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Travis felt a little stupid, but he moved away from the stove to wipe the already clean pass-through that connected the front and back kitchens.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” he heard Makenna say in a strained voice. “I’m trying to move forward and it feels like every step I take isn’t working. I’m trying to make the best decisions for Paige—”

“Which you are,” Logan said.

“Right, but I don’t fit in, and Paige is . . . well, she’s advanced, and I’m sure that has something to do with the fact that it’s just the two of us.”

“Is advanced a bad thing?”

“No, but now I’m adding this dating thing and I’m not sure how that’s affecting her. You know how she is.”

“I do, and I love every bit of her.”

“I do too, but you’re not raising her alone and when you’re called to a teacher conference in the middle of helping your father clean up because raccoons got into his composter, it’s . . . hard.”

Travis kept wiping. Logan didn’t seem fazed by his sister’s rant.

“Why did you have to go to meet with her teacher?” Logan asked.

“Because Paige corrected some girl in class and told her babies come out of a vagina instead of from the damn stork!”

Even out of the corner of his eye, Travis saw her hands flailing as he tried to hold in his laughter.

“Then, to make matters worse, when the little perfect lily-white Disney character girl told her she was wrong, my daughter gave her a couple of websites where she could look stuff up.”

Logan laughed and Travis lost it too, but he covered his mouth and walked back to check on his water. He glanced up again and saw Makenna through the pass-through. She was smiling the really great smile she normally saved for her family. He was staring and, of course, she looked up.

“Travis, I’m sure you’ve heard the whole damn conversation, so you might as well join in the laughter.”

“I mean, there’s certainly nothing wrong with vaginas,” he said, throwing some salt into his pot and joining them in the back.

Makenna laughed and Logan was almost crying by this point.

“See, now this makes me feel better. When I’m here or on the farm, I’m me. It’s when I have to go out into the real world that I usually feel awkward and stupid. I just need to stay in my bubble.”

“Does this have anything to do with the dating thing?” Logan asked.

Makenna looked at Travis. He should have left, given her time to talk alone with her brother, but he found himself wanting to know the answer.

“No. Probably. I have no idea. I mean, maybe that’s part of it. I just canceled Date Number Two, so all I really have to go on is a couple coffee dates and the dog guy.” She held her hand up to Travis again because she must have thought he was going to bark. She was right, but he refrained.

“Oh, and I have yet to tell you about the super classy guy a couple of nights ago who wanted me to send more pictures. I understood that to mean more pictures about my life, you know, me on vacations.”

Travis ran his hand across his face because he already knew where this was going.

“Oh no,” she continued, “he meant pictures with more skin showing. Yuck!”

Logan looked at Travis, neither of them laughing anymore. “You need to be careful, Kenna,” Logan said while Travis stood there trying not to think about pictures of Makenna.

“I know. You don’t need to worry about me. I was just giving you a glimpse into the creepy online dating world. You don’t need to get all big brother on me. Besides, I’m done. Experiment over. I’m back on track. Paige and I are perfectly fine on our own.”

“That is true, you are, but you never know. You might—” Logan looked up at Travis.

Seriously?

Travis turned to leave, but not before he heard Makenna’s parting words: “Please, can we be done talking about this, because I’m pretty sure I’m going to smack you if you tell me I’ll meet someone. I already did that. I met him, married him, and we had a beautiful child. That was my happily-ever-after. Except it wasn’t. I’m pretty sure most women only get one shot at the prince and the horse thing, so I’m done.”

As he lowered a basketful of linguini into the boiling water, Travis tried to clamp down on the want. Not for himself, although that was in there too, but this was more wanting for her. She deserved someone, another happily-ever-after, and for the first time, he wanted to be that guy. It was too bad Travis was nowhere near a prince and he’d never even been on a horse.

Chapter Fifteen

K
enna was tucked away in the private dining area all morning and through most of lunch. At around one o’clock, Travis peeked his head around the corner.

“Hey, Todd was confused.”

“That’s not exactly news, is it?” She hit send on an e-mail.

He laughed. “He got confused and made an extra burger. Did you want it for lunch?”

Makenna looked up from her laptop.

“With fries. I’ll even get you a Coke.” He smiled, and she did too. His heart picked up more than it already had when he was making the burger in the kitchen, realizing he wanted to help her out of her bad mood.

“You joining me?” came right out of her mouth, and Travis could tell she was just as surprised as he was.

“Yeah, be right back.”

When he returned, Kenna closed her laptop and they sat eating in silence for a few beats.

“So, sports. You come from a big, sort of huge, sports family.”

He offered lunch to help, see if she needed to talk, and of course now she wanted to discuss his damn family again. What was it with her needing to know? Too late to change his mind now, so he unrolled his napkin and answered.

“I do.”

“That’s two words. You tend to do that when things get personal.”

“Personal? Is that what this is?” Travis flashed her a halfhearted grin and took a bite out of his sandwich.

“Is that the new grinder?” She was trying to change the subject, to make him comfortable so he’d open up. He’d played this game with women before, so he simply nodded.

“Do you like what you do?” she asked.

He was thrown by the random question, but it was an easy one. “Yes, I love what I do.”

“Why?”

He put the sandwich down. “What’s this about, Makenna?”

“I’m just asking a question. We can talk about things, remember? You said that a while back. Or does that only apply to my . . . things?”

“No. Fine. I played football all through high school. Football and baseball actually, but I was pretty useless at bat, so mainly football.”

“That’s still impressive.”

Travis laughed. “Yeah, well, I was recruited by USC for football, full ride, and then I blew out my knee senior year of high school before I even arrived on campus.”

Kenna said nothing.

