Turning Thirty-Twelve (7 page)

It suddenly occurred to me that Carly was matchmaking. She was a budding Yenta straight out of
Fiddler on the Roof
. God love her, she wanted me to like her father. That wasn’t something she needed to worry about. I already did.

He reached up and ruffled her hair.

She threw him a disgruntled glare and tried to comb her bangs back into place with her fingers.

“I’ll go call Domino’s,” she announced. She started to run out of the foyer, but quickly whirled back around. “Breadsticks, too? And some cinnamon sticks?”

Mark nodded.

Carly was practically skipping when she left.

“Sorry.” He took my hand and started to pull me out of the foyer.

“Why? She’s wonderful.”

He chuckled. “And a little too enthusiastic. She likes you. A lot. And she... Well, she misses her mother.”

I’d forgotten all about his late wife. Didn’t Suzanne say she passed away because of breast cancer?

A wave of sadness washed over me. I had a habit of absorbing other people’s emotions, and I could tell exactly how much the subject was still haunting Mark.

“I’m so sorry about her mother.” Tears stung my eyes.

“I still…” He swiped his hand over his face. “I miss her sometimes.”

His long sigh sounded mournful to me. He must have loved his late wife a great deal. I wanted to pull him into my arms, stroke his hair, and tell him I would make it all better.

But I couldn’t do that—wouldn’t do that—because I wasn’t capable of making this better for him. Life could be so cruel sometimes. I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze and fought my own tears.

It was the best I could manage.

Mark shook off his melancholy and he favored me with a weak smile. “Let’s go see what kind of junk food she’s ordered. Maybe we can pick a flick before she chooses something lame.”

The house was beautiful. He led me through a dining room, a den, and a formal gathering room that looked like a damned museum. The carpet still bore the marks the vacuum left in its wake.

I was about to make some smart-aleck remark concerning whether he suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder when it dawned on me that with Patrick and Nate gone there were probably several rooms in my house that I never set foot inside anymore. They were probably exactly like this room. I bit my tongue and enjoyed the rest of the tour.

We settled in the kitchen. Mark pulled out a long-legged wooden barstool that was sitting next to a large island of cabinets. I took a seat while he poured soft drinks for the three of us. Carly scooted onto the barstool next to me, leaned her elbows on the counter, and stared at her father.

He raised an eyebrow at her, held up his wrist, and pointed to his watch. She smiled and nodded.

I realized I’d missed something. These two communicated well without words.

Carly bounced off the stool and held out her hand. Mark pulled out his wallet, set a twenty-dollar bill on her palm, and shoved the wallet back into his pocket. She frowned, narrowed her eyes at him, and began to tap her toes on the tiled floor. He let out an exaggerated sigh before he fished his wallet back out of his pants. He pulled another twenty out and held it out to Carly. She snatched the bill from his fingers, kissed his cheek, and headed back toward the front of the house.

The doorbell rang only a moment or two later.

Mark smiled at my confused star. “She gets to keep the change.”

“Ah. Now I know why she was so happy.”

“Yeah, but she has to give the delivery kid a tip. She can be pretty stingy.”

Carly brought back the pizza boxes, set them on the counter, and grabbed some plates from one of the cabinets.

Mark handed me a plate and then piled his own with a several slices of pepperoni pizza, a couple of breadsticks, and a container of cheese dipping sauce. He disappeared into the family room.

I took a slice of pizza and followed Carly as she headed the same direction.

She nodded toward the large sofa, so I sat down. She left her plate on the glass coffee table and ran back to the kitchen. When she returned, she set our glasses of soda down on the table, picked her plate back up, and plopped down in a recliner.

Mark was fiddling with a DVD player connected to a large-screen television. “I took the liberty of choosing a movie. Let me know if you don’t like it, Jackie.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” I picked up my pizza and took a bite. I almost choked when
Jackass
came on the screen. With some embarrassment, I quickly chewed and swallowed the pizza. “Your favorite show?”

He laughed. “Nah. Just wanted to see your reaction.”

“Cops are weird. He’s always trying to find out about people by watching them,” Carly added from her perch on the recliner.

