Bachelor Number Four (13 page)

Lida leaned across the table. “So why the long face and guilty baking?”

Arden relayed the morning’s conversation. “And last night, he said he wanted more than just sex. He wanted flowers and walks in the park.”

Lida, who knew all about Arden’s previous argument with Shane, nodded. “Smart guy.”

“But this morning, I think he changed his mind. Or maybe he thinks I did. I don’t know. He asked me if I wanted to talk about Jason, and I overreacted a little.”

“Well, what do you want?” Lida asked. “Do you want walks in the park and flowers from Shane? Or just hot monkey love?”

Arden looked to where her daughters howled with laughter at the cartoon’s antics. “I don’t know, Lida. I think I’m ready to move on. I mean, to think about it anyway. I feel like I’m done mourning Jay, you know? And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. I want the girls to have a daddy—”

The tears came without warning, sliding down her cheeks and making her voice hoarse. Arden took a moment to wipe her face and clear her throat. Lida’s eyes had welled with sympathetic tears, and Arden laughed to dispel them.

“More waterworks. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Lida handed her another cookie. “Here. Have a cookie. I promise you, by the time you’re done eating it, you’ll feel better.”

Arden took the cookie, but didn’t eat it. “I want to fall in love again, Lida. But I don’t know if it’s going to be with Shane.”

Lida shrugged. “Do you think anybody knows that? If we all knew who we’d fall in love with, why would anybody ever bother to date? I think you need to ask yourself if you’re willing to find out.”

Arden crumbled her cookie onto the plate. “This was easier when it was just about sex.”

“Screaming hot sex,” Lida corrected with a smile. “And you don’t think it’s just that with him?”

Arden shook her head, forcing herself to admit something aloud she’d not even admitted to herself. “I don’t think it ever was. If it was just about sex, I’d have slept with him three weeks ago. Or slept with Philip. That would’ve been easier.”

“Nothing about sex is ever easy.”

Arden sighed. “Don’t I know it.”

“You’re wasting that cookie,” Lida told her.

Arden nodded toward the counter, where three more plates sat. “I think I can spare one.”

Lida grinned when she saw the cornucopia of chocolate. “Damn, girl. That must have been some hot, hot loving!”

A shiver ran through Arden at the memory. “It sure was.”

Lida leaned forward again to look into Arden’s eyes. “Your body might be easily led astray, but your heart knows what it wants. Listen to it, Arden.”

Good advice, Arden thought, if she was brave enough to take it.

Shane didn’t call her until Tuesday afternoon, and by that time Arden had convinced herself he wasn’t going to. She’d put her fingers to the phone to dial his number a dozen times on Monday, but had never done it. She hadn’t logged on to her instant messaging account either, afraid to see his name show up on her friends list and know he was ignoring her. When the phone rang at the shop, she answered it with a mouth full of pins, her mind full of the dress she was sewing and the idea she had for a new pattern.

“Arden?”

Shane’s voice filled her with warmth, like gooey caramel. She spit out the pins. “Hi.”

“I figured you’d be here, not at home.”

“Here I am. I’m here a lot,” she added, talking too fast but unable to stop herself. “It’s my, you know. Job.”

Even through the phone she sensed an awkwardness to their conversation that she didn’t like. Shane’s breathing filled her ear. Heat flared inside her at the memory of the way his breath had caressed her.

“Can I take you to lunch?”

She looked at the clock, already knowing she was going to say yes. “I only have an hour, I have an appointment—”

“I’ll come to you.”

Shane showed up in ten minutes, grease-spotted paper sacks in one hand and a paper tray of specialty coffees in the other. Lunch turned out to be delicious grilled sandwiches and homemade fries from the coffee shop down the street, and though Arden always promised herself she’d limit herself to just half a sandwich from that place, she ended up eating the whole thing.

“So. Freaking. Good.” She wiped the corner of her mouth with her pinky, catching a glob of dressing and tucking it into her mouth. Focusing on the food was an easy way to keep from blurting out an apology for what she’d said the morning “after”. Or from diving across her desk and tackling him for a little naked time right then and there.

“Love their stuff. I told you, pancakes and tuna are the extent of my kitchen skills. I’d starve if it weren’t for take-out or my mom’s leftovers.”

