The House On Willow Street (43 page)

“It’s not a date,” Mara kept telling herself as she got ready for her dinner with Rafe. “It’s only an evening out with somebody I’ve met in a new place, that’s all.” And then inside her head came Cici’s voice saying,
“You’re putting a lot of work into something that isn’t a date!”
Mara had to admit that was true.

She’d used the hot-oil conditioning treatment that made her hair all silky and glossy, and she’d spent quite some time on her makeup, flicking her eyeliner up very carefully, which, even though she was well practiced at it, took time and a steady hand.

Smelling of a delicious combination of lemon and a faintly scented lavender body cream, she was ready to go, all dressed up in an outfit she’d bought for a date with Jack. “You have no power over me anymore,” she had told the blouse fiercely as it hung innocently on the hanger. It was green silk, fitted at the waist, cut low enough in front to give the faintest hint of creamy cleavage. It went with a dark olive tweedy pencil skirt. Jack had loved it.

“God I could rip that off you right now,” he’d said when she turned up to meet him in the restaurant. “Who needs food? Let’s go back to my place.” And they had. They’d left the restaurant without so much as a bite. Jack had thrown some money on the table and had whisked her off to his apartment, where he had indeed removed the outfit and made love to her.

Going out with Rafe would be an exorcism for the outfit. She’d stopped thinking about Jack as often as she used to; she was too busy, for a start. Nobody working for Cashel ever had time to be bored. But Jack’s memory sometimes crept in when she was in bed at night, and she’d wonder if there would ever again be somebody to caress her, to kiss her, to nuzzle into her neck and say he loved her smell.

Mara jammed a brown felt hat on top of her curls and put on her coat, adding a scarf before marching back into the kitchen.

“Okay, Danae, I won’t be long—it’s only dinner.”

“Have fun,” said Danae, beaming at her. “I’m tired tonight, I might be in bed when you come back.”

It was only after Mara had kissed her goodbye, petted Lady and got into her car, that it suddenly occurred to her Danae was subtly saying:
“Stay out as long as you want, darling, nobody will be here to see it, it’s up to you.”

Morelli’s restaurant in Avalon was busy when Mara walked in the door. She was ten minutes late; it had been hard to find parking and these shoes, though joyful to look at, were a nightmare to walk in—well, totter in.

She’d been in Morelli’s before with the girls, and Belle had filled her in on the facts. Gino Morelli had married into a huge Irish family and had set up the restaurant and it had been jammed ever since, people loving the combination of fabulous Italian cooking and the hospitality dished out by his wife, Laura, and her two daughters, Concepta and Jacinta.

Mara was embarrassed because she wasn’t entirely sure which of the two sisters was on the desk this evening. The Morelli women all looked exactly the same: tall, with olive skin, dark eyes and long dark hair.

“Hello,” said Mara, smiling, hoping the smile might make up for her not saying the woman’s name. “I’m Mara—I was here a few weeks ago with my aunt and some friends. I’m joining Rafe Berlin tonight. I don’t know if he’s here already but I am a bit late.”

The dark haired woman behind the counter smiled. “Hello, Mara, lovely to have you back. My sister Jacinta and I were saying only the other day what a lovely evening that was when you and the ladies invited us to join you. Mr. Berlin is
here. We’ve been admiring him already,” she said and one eyebrow lifted, “if I wasn’t a married lady, well . . .”

She left the rest of the sentence unsaid and Mara found herself grinning happily. He was good looking, there was no doubt about that, but this wasn’t a date. If Cici were to ask her about it again, she’d explain: No. Date. Whatsoever.

With swaying hips, Concepta brought her to the table where Rafe was waiting and Mara had to agree with Concepta: Rafe was looking pretty good tonight. He stood up when she arrived and held back her seat. She was surprised, Jack had never done that sort of thing. Then he kissed her gently on both cheeks, European style. Mara found herself getting a bit flustered.
Definitely not a date
, she said to herself.
This is two people meeting for dinner. Modern people do this: have dinner, make friends with members of the opposite sex, it doesn’t have to
mean
anything.

“You look beautiful,” Rafe said, and this time Mara actually flushed.

“Thank you,” she said, and busied herself picking up the menu. “Sorry I’m late, these shoes . . . and I couldn’t find parking . . .”

