the room so they can see everything.”
As long as he could see her, it didn’t matter. “Anywhere is fine.”
“A man who’s easily pleased. I like that.” Sending a warm smile his way, she picked up a menu from the hostess desk and led the way into the dining area.
Music blended in with the voices of the various patrons, weaving a tapestry of noise that was oddly soothing.
Travis was doing his best to focus exclusively on his role as an impartial family lawyer but it definitely was not as easy as he would have liked. When she spoke, Shana became animated, gesturing to underscore her words. And each gesture caused the neckline of her peasant blouse to dip and move, rendering enticing glimpses of soft, perfect cleavage, the sight of which effectively kidnapped him away from thoughts of all things lawyerly.
“This table all right?” she asked, selecting one that was slightly right of center.
“It’s fine,” he told her, his eyes on her, not the table in question. If she’d offered it, he would have agreed to sit on a toadstool.
Get a grip, Trav, or she’s going to think her father’s employing a babbling idiot.
Taking a seat, he accepted the menu from her. Ambition had always been a driving force in his life. It generated the next question he put to her. “How old are you if you don’t mind my asking?”
She studied him for a long moment before speaking. “That depends.”
He felt his breath catching in his throat and he forced it out. “On?”
“Are you asking the question as our lawyer, or as my father’s guest?”
He tried to gauge which was the better answer and which would get him a response, because he had a feeling that they weren’t equal in her eyes. He went with what was safe. “As your lawyer.”
“Then I’m twenty-five,” she told him.
The first thing that registered was that she was two years younger than he was. He forced himself back on track.
“I’m assuming you have a degree.” She seemed far too intelligent to have just floated aimlessly after high school, living off her father.
“I do.” Amusement entered her eyes as she secondguessed what he was getting at. “You think I should be some fledgling barracuda sailing down the fast lane in pursuit of a mega career.”
That was a little blunter than he would have worded it, but she’d gotten the gist of it. “Not exactly in those terms, but I’d think you would be more motivated than this. Don’t you want to forge a career for yourself?”
She seemed to take no offense from his suggestion. “I have a career, Mr. Marlowe. I’m the hostess here. It allows me to meet a variety of interesting people I might not meet at another job. And, more importantly, I am also my father’s caregiver. With me around, he doesn’t quite feel the sting of his infirmities as strongly as he might if someone else was hovering over him, offering to help when his strength fails him.”
Caregiver.
He understood feelings like that. They fit right in with the way things were done in his own family. It was also nice to discover other people valued home and family the way he did.
He found himself being more and more attracted to Shana. It was a definite conflict of interest, he warned himself.
“He means a lot to you, doesn’t he?” Travis asked warmly.
“He means the world to me,” she corrected and then added, “He’s my dad. I’d walk through fire for him—and he’d do the same for me,” she told him with feeling. “We’ve gotten even closer since my mother died,” she confided. “I couldn’t leave him to deal with things on his own, even if I wanted to—and I don’t,” she underscored in case Travis had another comment to offer about her choice of vocations.
If she had a career the way he seemed to think she should, she wouldn’t have been able to devote as much time to her father as she did. And she wanted to spend time with him. There was this vague feeling buzzing around inside her that time was short.
“I noticed he had trouble getting up from the sofa this morning,” Travis acknowledged. He lowered his voice, as if this was something he understood was private and she didn’t have to answer him if she didn’t want to. “What’s wrong with him, if you don’t mind my asking.”
“If I did, you’d probably only go to the source.” Travis didn’t strike her as a man who backed off until he had what he was after. “My father has a number of things going wrong at the same time.” She deliberately divorced herself from her words. If she didn’t, she knew she would tear up and although he seemed very amiable, Travis was still a stranger. “He has emphysema, a result of a cigarette habit he started at the age of eleven and didn’t stop until he turned sixty-five. Plus there’s angina—he’s on heart medication,” she told Travis before he had the opportunity to ask. “There are also a few other minor conditions, all of which keep him from being the dynamic man he used to be.”
Travis thought of the first impression Shawn made on him this morning. “Oh, I don’t know, he seemed pretty dynamic to me.”
Shana smiled fondly. “You should have seen him when I was a little girl. He seemed to be able to go for days without stopping.” She’d worshipped the ground her father had walked on. “I’d come home from school, rush through my homework and then sit by the window, waiting for him to come home. When he did—and I was still awake,” she added with a laugh because there were many nights when she’d fall asleep waiting, “he’d always pick me up, swing me around and ride me around on his shoulders.
“They seemed like the broadest shoulders in the world to me then.” She let a sigh escape, then flushed ruefully, as if that qualification somehow made her disloyal to her father. “Back then I thought he would go on forever. That he was immortal.” Her voice took on a tinge of sadness. “I think he thought so, too.”
“It’s a common feeling,” Travis told her. He had so many clients who had been coerced by their families to get their affairs in order and prepare a will. “Until someone close to you dies.”
She looked at him sharply, catching something in his voice. “Who died who was close to you?”
He wasn’t here to talk about himself. Backing off, he said, “I was just speaking in general.”
Shana looked into his eyes and then slowly shook her head.
“No, you weren’t,” she countered quietly.
He had no idea how she knew. Maybe those luminescent blue eyes of hers allowed her to look into his soul, maybe not. Either way, he saw no reason to pretend that she was wrong. He didn’t believe in lying.
“My mother.”
His answer surprised her. “You lost your mother, too?” It gave them something in common. Without realizing it, she felt a little closer to him. “When?”
Why was it always painful, going back to that time? He was twenty-two years past it. The memory should have healed by now.
“I