He winked at her before he asked, “What do we watch, Ms. Delgado? I vote for one of the
Lethal Weapon
shows.”

Carly wrinkled her nose. “If I have to watch one of those again, I’ll... I’ll...”

“Leave us alone?” her father asked with a raised eyebrow.

“You said I could stay for a while!”

Fearing a family fight over the presence of a teenage chaperone, I intervened. “I don’t like cop shows. Too much...macho. All that testosterone and all.”

In actuality, I hated violence in any form—especially guns. They made me queasy and nervous. For me, watching an action flick would’ve been akin to having a nasty root canal without any anesthetic. The only thing I would have hated worse was a slasher flick. My theory was those kinds of movies would eventually lead to the downfall of mankind.

Mark appeared to be properly outraged.

I retaliated with a smile. “And Carly, you can stay. I enjoy your company.”

He looked properly pleased. After plucking a DVD from the shelf, he shoved it in the player and then flopped down next to me on the couch hard enough I bounced.

Happy Feet
came on the screen. I hadn’t seen it, so I was thrilled. At least I was thrilled until I realized how many references to sex would be included in what was supposed to be a children’s cartoon. Jesus, the temperature went up rapidly. Mark and Carly didn’t seem to mind.

Maybe the problem was my own dirty mind.

Sometime during the show, she brought in the cinnamon sticks, and I ate a couple despite the fact it would be faster to apply them directly to my thighs and bypass the stomach entirely. They were going to wind up there eventually anyway.

As I held one up to take a bite, some of the icing began to drip, and I quickly caught it with the fingers of my other hand.

Carly jumped up and ran to the kitchen—probably to get me a napkin.

Mark glanced over his shoulder toward the kitchen, then he reached for my sticky fingers and licked off the icing with one long, caressing lick of that heavenly tongue.

My face must have flushed the same red as the old Soviet Union flag. My heart was pounding a frantic rhythm as I realized just how much this man affected me. 

He gave me an entirely wicked smile and dropped my hand just as Carly came back into the room and gave me a paper towel.

I pretended to wipe off the icing that was no longer on my fingers. I hoped she didn’t see what her father had done to cause my blush. I looked back at Mark to try and give him a chastising glare, but he wiggled his eyebrows at me. The temperature instantly shot even higher.

I tried to settle down and watch the cartoon. Carly flipped the footrest up on her recliner and relaxed. Mark draped his arm on the back of the sofa.

I felt like a teenager again, waiting, anticipating, longing. He subtly dropped his arm to my shoulder, caressing me with those clever fingers. Fire raced through my gut—that giddy warm feeling that you get when something excites you and reaches you on a visceral level.

After the movie, I asked for directions to a bathroom. As I walked away, I saw Mark talking quietly to Carly. She was nodding her head in response to his whispered words.

When I returned to the family room, she’d disappeared.

Mark stared at me with that little boy I-did-something-naughty twinkle in his eyes. He finally answered my unasked question. “Carly wanted to go...um...surf the net for a while.”

I wasn’t going to let him think I didn’t know what he was doing, even if I did find it both flattering and exciting. “Oh. I see. And she wanted to do this because?”

“I asked her to let us have some alone time.”

Got to love a man who’s honest.

I walked back to the coffee table and began to pick up the plates and glasses. He came over to help me. We carried everything into the kitchen. It felt downright domestic to stand side-by-side and wash and dry the dishes together. It was so comfortable. So like a real couple. So...

Stop it, Jackie. Just because your family is gone doesn’t mean you can adopt this one.

“Want to watch another flick?” Mark asked as I finished wiping the counter with the damp cloth.

“I should probably go. We lost our chaperone after all. People will talk.”

He grabbed my arm and turned me to face him. He reached out and caressed my cheek. “Stay. We can...talk.”

I turned my face toward his warm palm. The man was a magnet and I was metal. “Talk?”

“I barely know anything about you. Let me play detective.” He took the dishrag out of my hand and tossed it next to the sink before he wrapped his hand around mine and led me back to the sofa.