“I didn’t mind waiting for you,” Rafe said in that beautiful Kiwi accent. And the way he said it made Mara think what he was really saying was that he’d be prepared to wait a long time for her.

“So how have you been?” Mara asked, in a voice that sounded a little false even to her. She’d been aiming for matey, but it wasn’t coming out quite right.

“I’ve been fine,” said Rafe. “Looking forward to this, of course. I hadn’t expected to wait so long for you to set a date.”

“I was a bit busy,” said Mara, which was an understatement.

“I figured that,” he said lazily, smiling at her in a way that was very date-like.

“Yes,” breathed Mara, flushing a bit.

This wasn’t turning out the way she’d expected. He was acting like a suitor and she was responding. Boy, was she responding.

It was beginning to feel like a proper boyfriend/girlfriend dinner, and she was nervous now and conscious of him, how he looked and how he looked at her. Those blue eyes devouring her, not in a horrible way but in a loving, appreciative way.

She kept her head down, looking at the menu, although she wasn’t reading it at all. It was a jumble of words and letters, pasta and basil and God knows what she was going to eat because suddenly she didn’t feel in the slightest bit hungry and he was still looking at her, she could tell. She looked up.

“For God’s sake, stop looking at me, okay?”

“Why am I not allowed look at you?” he demanded.

“Because you’re putting me off,” Mara said. “This isn’t a date.”

“It isn’t?” he asked.

“Well, no. I thought we were going out to dinner and you were going to fill me in on the town, both of us being newcomers.”

“I don’t know about around here, but where I come from that’s a date.”

“I told you, I have recently come out of a very hurtful relationship—well, hurtful when it ended,” Mara said. “I’m not up for going out with anyone. My heart is broken, okay? Totally broken.” She glared at him.

“You are not wearing a totally broken outfit, and you do not look totally broken,” Rafe said. “But forgive me if I’m
wrong. Kiwi cowboys, such as I, have no clue what goes on in sophisticated Celtic women’s minds.”

“I did not say you were a cowboy,” she said. “Well, okay, I did. But you
were
wearing that ridiculous hat.”

“I went to Texas, I bought a hat, I like it,” he said. “And y’know, people have said in the past that it sort of suits me. Not that I’m really tall enough to carry it off.” And Rafe was grinning at her.

“Do not be mocking me, Rafe Berlin,” she said, but she was beginning to grin too. “Fine, for categorizing purposes, it is a date. But a really, really, really early one. A sort of ‘we don’t know each other at all and let’s see if we even vaguely like each other’ one,” Mara said. “Okay? Those are the ground rules.”

“Ground rules, right,” said Rafe. “I will try and remember them. What are the other ground rules? Am I allowed to touch you? Was that double-kissing thing acceptable? ’Cos, you know, most women like that.”

“Do not do things to me that
most women
like,” she said. “I am not
most women.
I want to be treated like an individual.”

“Fair enough,” Rafe said. “I thought
you
might like it.” His voice was lower now and Mara found that she was holding her breath because she had liked it, liked it a lot. But she couldn’t let him in, she was too hurt. It was too early. It was all wrong.

“How about we pick something to eat, and have our dinner and talk about stuff, and that’ll be the first really-really-early embryonic date over?”

“Is there a time limit on this embryonic-date stuff?” Rafe asked.

Mara pretended to think about this. “Mmm, it’s a long time since I’ve done this. I think maybe two hours maximum.
And then, you might escort me to my car—very slowly, because I’m wearing high-heeled shoes.”

“I noticed,” he said. “I love your shoes.”

“But not in a shoe-fetishy way, right?” Mara asked.

“No,” he agreed, “not in a shoe-fetishy way. I just like the way they make you sort of walk . . . well, very nicely. Next subject,” Rafe said. He gave up on trying to explain how attractive he found the way she walked, that instinctive little sway of her hips, the fact that all the men in the restaurant had looked at her and she hadn’t noticed them at all. “So after two hours I walk you to your car, shake hands with you and you go home. And if I’m really good we can do it all again next week?”

“That sounds reasonable,” Mara said.

By eleven o’clock, there weren’t many other couples left in Morelli’s. They’d shared a bottle of wine and Mara felt totally giggly and deliciously relaxed. She refused the waiter’s offer of a complimentary Italian liqueur. “Oh, heavens no, I couldn’t,” she said, “sorry.”

