Just Like Heaven (12 page)

 
Too honest.

The thing to do was shut down the computer before she did something even more horrible than be caught wearing a red lace thong by a gorgeous Episcopal priest in a Grateful Dead T-shirt. Something she might actually regret a few weeks from now when she was feeling more like her normal, practical self.

“Window seats,” Paul said as they followed the hostess to their table. “With a view of the stream.”

The trees had been strung with tiny white fairy lights that illuminated the soft spring night with romance.

This time last week she would have been oblivious to the twinkling lights and soft music, but tonight all she could think of was how wonderful this would be with the right man.

And, to her regret, her dear friend would never be that man.

The hostess went to pull out Kate’s chair for her, but Paul leaped into position and did the honors. Normally they would have jockeyed playfully for the best seat but here in bizarro world he was acting like a
boy
friend instead of a
best
friend. Flowers. Compliments. She was afraid he might break into song at any moment.

It was going to be a long evening.

“I’ve always loved this place,” she said after the hostess hurried away to seat another customer. “If it weren’t in the back of beyond, I’d come here all the time.”

“Best porterhouse steaks in the Northeast.”

She winced. “I’m afraid it’s broiled haddock for me.”

“Damn,” he said. “I should’ve taken you to Luigi’s for seafood.”

“They have fish on the menu here. I’ll be fine.”

She sneaked a glance at her watch. Two minutes and forty-three seconds had passed since the last time she looked. If she could keep the conversation firmly centered on her dietary restrictions and not on their future, alone or together, the night might not be a total disaster.

John, their server, offered a wine list. Paul zeroed in on his favorite merlot, which Kate declined.

“No wine?” He looked surprised.

“I forgot to run it by Dr. Lombardi,” she said. “He has me on a few different meds and I’m not sure about interactions with alcohol.”

Paul nodded. “Better safe than sorry.”

“Isn’t this the kind of conversation our grandmothers had over pots of tea?”

“We’re getting older, French,” he said. “Next stop is the AARP card.”

So far, so good. This was the kind of thing they did best. No posing. No posturing. No trying to impress each other. Just two old friends, getting older by the day, out for dinner and friendship.

Provided, of course, you could ignore the twinkling lights outside, the candlelight inside, and the fact that he suddenly couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her.

“I owe you an apology,” he said after the busboy cleared away their salad plates and refilled Kate’s iced tea.

“For eating those gorgeous shrimp in front of me?”

“Okay,” he said with a smile, “so I owe you two apologies.”

She shifted in her seat, wishing she could find a way to defuse this situation before he said something they would both regret. “You don’t owe me anything, Grantham.”

“I shouldn’t have dropped everything on you yesterday.” He dragged his hand through his wavy hair, a gesture she knew very well. “Believe it or not, I had a plan.”

“A plan?”

“I was going to drop it on you tonight, somewhere between the salad course and dessert.”

She glanced toward the exit some eighty feet away. “You’re lucky I’m wearing heels. Otherwise I’d make a run for it.”

“I’m spilling my heart out to you and you’re making with the jokes.”

“It’s what we do,” she reminded him. “It’s what friends do.”

“Think about it,” he said. “No secrets. No drama. No bullshit. There would always be somebody at your back.”

“Don’t we have that already?”

“I want more.”

“So do I.”

She wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised. Suddenly she realized that she wanted the secrets, the drama, the flowers, the fireworks, the whole nine yards.

Who knew?

“I tried to get us a window seat,” Mark said as he followed Scott and Marcy into The Old Grist Mill, “but they were completely booked.” He had even played the clergy card, something he never did, but to no avail.

“Same great steaks no matter where we’re sitting.” Scott placed a beefy hand at the small of his wife’s back as they waited for the hostess to seat them.

“We would have been happy with Sizzler, Father Mark,” Marcy said. “This is way too fancy for us.”

It was also Scott’s favorite place, which made it a no-brainer.

