The Marriage Campaign. Karen Templeton
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about finding dinner so late when you got back, right?”
“Please, Blythe?” Quinn said from the other side of the room. Winsome grin and all. Yes, it irked Blythe that she and April hadn’t even known the child existed until a few months ago, that she’d missed all those years when she could have played the doting “auntie,” but since she was more comfortable with older kids, anyway, she supposed it was for the best. “Then you could drive me back to Mom’s and Ryder’s afterward so the Phillipses wouldn’t have to.”
“Now, honey,” Candace said, “you know that’s no bother—”
“I’d be delighted to stay,” Blythe said. “Thank you.” Because as long as Wes wasn’t part of the picture, what could it hurt? “What can I do to help?”
“Not a blessed thing. Dinner’s all done, and the kids set the table. Come on, children—chore time!”
Blythe and the dog followed the intoxicating pot roast scent—and Candace—downstairs and into the kitchen, an open-concept marvel in off-whites and light pine cabinets opening up to the family room that, like the rest of the house, managed to be classy and unpretentious at the same time. Wes’s father, Bill, was watching the news on the big-screen TV, but he stood when the women trooped through, heartily shaking Blythe’s hand, his grin as infectious as his wife’s.
Not to mention his son’s.
And despite the sadness still tingeing everyone’s eyes, the trying-too-hard-to-make-everything-normal-for-the-kid’s-sake vibes, envy still zinged through her. Because at least they were here for each other, they were trying. In fact, she guessed Wes’s parents had put their own lives on hold to take care of their grandson, a sacrifice she sure as heck hadn’t witnessed firsthand. So she briefly mourned this family dynamic she’d never had—and doubted she ever would—even as she decided to content herself with stealing a sliver of a life that wasn’t hers. Living vicariously was better than not living at all, she supposed.
However, they’d no sooner settled at the round pine table in the kitchen’s bay window when the dog lurched to his feet and took off, followed by Jack yelling, “Dad! You said you wouldn’t be home until tomorrow,” as he streaked from the room.
Good thing she’d donned her big girl panties this morning, that’s all she had to say.
“… and Blythe’s here, she came to talk about redoing my room, and it’s going to be awesome, I get to pick out all the new stuff and she said I can keep whatever I don’t want to get rid of! Cool, huh?”
Whoa. Dumping his briefcase on his office desk, Wes couldn’t decide which was messing with his head more, his son’s sounding like an excited six-year-old, or—
“Blythe’s here?”
“Yeah.” Jack frowned. “She said you arranged it.”
The appointment, yes. Her staying for dinner, no. Although, knowing his mother, why was he surprised?
What he definitely was, was dead on his feet. And for sure he didn’t know how he felt about seeing, in his kitchen, the woman whose honesty and craziness and soul-searing gaze had haunted his thoughts and dreams for the past six weeks.
And there she was, stuck at the one seat at the table without easy egress, the only woman in the world who could look radiant in gray. She also looked a bit deer-in-headlighty, which in another life he might have found amusing.
Then his mother—glowing, as usual—popped up from the table and bustled toward the cooktop. “Isn’t this a nice surprise!” she said, ladling pot roast and veggies onto a plate and bustling back. And a surprise it was, an impetuous decision made two hours ago when he realized the thought of spending the night in his office, which he usually did without complaint, made him want to blow his brains out. He wanted to see his family. His son. Now.
Blythe, however—
She lifted one hand and did a finger wiggle. She might have been blushing. Hard to tell in the candlelight. “Hi.”
Loosening his tie, Wes took his seat across the table from her, leaning back slightly when his mother set a plate of food in front of him. Bravely, he met Blythe’s gaze. Felt the zing. “Hi,” he said, thinking, Damn.
Nope, six weeks of not seeing her hadn’t done a blessed thing to dampen his … ardor. This was so not good. Because he was so not ready for … ardor. Or anything else. Although he was grateful to see that some of the terror had abated in those blue eyes that, yep, were still doing the same number on his … head that they’d done that morning in the restaurant.
He was attracted to the woman. Very attracted. Attracted in that way that makes men do dumb things. Especially men dumb enough to think staying busy was a good way to avoid, you know. Living.
“Your mother invited me to stay for dinner,” she said as Wes dug into his food, praying the nourishment would revive him enough to plow through the lengthy bill being discussed on the floor the next day.
“So I see,” he said, except he could barely hear himself because Jack was yakking away a mile a minute in his ear.
Wait. Jack yakking a mile a minute?
Forking in a bite of moist, tender beef—his mother did make a mean pot roast—he looked over at his son. Who seemed, if not happy, at least captivated by something that wasn’t a video game. Huh.
Just go with it, he thought, returning his gaze to Blythe.
Who was watching his son with an I got your back, kid expression Wes found both gratifying and annoying as hell.
As if dinner itself hadn’t been bizarre enough, between watching Wes do the whole Who is this kid? thing with Jack and trying to ignore the zzzzap! to her girl parts every time the man looked at her, afterward ventured dangerously close to Twilight Zone territory.
Blythe would have imagined, given Jack’s obvious resentment over his father’s frequent absences, and his equally obvious excitement that Wes had come home, that the kid would have commandeered Wes’s attention for the rest of the evening. Not so. Instead, the moment he’d dispatched the last molecule of caramel sauce from his sundae glass, he pointedly dragged Quinn off to finish up their game. Which, in turn, had produced another flash of that lost look in Wes’s eyes before, after thanking his mother for dinner and giving her a kiss on the cheek, he also vanished. Leaving Blythe feeling equally at sea, especially when Candace refused her offer to help tidy up.
“That’s my job,” Wes’s dad said with a wink as he carted over stacked plates from the table. “And I’m sure you wouldn’t want to put an old man out of work now, would you?”
And the odd thing was, Blythe thought as she gathered her things, it was clear she would have usurped the older man’s position. Because, listening to the couple’s easy chatter as they scraped and rinsed the dishes and filled the dishwasher, it was obvious this was one of those little rituals that kept the couple’s love alive and kicking. It wasn’t what they did, but that they did it together, the act of sharing the moment turning the mundane into the sweet.
Jeez. What had the woman put in that pot roast, anyway?
Because this whole cozy-family thing wasn’t her thing. Seriously. Sure, she loved hanging with her cousins and all. But they were more like gal pals than relatives, you know? Yeah, yeah, April and Mel kept going on about how they were more like sisters, and Blythe had to admit there’d been the occasional moment during the past several months when she could see where they were coming from. But that didn’t mean she was coming from the same place. Or any place, really. Family … that’s what other people had.
Some other people, anyway. Hey, from what she could tell, this was one of those things that looked a lot better on paper than it did in practice. Because in her experience, people were far more likely to screw it up than make it work.
At least, people who didn’t have decent examples to follow. Say what you will about