As we settled in, we turned to face each other. He casually rested his bent knee against mine. It was so relaxed and entirely too comfortable. I knew it. I’d let him in already.

Damn it all anyway.

“Tell me about you.”  Mark laid his hand over mine where it rested on the back of the couch.

I shrugged. “I’m a teacher. I’ve got two boys away at college.”

He shook his head as he stroked my hand and wrist with his warm fingertips. The touch was so gentle it sent shivers running up my arm. “Tell me about
you
.”

I had to take a minute to think about that. For most of my life, I’d been either a child or caregiver. I’d been my parents’ daughter, then I was suddenly David’s wife. We’d married so stinking early in life, barely out of our adolescence. It still embarrassed me that I’d had to get married. And then I became Patrick and Nate’s mother. The hardest transition for me had been changing my name back to Delgado when David and I divorced because I’d been “Mrs. Ryan” for so long to all my students.

Hell, I’d been that identity so long to
me
. 

So exactly who
is
Jacqueline Marie Delgado?

Mark loudly cleared his throat.

I came back from my reverie, blushing all the way. “Sorry,” I offered. “Thinking too hard again?”

He tossed me a nod. “Since telling me about you seems to be a difficult topic, let’s just start with the simple stuff. Where were you born?”

“Georgia. Fort Benning. My dad was assigned to dishing out basic training.”

“Army brat. I remember.” He began to stroke my hand again.

We started to play a chase with our fingers.

I let him win.

“I suppose Suzanne told you I’m divorced.”

A slant of his head and a raised eyebrow told me he was confused. “That’s quite a leap. Born in Georgia, then divorced. Child bride?”

The guy made me laugh at myself. Aloud. That was a gift from God if I ever knew of one. “Not that young, but young enough. Nineteen.”

A low whistle spilled from his lips. “That’s only a year older than Kathy. Way too young. How old were you when your oldest came along. Patrick, is it?”

“Yeah, Patrick.” I was flattered he’d remembered but not thrilled with confessing my youthful indiscretion. “Let’s just say he was a big baby for being six weeks premature. I was only twenty. Nate was a few years later. Then we learned about this miraculous invention called ‘birth control.’”

He chuckled. Then his face turned serious. “Elaine and I were high school sweethearts.”

My heart clenched in empathy. He was sharing stories with me about his late wife, and it was an important sign, a tell. He felt comfortable with me—just like I was comfortable around him.

I suddenly felt pulled in two directions. I wanted to know about her, but I didn’t. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t recognize that her ghost was sitting between us, I just didn’t want to know her well enough to mourn her passing. But I quickly realized I already did. I mourned what Mark and his daughters had lost.

“It took us some time to have the girls. Not horribly long, but Elaine was getting...nervous. It’s not like the Army has a lot of fertility benefits.”

We talked for some time about our lives, our families. Mark kept touching me. Sweet little caressing touches on my hand, my wrist, my knee. They were simple pats, almost absentminded. I’d forgotten how much I loved that type of contact and realized just how desperately I’d missed it.

After the first couple of years, David hadn’t been very demonstrative. Toward the end of our marriage, sex had become more a biological function than a loving expression of affection. I drank each of Mark’s caresses in like good, smooth whiskey, and he made me feel just as drunk.

We never did get around to watching another movie. By the time I recovered from my “Mark bender,” I looked up at the clock and gasped.

Midnight
.

“Oh, my stars. How did it get to be midnight?” I asked.

“Good company and pleasant conversation. Are you afraid your car will turn back into a pumpkin?” He chuckled and gave me one of those incredible smiles.

“It’s already a pumpkin.” I stood up and stretched. “I really should be heading home. I’ve abused your hospitality long enough.”

Mark jumped to his feet, grabbed my hand, and tugged me into his arms. Damn, it was like some romantic movie as he stood there staring into my eyes. He was kissing me a second later.

Only four guys had kissed me in my entire life. At least it was four if you didn’t count my father and my weird cousin Henry who kissed every woman he could get his hands on.  But even with my limited experience, I knew this man was something special—this kiss was something special.