He ordered a pitcher of iced tea for the table and settled back in his chair while Scott and Marcy debated sharing a Caesar salad or steamed clams and mussels. The restaurant bustled with conversation and laughter and music. A fire crackled in the stone hearth at the far end of the room, one of the last before the spring nights turned balmy and they opened the doors to the patio. He had been here twice as a guest and both times he had been shocked at the prices and impressed by the food and service. Not that he was an expert. Takeout Chinese, pizza, and frozen lasagna were more his speed.

He hadn’t remembered The Old Grist Mill being a big date place, but tonight the restaurant overflowed with couples at various stages of courtship behavior. Young lovers whose dinners grew cold on the plate while they gazed into each other’s eyes. New parents out for the first time since the baby’s arrival, happy to be together but anxious to get home to their precious offspring. Empty nesters like Scott and Marcy in the rediscovery stage of marriage when, if you’re lucky, the old becomes new all over again.

He had turned away from God after Suzanne’s death, unable to reconcile an all-loving Creator with the shocking end of a young woman’s life. He had lost his wife, his lover, his confidante, his future, and his faith the day she died.

“Hey,” Scott said, after they placed their orders, “your redhead must be pretty special to rate this kind of thank-you.”

Marcy gave her husband one of those wifely “shut up” looks that made Mark laugh out loud.

“I was glad to get those papers back to their rightful owner.”

“I’m not buying it,” Scott said, pressing hard.

“Ignore him,” Marcy broke in. “There’s nothing worse than a retired detective. He’s always looking for the hidden story.” She turned toward her husband. “I left my cell in the car. Would you get it for me, please?”

“It’s not in your purse?”

“If it were in my purse, would I ask you to get it from the car?”

Scott, grumbling but in a good-natured kind of way, set off to retrieve his wife’s cell phone. Marcy watched his progress to the exit with a look of love and bemusement on her face that brought a lump to Mark’s throat.

“You like him,” he said when Marcy caught him smiling at her.

“Him?” She laughed, but the affectionate look in her eyes was unmistakable. “I was just making sure he didn’t trip on his shoelaces.”

Mark laughed with her but he knew love when he saw it.

Eight

Kate and Paul were halfway through their entrées when something across the room caught his attention.

“You’re not going to believe who’s sitting at a corner table.” He had that cat-that-ate-the-canary look she remembered from high school when he scored higher on the math SATs than she did.

“Maeve and Paul Newman.”

“Not even close.”

“Gwynn and an investment banker.”

“You wish.”

“I hate guessing games.”

“Your Good Samaritan and his wife.”

She spun around in her seat so fast she had to grab the edge of the table to keep from slipping off. “Oh my God!”

“Nope,” said Paul, “but definitely one of the disciples.”

The woman sitting opposite Mark was somewhere in her midforties, pleasant looking and conservatively dressed, exactly how Kate envisioned the perfect minister’s wife. She finally had something worth crying about and the tears were conspicuously absent. Go figure.

“You didn’t know he was married?” Paul sounded gleeful.

“I still don’t know he’s married.”

“The only thing missing is the booster seat for their youngest.”

She had to admit the signs pointed toward wedded bliss. The comfortable familiarity between Mark and the woman was obvious. They weren’t falling all over each other but there was an obvious connection between them. No sparks, not like yesterday, but—

“He should be excommunicated,” she mumbled into her glass of iced tea. If Episcopalians didn’t currently excommunicate, they could test the waters with Mark Kerry. If she was going to burn in hell, she would rather it be for missing Sunday mass than for coveting another woman’s husband. That was just plain unforgivable.

 
Scott and Marcy went out to grab a smoke while Mark took care of the bill. The server had forgotten to add in Scott’s medium-rare T-bone and had been pathetically grateful when Mark pointed it out to him.

“You don’t know what it’s like around here,” the server said as he recalculated the bill. “They count every piece of dead cow back there and make us foot the difference.”

“That image will stick with me a while.” He added the tip and signed the credit receipt. “Thanks.”