Arden tilted her head as she sipped from her coffee drink. She’d never met Shane’s family back in the day—they’d spent hours together fucking, but introductions to family and friends had never come up. It had all ended before that could seem important. Still, Annville and its neighbors were all small towns. She’d heard things.

“Your mom still lives in Palmyra?”

He smiled. “Yeah. She got remarried a few years after my dad died.”

“Oh…I’m sorry. I mean about your dad, not about your mom getting remarried. Unless that’s a bad thing?” Arden bit down on her tongue to keep herself from more word-vomit. She hadn’t even known his dad had passed away and felt doubly stupid for it.

“No. It’s a good thing. Ken’s a good guy. He’s not my dad or anything, but he’s good to my mom.” Shane shrugged and dipped a last few fries into some horseradish sauce.

“That’s good.”

“Ken was smart, made sure I knew he wasn’t trying to replace my dad or anything like that. He was…respectful, I guess you could say. He did it the right way, not like some guys who go in and try to make everything fit around them. You can’t ever replace anyone’s father.”

Arden focused her attention on her napkin, wiping her fingers and crumpling up her trash to toss in the pail to give her a reason not to look at him so she wouldn’t give away how close to tears she suddenly found herself. Was he trying to tell her something? “No. I guess you can’t.”

“Anyway, I was a grown-up. Mostly. Sort of.” His smile was a little tilted, but he didn’t drop his gaze. “Not like your kids. It must’ve been really hard for them.”

She thought about that. “It’s been hard for all of us. I used to be afraid they were so young they’d forget him, you know? And I see it in the way they talk about him sometimes. More like a story they’ve been told over and over than something real to them. It hurts, but maybe it’s a blessing, too, you know? That they have this happy story to remember…”

She trailed off with a shrug.

“My dad died right before I met you.” Shane looked up at her, gaze steady. “And I won’t try to say it’s why I was such a colossal asshole, but…”

She held up a hand. “Say no more. That was a long time ago. And I’d say losing your dad entitled you to being a bit of a prick. I just wish that I’d known.”

“Do you?” He shook his head a little. “Would it have made a difference? Would you have given me another chance?”

A few minutes ago she’d had too many words tumbling over her tongue. Now she could barely think of more than two to string into a sentence. Giving Shane another chance back then would’ve changed everything that had happened in her life…

“It’s okay. You don’t have to answer that.” He laughed and scooted his chair a little bit closer to her. “You can’t change the past. And I really was a jerk. You remember that night I showed up at your place in the rain?”

“How could I forget?” Their knees bumped. “It was the last time I saw you.”

“I already knew I’d blown it with you. You’d started seeing that guy —”

“The guy I married.”

Shane paused. Nodded. “Yeah. Your husband. You’d already started seeing him, and I could tell by the way you talked about him that it was serious.”

“I never talked about Jason with you,” Arden said softly.

His grin looked a little more normal this time. “I know. That’s how I knew it was serious. If you were just playing, trying to make me jealous or something, I figured you’d have told me everything you could. Anyway, I knew you were serious about him, and I knew it was my own fault for not telling you how I felt about you before that. In the movies when the guy shows up in the middle of the night and the rain, the girl always takes him back, you know?”

“In the movies, she’s always in love with that guy, just waiting for him.” She swallowed hard against a surge of emotion threatening to close her throat, steal her voice. “But…I wasn’t in love with you, Shane. And it was probably one of the worst nights of my life having to tell you that.”

“It was a pretty big downer for me too,” he said, then laughed, and reached for her hand. His thumb stroked gently over the back of it. “I knew it was too late. And hell…I didn’t know anything about love back then. I just wanted something I couldn’t have and didn’t realize how much until I didn’t have it anymore.”

Their fingers linked. She squeezed gently. “Just because I didn’t love you didn’t mean I couldn’t have. It just means…I didn’t. And to be fair, Shane, you weren’t really in love with me either.”

He laughed a little louder at that, and she didn’t miss the way his gaze finally cut from hers. “Maybe not. It was a long time ago.”

She squeezed his hand again. “I have to tell you something, and it’s the truth. I never stopped thinking about you, either.”

He looked at her, but said nothing.