“It was the weirdest thing. I knew I was going down. I was wide open for a sack, but I sort of tried to move and ended up twisting the crap out of my leading leg. I went down and my ACL was shot. By the time it healed completely, I was finished.”

“Were you devastated?”

“No. Best thing that ever happened to me. Sometimes I wonder if I subconsciously moved—if I knew. Training says if you’re going down, you let it happen, fall, and go with it. Stay loose. Why the hell did I move? I pushed off. I guess I’ll never know why, but once I got my knee back, I honestly didn’t care. My dad, my brothers, they all left me the hell alone. I was no longer a commodity for the McNulty name. It was freeing.”

“Oh well, good.”

“What was the question?” He tried to smile. “My job, cooking, right. I tried college through my sophomore year, but I wasn’t into it. So I left and went to work at a restaurant. I’d done busser and prep cook stuff in high school, but once I started cooking, I fell in love. The energy, the flow, I was hooked. I went to culinary school.”

“Realized you were brilliant?” She grinned and continued eating her fries.

“Something like that.”

“Logan says you’re brilliant. Hey, so does Paige, and she’s a tough customer.”

Travis laughed and when she joined him, all he heard was her laughter. It filled the room. He decided she didn’t do it enough.

“I love what I do, so I’m always working at it. I think it’s like that with anything. Logan’s passionate about this place, about growing things fresh and being responsible. It’s who he is, so it’s easy. I mean, I guess it’s not easy, but it’s where he wants to be all the time. I’m that way when I’m in a kitchen. It’s all mine and yes, I guess it’s something I do well.”

“Did your family support you?”

It was such a simple question, but Travis found the pain of the answer caught in his throat, so he opted for silence.

“Okay, well, having met them, I’m guessing they didn’t. That they stopped supporting you after you lost your knee?”

Travis nodded. He never talked about this anymore.

“Sorry, I ask a lot of questions.”

Travis shook it off. “Do you like your job, Makenna?” It wasn’t exactly subtle, but he needed to move on.

“I do. I get to use all those accounting classes, but I’m not stuck in an office. The restaurant is flexible; so is the farm. Flexible is a gift, especially with Paige.”

“Long hours, though.”

“I don’t mind working. I was raised on hard work, so it’s really all I know.”

“Seems that way. Is it difficult being a single mom?”

Kenna raised her eyebrows as she finished chewing. “Apparently I’m not the only one who knows how to ask the questions.”

Travis took another bite of his sandwich.

“I don’t like calling our life, my . . . situation, I guess is the right word, difficult. Life isn’t easy for anyone. My set of circumstances may be unique, but struggle touches everyone in some form or another, don’t you think?”

“I do, but losing your husband when your daughter was only—what?”

“Five weeks and three days.”

“That seems like a pretty extreme situation to come back from.”

Kenna glanced up at him and let out a steady breath. She was thinking about her answer and he found himself dying to know.

“I suppose it is. Being a mom is challenging, single or not single. It’s about as far from accounting as I could have gone. There’s nothing but gray area, and there’s rarely a right or wrong answer. Some days I’m sure she’s going to win the Nobel Peace Prize and then the next day I convince myself she’ll become hooked on drugs or air dusters. There are lots of monsters under the mommy bed.”

They both laughed.

“I guess not having someone, a partner to bounce things off of, is tough,” Kenna continued. “All of the decisions are on me and each one moves me a little closer to the nuthouse. But, with all of that, being her mom is the most important thing I will ever do. I need to get it right.”

Travis wasn’t sure he fully understood, not yet, but sitting there with her, he was certain she was what he liked to call an A-plus. Major effort, maximum return. She was brilliantly herself and watching her search his face with uncomfortable eyes, he realized she had absolutely no idea.

Makenna knew he needed to start prepping for dinner, but there he was, as cool as if it were Sunday afternoon. He sat laughing with her and even when she asked him personal questions and tried to get him to run, he stayed. In the privacy of her favorite space, the whole thing felt a whole lot like a date, except if it were a date she probably would not have just flicked a chunk of dried mud off the side of her shoe.

“So, rough morning and the dating’s not going well?”

“I meant what I said, I’m done. I’m better off without it and I have plenty of things to keep me busy. I’m fine.”

“Yeah, me too. I’m fine too.”

“Oh yeah? Again, we’re just in sync, huh?” She rolled her eyes at the absurdity that they had anything in common. Travis nodded.

“Did you have to chase a bunny around your backyard this morning and then listen to a lecture from your five-year-old about how we need to change out all of our lightbulbs to save the polar bears while you drove her to school?”

The look on his face told her this was what he was waiting for from the moment he sat down. He wanted her to vent. Travis shook his head.

“No? Did you forget your breakfast and, because you ran out of the shower and threw your jeans on when your daughter yelled that Popcorn was running away, did you forget to then go back in and put your underwear on? Did you realize you’d forgotten undergarments when you were sitting in the drop-off line sandwiched between the BMWs and the Range Rovers? Did you start your day feeling completely out of control?”

“Well, I did realize I was dangerously low on toothpaste this morning. I need to get some more. Wait, so you’re commando today?”

Kenna tilted her head and felt like they were standing on opposite sides of a canyon. She was beginning to wonder if there was anyone who could relate to her insanity. “I . . . that’s all you got out of what I just said? All that happened before the teacher conference and you’re on my underwear?”

Travis stood, walked around the table, and pulled her to her feet. “Makenna.”

“What, no Ken today?” She looked up at him with bravery she wasn’t feeling.

“No, no Ken.” He pulled her into his arms and hugged her. She had no idea why—maybe it was the release of someone taking hold of her or the simple warmth of him—but she started to cry. It wasn’t a hysterical cry; she felt a shudder and a few tears sink into the cotton of his shirt.