“You have a good night.”

He might have had at least a decent night if he hadn’t chosen that second to turn around for one last look at the old couple laughing over coffee near the stone hearth and seen Kate French and her friend approaching him.

“Looks like The Old Grist Mill is the place to be,” Kate greeted him.

She didn’t look surprised to see him. Her friend, the angry guy, shot him the kind of look usually confined to boxing rings and WWF conventions.

“Good to see you.” He debated shaking her hand but decided against it.

Besides, she didn’t offer.

The angry guy made a show of looking around. “Where’d your wife and friend go?”

He frowned. “My what?”

“Your wife,” the angry guy persisted. “Nice-looking woman, light brown hair, probably answers to the name Mrs.”

The thing about redheads was they couldn’t hide anything. If their tempers didn’t give them away, their skin did. Kate’s throat and cheeks flamed crimson.

“You’re talking about my friends Scott and Marcy Reilly. Come on,” he said. “I’ll introduce you.”

He had pretty much put one-upmanship to bed by the time he was old enough to vote, but tonight he couldn’t help himself. Watching the angry guy, aka Paul Grantham, deflate as he shook hands with Scott and Marcy was worth the price of a dozen steak dinners.

Kate, however, was clearly delighted to meet his friends. She embraced Marcy warmly and kissed Scott on the cheek. “I’ve never been so happy to have my privacy invaded in my life,” she said and everybody laughed. “Those letters are very important to me.”

“Wish I’d seen them,” Scott said. “I’m a Revolutionary War buff myself.”

“You can’t grow up in this area and escape it,” Marcy said. “George Washington slept around more than my cousin Amy.”

The night air was cool and clear, a welcome change after the warmth of the restaurant. The sky was a deep rich inky black studded with stars. It had been a very long time since he’d noticed a sky like that and even longer since he’d given a damn. But tonight those stars pierced him straight through to his heart. He wandered toward the far end of the lot without realizing it.

“They’re getting along well.” Kate popped up at his right elbow. “I think they’ve forgotten all about us.”

“That’s what happens when you put a lawyer together with a retired cop and his social worker wife. Hope you weren’t in a rush to go home.”

“It’s such a beautiful night. I could stay here forever.”

He gestured toward the debating threesome on the other side of the parking lot. “Good thing, because they don’t sound like they’re ready to call it a night.”

They leaned against the side of his car and looked up at the sky. The sounds of music and laughter drifted out from the inn and mingled with the soft rustle of the wind through the budding trees. He liked that she didn’t feel the need to fill every silence with talk. Not everybody understood the beauty of silence.

“. . . you would actually let some son of a bitch go free because his Miranda rights weren’t . . .”

“. . . the law’s the law . . . our constitutional rights are precious . . .”

“. . . maybe it’s time to rethink the entire penal system . . .”

Next to him, Kate made a face. “I feel like I’m channeling Fox News.”

“We could walk around back and look at the stream.”

She hesitated and his heart sank. So there
was
something going on between Kate and the angry guy.

“Or not,” he said. “It’s up to you.”

“It’s an awkward situation,” she said after a long pause.

“Is it?”

“Not because of you—” She stopped and looked at him. “Okay, a little because of you but mostly because my heart attack seems to have triggered some . . .” She hesitated, searching for the right word.

“Some unexpected emotions.”

“Paul and I have been friends since grade school. He’s Gwynn’s godfather. We’ve been there for each other through divorce and everything else life threw our way, but we’ve never been romantic.”

He nodded. “I get it.”

“I know this is only temporary,” she said. “I had a heart attack and he’s feeling his mortality but right now he thinks he’s in love with me and I don’t want to hurt him.” She stopped for breath this time. “Too much information. Sorry. I’m usually not this forthcoming with strangers.”

“We’re not strangers,” he pointed out.

She wrapped her arms around her chest and gazed up at the night sky. “We’re pretty close to it. I don’t know if you’re married—”