Arden drew in a breath. Mistakes were useless if you couldn’t learn from them, and she’d had plenty of time to think about all the ones she’d made with Shane. No matter what happened…or didn’t happen, she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes twice.

“There was so much I should’ve told you back then. Things you never asked and I was afraid to say because I figured…well, you know, I believed you when you said you didn’t want something real from me. And I was afraid of what you’d do if I told you I did, or at least that I was willing to give it a try.”

“You were afraid I’d say no.”

“Maybe,” she said, leaning just a little closer, “I was afraid you’d say yes.”

The kiss was brief and sweet and tasted just a little of horseradish. She cupped his cheek for a second when she pulled away. Looked into his eyes.

“I loved my husband,” she told him, and before he could say anything else, she cut him off. “But that doesn’t mean I’m still mourning. I loved Jason, but he’s gone. It doesn’t mean I have to forget him. It doesn’t mean I can’t make new memories.”

Shane smiled. “Are you busy tonight?”

It wasn’t what she’d expected. “I don’t have anything special planned, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I want to take you to dinner. All of you.”

Arden sat back in her seat. “Really?”

He laughed and the awkwardness dissolved like sugar in hot tea. “Yeah. Really. You, me, and the girls.”

Arden recognized a fork in the road when she saw it. The choice she made now would determine the path her relationship with Shane would take. Could she know what lay at the end of the road? Nobody ever could. But she couldn’t let that keep her from making the choice her heart told her it wanted. She had to be brave.

“I’d like that,” she told him. “Very much.”

She wasn’t sure what to tell Maeve and Aislin about their dinner plans, so she fudged a little bit. “A friend of mine is taking us out to dinner tonight.”

Maeve looked up from the spelling words she was writing. “Where are we going?”

“Which friend?” Aislin asked from in front of her own homework. “Lida?”

“No.” Arden put her hands in her pockets and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “A friend you’ve never met. His name is Shane.”

The girls exchanged a glance, but didn’t comment. Maeve shrugged and bent back to her spelling, but Aislin scrunched up her face. “Where’s he taking us? Someplace fancy?”

Arden laughed. “I don’t think so. Why?”

“Because Samantha says whenever her mom’s dates take them out, they have to go to someplace fancy that serves gross stuff like snails.”

“Snails!” Maeve sounded horrified. “Gross! No way am I eating snails!”

“Shane will not be taking us to a place that serves snails. I promise.” Arden’s heart filled with a love so strong for her darling girls it almost overflowed. They were so dear. And so funny. She was so proud of them.

“Good,” Aislin said.

“Can we go to McDonald’s?” Maeve questioned hopefully.

Arden pursed her lips. “Uh, no. Someplace nicer than that.”

“Chinese buffet?” Aislin asked.

“Maybe. We’ll see where Shane wants to take us.”

Both girls seemed to accept that answer and bent over their schoolwork again. Arden turned back to the sink to wash a last couple of dishes before going up to get changed.

“Mommy?” Maeve asked.

“Hmm?”

“Is this a date?”

Arden kept her voice neutral. “Yes, Maeve.”

“Told you,” she heard Aislin mutter, and Maeve whispered in reply, “I was just checking.”

“Only if it’s okay with you both, though.” Arden wrung the dishcloth and turned to her daughters.

The girls both shrugged. Aislin rolled her eyes. Maeve scrunched her nose.

“It’s okay with me, as long as he doesn’t make me eat snails,” said Aislin.

“It’d be better if he took us to McDonald’s,” Maeve said, then hastily continued when she saw Arden’s look, “But Chinese buffet is okay, too. It’s okay, Mommy.”

They were amazing, these resilient children. Arden reached out to hug them both and kiss them, and the girls accepted her mothering without squirming.

“You’d better go change, Mommy,” said Aislin matter-of-factly. “Put on some makeup or something. Samantha says her mom always wears a miniskirt on dates.”

“Our mom doesn’t need to wear a miniskirt,” Maeve interjected hotly. “She’s beautiful the way she is!”

“But she’d be more beautiful if she wasn’t wearing sweatpants,” Aislin pointed out to her younger sister.

Arden laughed and squeezed them again. “You’re right. I’m going up to change. You need to have this stuff finished and put away in your bookbags by the time I get down here, okay?”