don’t you make the salad. Use what I bought and whatever you want from the refrigerator. Stick the bread in the oven, too, will you? Then it will be ready when the steaks are.”
Grateful for something to keep herself occupied, Ally hurried back into the kitchen. Like the living room and the dining area she’d passed through on the way, it had walls of exposed brick, too. The cabinets were a light oak, the appliances stainless steel. They were all a far cry from the apartment-size stove and bar-size fridge he’d had on Oahu, and despite her insistence that she just wanted his signature and then she would be out of his life, she found that she was curious about how he lived, who he’d become.
She set about making the salad, periodically glancing back at PJ, who stood silently watching over the steaks. On one level it seemed so natural, so mundane—a husband and wife making supper at the end of a day.
On the other, to be casually cooking dinner with PJ Antonides, as if they were a simple married couple, seemed almost surreal.
She finished the salad and put it on the table, then opened the cupboards looking for plates. His kitchen was rather spare but reasonably well equipped. Obviously he was no stranger to cooking. Did he do it often? Did he have girlfriends who came and cooked for him?
A vision of Annie Cannavaro flashed through her head.
She’d told him about Jon, but he hadn’t said a word about the women in his life. The newspaper article had made it clear that there were plenty of them. No one special, though?
Would he tell her if she asked?
She didn’t get a chance. When he came back with the steaks a few minutes later, he said, “So tell me about how you got started with the fabric art. I remember you made some funky stuff back in the ‘old days,’ but I was surprised when you turned it into your profession.”
She wondered if he was going to have another dig at her for her behavior at the opening in Honolulu. But he seemed actually interested, and so she explained. “When I was in California and I got a job in a fabric store while I was going to school, it seemed like something to explore further. I had access to stuff I didn’t ordinarily have. So I got to try things. Experiment, you know.”
He put a steak on her plate and one on his, then unwrapped the corn from the foil and added an ear to each of their plates. She dished up the salad, then cut the bread. He refilled her wineglass and got himself another beer. They sat down. “Right. Experimenting. I did that with the windsurfer. I know what you mean. Go on. I’m listening,” he prompted.
She hesitated, torn between wanting to tell him how she’d gone from being a mere girl with dreams to a woman who had realized them and wanting to know more about his windsurfer, which had ultimately brought him here. And of course at the same time she realized that neither one was the reason she’d agreed to have dinner with him.
He gave her a patient smile across the table. “We’ve got ten years to catch up on, Al, minus one night. We’re going to be here a while. So talk. Or are you—”
“—chicken?” she finished for him with a knowing smile.
He gave her an unrepentant grin.
“Fine. Here it is in a nutshell.”
And she began to talk again. Maybe she could bore him into signing the divorce papers. While they ate, she began the canned account of how she got into her business, the one she hauled out whenever she was interviewed.
But PJ wasn’t content with that. He asked questions, drew her out. “Were you scared?” he asked her when she was describing the start-up of her first shop.
“Chicken?” she asked wryly.
“No, really nervous.”
She understood the difference. And she nodded. “Felt like I was stepping off into space,” she agreed, and recounted the scary times she’d spent on her own, learning what she was capable of, learning what she liked and what she didn’t, learning who she was, apart from her father’s not-so-dutiful daughter.
It wasn’t something she usually did. Ally had learned early that too much reflection meant that she wouldn’t get anything done at all. She’d think about things too much, worry about them too much, and so she’d taught herself to weigh her options just long enough to see a clear direction. Then she moved ahead.
She didn’t spend a lot of time looking back or analyzing what she’d done. She’d just done it and gone on.
And while she was busy doing, no one was close enough to her or interested enough to ask.
Even when she’d come home, the questions had been few. Her aunt Grace had been impressed. Her father had been too ill to care, and too glad she was home to do more than give thanks that she was there.
Jon thought anything she did was wonderful. He was proud of her. But he was always busy himself. And Ally knew that saving lives was far more important than her “sewing projects” even though he’d never actually said so. He never said much at all about them.
PJ, on the other hand, kept tossing out questions.
And Ally kept answering.
Maybe she answered so expansively because she was proud of what she’d done. Maybe it was to make sure he understood that she had truly taken advantage of the opportunity he’d given her by marrying her, that she’d built something to be proud of, not merely escaped. Maybe it was to show him that she really wasn’t the immature rude person she’d been five years ago.
And maybe, she admitted to herself, it was what happened when she found someone interested enough to really listen.
By the time they had finished dinner, she was aware that she had talked more than she’d talked in ages—and PJ had said very little. He sat there, nursing his beer, tipped back in his chair, watching her from beneath hooded lids.
Her awareness of his scrutiny had made Ally keep talking. But finally she stopped and said firmly, “Enough about me. Tell me about you.”
It could be opening a Pandora’s box.
She might well be better off not knowing anything more about the man who was her husband. But she couldn’t not ask. Besides, she really wanted to know.
“You read the newspaper article.” He stood up and began to clear the table.
“As you said, blah, blah, blah.”
He paused, his hands full of plates. “They got the basics right. More wine?”
Ally shook her head. “No, thanks.” She was mellow enough. She needed to move things along. At the back of her mind she could imagine talking to Jon in the morning, facing again the question about whether she’d got things settled.
“So you don’t want to talk about what you’ve been up to?” she pressed. “I thought this was ‘catching up’ time.”
“I work. I play a little softball. When I have a free weekend I go out to Long Island and surf.”
“You’re living a completely monkish existence, then?”
He grinned. “Doing my best.”