“Me neither,” Rafe said. “I feel a bit drunk really,” he added, “which is odd on two and a half glasses of wine.”

“Me too,” Mara said, astonished. “Why is that?”

He reached over and touched her hand on the table. He’d done that a few times and she’d let him. He was affectionate, liked reaching out and touching her. As well as her hand, he’d touched her face once when she had a crumb of bread stick on her mouth. And the strange thing was, she liked him touching her.

“I don’t think I can walk you to your car,” Rafe said. “You have to get a taxi. I should have picked you up in a taxi, but I didn’t want to push my luck. Especially when it was hard enough getting you to meet me in a restaurant in the first place.”

Mara smiled, feeling mellow and comfortable.

“My last boyfriend almost never picked me up,” she said candidly. “He’d just tell me to meet him somewhere. Once he wanted to meet up inside some fancy nightclub, which meant when I got to the door I had to pay the cover charge. It really annoyed Cici, my flatmate. She reckoned he was a tight git and he’d fixed it deliberately to save having to pay for me.”

“I’d say worse than that,” said Rafe, “but I’m not supposed to curse in front of ladies. I’ve never met somebody in a restaurant before; I’ve always picked them up.”

“On the back of your motorbike?” Mara asked playfully.

“No,” he said soberly. “If I’m going to have a drink, I take a taxi. My brother’s injury was caused by a drunk driver. That’s why you are not driving home tonight, you are getting a taxi.”

“I wouldn’t dream of driving tonight,” she said. “I didn’t plan to have anything to drink, that’s why I brought the car. I mean, I don’t ever drink and drive,” she said, anxious to convince him of the fact.

“It’s fine, I believe you,” he said, “but you know when something like that happens to you or someone close to you, it changes the way you think about things. I could never go out with somebody who thought it was okay to have a couple of glasses of wine and get into their car and drive home.”

“It must have been terrible, his accident,” Mara said.

“Horrific,” Rafe replied. “He’s my big brother. All the time we were growing up, he was like a god to me. To see him in that hospital bed and hear that he’d never walk again . . . It was pretty rough. He thought Karen should walk away from him, find another father for the baby, even though that would have killed him. He didn’t want to be a burden. ‘A kid needs a dad who can stand up,’ he said.

“You know what Karen said to that?” Rafe looked off into the distance, remembering. “She said she didn’t care what had happened to him, she loved him, nothing could change who he was, and he was the man for her. And he’s the most amazing dad in the world, which I keep telling him when I remind him of all the dumb things he said about needing to stand up to be a father.”

“He must be pretty special,” said Mara.

Rafe grinned at her. “People say both the Berlin brothers are pretty special,” he said, with a slightly wicked grin. “Let’s get you out of here. In a cosmopolitan hot spot like Avalon, all the taxis will be gone if we don’t get a move on.”

Rafe asked for the bill and when it arrived Mara made an attempt to grab it.

“We’re going Dutch on this,” she said.

“No,” Rafe said. “I’m sorry, but where I come from when a guy asks a girl out to dinner he pays the bill. You’ll have to excuse my rough Kiwi cowboy ways, but that’s what we’re going to do.”

Concepta, who’d brought the bill, sighed a little at this masterful talk and shot Mara a glance that said:
You are one lucky girl.

“Okay,” said Mara, “but I pay next time. I’ve got a job now.”

“We can talk about that later,” Rafe said.

He paid the bill and added a healthy tip. Mara had been craning her neck to see his tip and she was delighted. She hated bad tippers. Then he helped her into her coat at the door and somehow he was holding her hand as he led her out on to the street. When she immediately began to shiver in the bitter cold, Rafe put his arm around her shoulders.

“That sure is a nice coat,” he said, “but I don’t think it’s warm enough.” A taxi cruised past and Rafe waved.

“The house right at the end of Willow Street,” Rafe told the taxi driver.

“You’re not going to come with me? ’Cos the driver can drop you first and then me,” Mara said, getting in and then turning around and looking up at him.

He leaned in, his face close to her.

“You know what, Mara,” he said, his voice soft like honey, “I don’t think I can trust myself with you in a taxi.” And then he kissed her on the mouth, and Mara found herself leaning closer to him, her eyes closed, sinking into the kiss, feeling the controlled heat.