he reasoned, he came up short now, why he just wasn’t any good at this whole dating-ritual thing. Even though he did his best to channel his professional persona into his private life whenever possible, he would be the first to admit, albeit only to himself, that he just didn’t really know what he was doing.
Small talk was particularly difficult for him.
But even though they had said only a few words to each other, Erin seemed very easy to talk to. And, far more important than his own comfort, he could see that she’d made an impression on Jason. Or at least, she and her T. rex had.
That made this an avenue he had to explore—for both Jason’s sake and his own.
Pulling up to where Erin was still waiting for him, he rolled down his window and said—needlessly, he realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth—“Okay, you can follow me now.”
“I thought you’d never ask.” She laughed, starting up her car. She fell into place right behind him.
* * *
The café he’d told her about was in the middle of a very small strip mall, nestled between a five-screen movie theater that guaranteed low admission prices for their slightly-less-than-newly-released movies and an art studio that prided itself on bringing out the budding artists buried within the five-to-ten-year-old students who attended.
It seemed like a nice area, she judged. Best of all, there was more than ample parking available, so when he pulled into a spot, she was able to park right next to him.
He got out of his vehicle and quickly hurried over to hers so that he could open the door for her as she started to get out.
Chivalry was not dead, she thought to herself. This was nice.
“It doesn’t look like much,” he told her as they crossed the lot to the front of the café, “but the pastries practically float off your plate and the coffee is the best around. I can’t speak for the tea, though,” he added, apologizing.
“That’s all right, I’m really a coffee drinker at heart,” she told him.
The scent of freshly brewed rich coffee mingling with the aroma of freshly baked cakes and pastries greeted them the moment Steve opened the door for her.
Erin could feel her mouth watering the second she walked in. Between the aroma and the display of baked goods just behind the glass that ran the length of the counter, she was a goner.
“Well, there goes my diet,” she cracked. “I think I gained five pounds just by inhaling.”
“What is your pleasure?” the older woman behind the counter asked politely.
Erin looked at the pastries, each one more tempting than the last. “One of everything,” she told the woman wistfully.
Though pleasant, the woman behind the counter looked as if a sense of humor was not part of her makeup.
“That can be arranged,” she said in a very serious voice.
Afraid that the woman would begin placing things on the tray that Steve had picked up and was resting on the counter right now, Erin quickly shook her head.
“Oh, no, no, I was just kidding, giving voice to a fantasy,” she explained. Taking a breath, she scanned her choices one last time and made up her mind. “I’ll have a cup of coffee and a cream-filled turnover.”
“Make that two,” Steve told the woman.
The dark-haired woman inclined her head. “As you wish,” she replied.
With a grand sweep of her hand, she indicated that they should move along to the center of the counter, toward the register. She met them there, delivering two cups of steaming, aromatic black coffee and two large cream-filled turnovers, each residing on its own plate. The woman carefully placed the plates one at a time on the tray, right next to the coffee.
She proceeded to ring up the sale. “Will that be together?” she asked.
“No,” Erin answered.
“Yes,” Steve said at the same time, his voice resounding slightly louder than hers. Taking out a twenty, he handed it to the woman.
“No, really, this isn’t necessary,” Erin protested, reaching into her purse.
The woman seemed to take no note of her, handing Steve his change. He slipped what she’d given him into the tip jar beside the register and picked up the tray. For the first time, the older woman smiled.
“You don’t have to pay for me,” Erin told him as he walked over to a small table for two to the left of the register.
Setting the tray down, he looked at her. “If you had asked me out for coffee, I would have expected you to pay for me,” he told her cheerfully, despite the fact that he really wouldn’t have allowed her to pay. The idea of going Dutch had never appealed to him and it wasn’t something he felt comfortable about doing. Certainly not when it came to something as insignificant as a cream-filled turnover and a cup of coffee. “Tell you what,” he suggested, sitting down after she had taken her seat. “You tell me what fantasy you were giving voice to and we’ll call it even.”
She looked at him, slightly confused. “What?”
“Back there, when that woman looked like she was more than happy to give you ‘one of everything,’ you stopped her by saying you were only ‘giving voice to a fantasy.’” As he spoke, he distributed the two cups of coffee and then the two turnovers. With the tray empty, he removed it and put it out of the way on the floor behind his chair. “Did you used to dream about pastries?”
He meant it as a joke, in the same vein that he’d asked her about naming inanimate objects. He hadn’t really expected her to answer his question seriously.
“All the time,” Erin told him with a heartfelt sigh.
“You weren’t allowed sweets as a kid?” he asked. The guess arose out of his own childhood, when one of his friends—Billy—had parents who wouldn’t allow him to have any candy, cake or cookies. Billy’s snacks were all painfully healthy foods, such as nuts, fruits and carrots. The second Billy was out of the house, he made up for it, scarfing down as many sweets as he could get his hands on. He’d had a serious weight problem by the time he was twenty.
Erin, on the other hand, looked as if she was in danger of blowing away if she lost as little as five pounds.
“Oh, I was allowed sweets,” she told him. “I just couldn’t keep any of them down.”
He took a sip of his coffee before venturing, “Allergies?”
Erin broke off a piece of the turnover and savored it before answering, “Chemo.”
“Chemo,” Steve repeated, stunned. “As in chemotherapy?”
“That’s the word,” she acknowledged, nodding her head. Even now, more than twenty years later, the very sound of the word brought a chill down her spine. She always had to remind herself that she had conquered the horrible disease, not the other way around.
He felt as if
