want to do the right thing, or things, it was just that he still wasn’t sure what, exactly, that was.
Two showings, an office meeting and a closing later, he walked through the garage entrance into his house to be assailed by the mouth-watering aroma of roast pork, the pulse-quickening beat of bluegrass fiddle. Tugging off his tie, he followed his nose to the kitchen, where Dana—oblivious to his arrival—was stirring something in a pot on the stove, her white-shorted fanny wiggling in time to the music. In one corner, safely out of harm’s way, Ethan sat up in his playpen, gnawing on a set of plastic keys. The instant he caught sight of C.J., though, the keys went flying. With a huge grin, the baby lifted his arms, yelling “Ba!”
Dana whipped around, her hand splayed across her stomach. As usual, several pieces of her hair had escaped her topknot, curling lazily alongside her neck, the ends teasing her collarbone and the neckline of her loose tank top. She laughed. “Somebody needs to put a bell on you, mister! You’re home early!”
Home. The word vibrated between them, like a single note plucked on a violin, clear and pure and destined to fade into nothingness. A word C.J. had never associated with this house. Or any other place he’d ever lived, for that matter. A concept he’d never associated with himself, he realized as he set down his briefcase and scooped up his baby son, who began to excitedly babble about his day.
C.J. stood there, literally soaking up his baby’s slobbery smile. At that moment, he felt as though he’d stepped into some family sitcom, where no matter what tried to rip apart the characters during the course of the episode, family ties always triumphed in the end. Except real life wasn’t a sitcom, and the habit of a lifetime wasn’t going to be fixed in twenty-two minutes.
“What’s all this?” he asked, deliberately derailing his own train of thought.
“Nothing ‘all this’ about it. Business was slow so I took off early, figured I might as well throw the pork in the oven. We’re eating in the dining room, by the way.”
He glanced toward the room in question, saw the table set with place mats, cloth napkins, candlesticks. A centerpiece, for God’s sake.
“I never eat in the dining room,” he said.
“Then it’s high time you did,” she said.
Honest to Pete, she’d had no agenda behind dinner beyond feeding everybody. Roasts were no-brainers, for heaven’s sake. As were boiled potatoes and steamed asparagus. Okay, so maybe the gravy was a little tricky, but not if you’d been making it since you were twelve.
And really, she hadn’t been trying to impress him or anything with the table setting, she’d just thought it seemed a shame, never using the dining room. The man needed to start appreciating his own house, that’s all.
So the look on his face when he’d walked in, smelled the cooking, seen the table, taken that first bite of pork … was icing on the cake. Seriously.
His chuckle when she handed him a dessert dish of Jell-O topped with a fluffy mountain of whipped cream, however … priceless.
They’d progressed to the family room, ostensibly to watch a film. She’d raided her parents’ stash of DVDs, hauling back everything from old Hepburn-Tracy flicks to Clint Eastwood westerns, vintage Woody Allen to Indiana Jones, eighties-era chick flicks to over-the-top disaster movies. But the slim, colorful cases lay fanned out on the coffee table, temporarily forsaken. Instead, C.J. sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace with Ethan in his lap, halfheartedly fending off the baby’s attempts to steal his whipped cream, and Dana thought, Yeah, it’s like that.
Or could be, anyway.
“I’d forgotten how good this is,” he said.
“Isn’t it crazy?” she said, spooning a big glob into her own mouth. “Mama always used to make Jell-O for me when I was feeling down in the dumps.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “So it’s a comfort food, then?”
“Well, the whipped cream is the comfort food, actually. But squirting whipped cream directly into your mouth is really pathetic.”
“Or efficient,” he said with a grin. “Go away, cat,” he said to Steve, who kept trying to bat at the whipped cream. C.J. held the dish up out of the cat’s reach. “Mine. Mine, mine, mine.” Ethan’s eyes followed the dish, followed by a squawk. C.J. gave her a helpless look, and she giggled.
“Oh, go on, let him have some.”
C.J. blew out a sigh, but lowered the dish anyway. Only the poor cat couldn’t figure out how to attack something that wouldn’t stay still, his head bobbing along with the quivering whipped cream. C.J. laughed, and Ethan chortled, and the cat finally stalked off, thoroughly put out.
“So how’s the writing coming?” C.J. asked. Then frowned. “What?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s just that I hate that question.”
“Oh. Sorry. Why?”
“Because I never know how to answer it. I know you mean well, but—”
“It’s okay, I understand. Well, actually, I don’t, but if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t want to talk about it.” He fed another bite of Jell-O to the baby, then said, “One question, though—does anyone else know you’re writing?”
“Not really. Well, my parents do,” she said on an exhaled breath. “My mother thinks it’s silly.”
His forehead creased. “Has she read any of it?”
“I doubt that would make a difference. It’s all a little too pie in the sky for her. Offends her practical sensibilities.”
“Because it’s a risk, you mean?”
“I suppose. She had enough trouble dealing with me going into business with Mercy and Cass, instead of getting a nice, secure accounting job with some well-established firm.” A smile flickered over her lips. “She worries.”
His dessert finished, C.J. set the dish up on the coffee table, then turned Ethan around to face him. Laughing, the baby dug his feet into the carpet and pushed up, clutching the front of C.J.’s shirt.
“Hey, look at you, hot stuff!” he said, clearly delighted, only to immediately suck in a breath. “Oh, God—when do they start walking?”
“Whenever they’re ready. Around a year, maybe later. He has to crawl first, though. At least, so I gather.”
And will I even be in the picture when that happens?
The thought pricked the haze of contentment she’d let herself be lulled into, propelling her to her feet to gather dessert dishes, which she carted back into the kitchen. C.J. followed, the baby in his arms.
“Hey. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Really,” she said with a forced smile when he frowned at her. “Just one of my moods again.” Then, because melancholy always led to masochism, she said, “So how exactly did you end up with my cousin, anyway?”
Clearly startled, C.J. pushed out a short laugh.
