stay at Grandma’s house.”
“We’ll call Julian together after I put the baby to bed.”
Stuart nodded and moved toward the door, then paused. “I like herbal tea okay—but do you have anything else to eat? Like some cookies or something?”
She smothered a smile, looking at her brother’s stick-thin frame and thinking he must burn calories like a furnace. “I’m sure I can come up with something.”
“Okay. Thanks, sis,” he said just a little too casually, then darted out the door.
Feeling a hard lump in her throat, Kim carefully scooped up her daughter and headed toward the nursery. Her emotions had been through the wringer during the past three days. The only way she could deal with it all at the moment was to focus on the tasks at hand.
She couldn’t think about Tate just then. Not without falling apart. And that would be of no help to any of the people who were depending on her.
* * *
Tate was disappointed, but not terrible surprised, to see an empty chair at the restaurant table when he and Evan entered on the last Wednesday in August.
“Where’s Kim this week?” he asked casually of Emma and Lynette, who’d arrived a few minutes before them.
“She said she had some errands to run today,” Emma explained. “And she wanted to stop by the day care center. She said Daryn was acting a little draggy this morning and she wants to make sure she’s not coming down with something.”
Tate hoped the baby wasn’t really getting sick, but he couldn’t help wondering if Kim had simply been looking for excuses to avoid him. Last Wednesday, he’d been told she had an appointment for a haircut. She hadn’t mentioned having that appointment when they’d parted from the others Sunday evening, so he had figured she’d made it specifically to avoid seeing him again so soon. Now she had skipped out on a second gathering.
He had neither seen nor heard from her since they’d parted so tersely outside her house, though he must have reached for his phone half a dozen times to call her. He had resisted only because he’d told himself he needed to give her time to come to terms with what he’d said to her. Pushing her would only drive her farther away.
Would she be back next week, thinking enough time had passed by then for him to get the message that nothing more was going to happen between them? If she knew he’d spent the past week and a half lying awake at night missing her and replaying in his mind every minute they had spent together, would she realize that a couple of weeks wasn’t nearly long enough to make him forget?
When had he actually fallen in love with her? Had it been sometime during their “weekend marriage” or even before that? Had the main reason he’d been willing to subject himself to that challenge in the first place been that he’d wanted an excuse to spend more time with Kim, outside this restaurant?
Hell, yes.
It turned out he was an even better actor than he’d realized. He’d managed to fool himself for several months that he hadn’t fallen head over heels in love with a pretty, prickly single mother. He’d even convinced himself that he hadn’t asked anyone else out almost since the first time he’d met Kim because he was just too busy and preoccupied with his business.
No wonder he’d rushed her into the bedroom the minute he’d had a private moment with her. Of course, Kim had been doing some rushing herself, which had been a serious boost to his self-esteem, even though she had pretty much shattered it since.
So where did that leave him now? Aching, brooding, perplexed, sleep-deprived. Missing her like crazy—as a lover and as a friend. Wondering what it would take to win her back as either or even better, both. Asking himself repeatedly if he was really ready to take on the responsibility of her child, and fully, nervously aware that was an intrinsic part of the bargain, if he could somehow convince Kim to give them a chance.
“Um, Tate? Were you going to order, like, sometime today?”
Evan’s quizzical question brought Tate out of his thoughts abruptly. “Um, yeah. Kung pao chicken,” he said to the server waiting with her pen poised patiently over the order pad.
“Something on your mind, Tate?” His sister eyed him speculatively.
“No, just hungry. So, how are things at work this week?” he asked, deliberately changing the subject. He directed the question toward Emma, hoping she’d take the question as a conversational cue.
“Hectic.” As he’d hoped, she launched into a discussion of things that had happened at work since the last time they had seen each other. Tate made a show of paying attention, though he couldn’t stop glancing at that empty space at the table. He was aware that his sister watched him a bit more closely than usual during the meal, but he avoided her eyes studiously.
He stayed busy at work during the next few days as the Labor Day weekend approached. There was a lot to be done prior to the three-day weekend and as the end of summer approached. A good month of warm days lay ahead, but winter would arrive inevitably and that required advance planning in the landscape business. The time passed in a blur of meetings and paperwork and scheduling, problems to handle, decisions to make. He was so busy he hardly had time to think of Kim at all—probably no more than a dozen times an hour, he thought wearily Friday afternoon, squeezing the taut muscles at the back of his neck with one hand.
Checking email on his phone, he smiled faintly when he saw a note from Stuart O’Hara. The message was brief, merely reporting that Stuart liked his roommate and had done well in his first week of classes and was still grateful for the scholarship. Tate had invited Stuart to stay in touch, and the young man was taking that offer seriously, as though to reassure Tate and Evan that they had chosen a worthy recipient for their first scholarship.
Jason really would be proud, Tate thought with the familiar wistfulness that always accompanied thoughts of his late friend. He was sure Kim was proud of her brother. He hoped they were growing closer, even if they did still live in separate states.
So, his thoughts had come back around to Kim. For the thirteenth time that hour.
His phone rang in his hand just as he was preparing to put it away. Glancing at the screen, he saw his sister’s number displayed above the time. He lifted the phone to his ear. “Lynn? I thought you and Emma were supposed to be on your way to your friend’s lake house for the long weekend.”