into my eyes.”
They both laughed self-consciously.
“I’ve had some second thoughts,” she admitted as she carefully laid the packets of chicken on the barbecue, still not meeting his eyes.
“And?”
Was she going to let him off the hook? Did he want her to?
“This is terribly unfair of me, expecting you to give up your free time like this.”
“Can’t complain about the eats.”
“Really, Eric, we can call this off right now. I’ll still help as much as I can with your committee, but I can’t ask you to—”
“Mindy,” he interrupted, even though he didn’t know what he wanted to say.
“You’re so busy,” she went on.
“When I agree to a deal, I keep my word,” he said, trying to sound resolute and committed.
“But I feel like I’ve trapped you into this.”
She kept fussing with long kabobs of potato, onion, mushroom and colorful yellow, red and green peppers.
“Look at me.”
He wanted to talk to her face, not the back of her head.
She looked at him over her shoulder, just long enough for him to see miniature bolts of green lightning in her intriguing hazel eyes.
“Enough fussing,” he said. “The food is fine.”
She turned and faced him squarely, then reached up and straightened the collar on his turtleneck. One minute she was willing to let him back away from their bargain, and the next she was fixing his shirt. The woman just couldn’t leave him alone. He took her hands in his and stared so intently she dropped her eyes.
“Sorry,” she said meekly.
“I’m going to go inside and talk to your dad,” he said gruffly.
“I meant what I said. You don’t have to do this….”
He went into the house without answering.
5
DAD WAS ONLINE AGAIN when Mindy got home from work late Friday afternoon. She’d moved the patio table into the living room and set up the computer there so she had access when her father was sleeping in the spare bedroom. Still, the arrangement wasn’t working well from her point of view. She did all her planning, organizing and accounting on her computer, usually in the evening. But after being home alone all day, her father was more chatty then he’d ever been before.
“How was your day?” he asked in a hearty voice from his spot on the couch.
“Fine, Dad.” Except for a crabby caterer, a carpenter whose wife had been in labor for twenty-one hours and counting and a client whose check bounced. “Did you find things to keep you busy today?”
“I found a list of e-mail addresses from my class at Penn State. I connected with a guy who lived next to me our freshman year. Now he’s right here in Phoenix. We had a good online chat.”
“Sounds like fun.”
Peaches did her welcoming dance while Mindy kicked off her sandals and enjoyed the cool tiles on the soles of her feet.
“Don’t leave your shoes where I can trip over them,” her father warned.
No, I certainly don’t want you to fall again she thought. “Did you get to your doctor’s appointment all right?”
She still felt guilty about not driving him there herself, but the day had been impossibly busy.
“The cab was twenty minutes late, but I allowed an extra forty-five for the trip.”
When had her father ever been late for anything, unlike Dr. Eric Kincaid who made a specialty of keeping people waiting? And not calling the woman he was supposed to adore.
“I do have good news,” he said.
“What?”
“The doctor says my ankle is coming along fine. Apparently the emergency room handled it okay. I’ll be back on both feet sooner than I thought.”
“That’s great news, Dad.” No more worrying about a phantom boyfriend, not that her father asked about him more than twenty or so times a day.
“That’s not the good news.”
Whoops.
“I’ve decided to stay through Christmas.”
“You mean stay another—”
“I haven’t had Christmas with you in a long time.” Interrupting was one of his little habits that was driving her up the wall.
Her father would be living in her house, micro-managing her life, giving her helpful advice. Until Christmas. She felt panicky. Maybe she could rent a temporary office—no, too expensive. She loved her father, but she desperately needed her space, especially during the busiest season of the year for her business.
“I don’t do much to celebrate Christmas,” she said.
Now there was an understatement. Last year she and Laurie had done each other’s nails and shared a frozen pizza. Her best friend was originally from Rhode Island and, like Laurie, Mindy preferred to make the annual pilgrimage home to see her family in the summer.
“This year we’ll do it up big. You and Eric can help me trim a tree—”
“Dad, Eric probably has other plans. His family will expect him to…”
“We’ll work it out. Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, I’m flexible about when we open presents.”
“Aren’t you forgetting Dwight and Carly and Sam and Kim? I can’t imagine you’d want to miss your grandchildren’s Christmas. You always spend holidays at their house.”
“No problem. I called Carly’s dad today. They’re going to take the family on a trip to Florida as their Christmas present. Renting a condo for a week. They’ll surprise them with the news on Thanksgiving. They can still celebrate a late Christmas with me when we all get home.”
“Sun, sea, beach, amusement parks. Doesn’t sound much like Christmas,” she mused aloud.
“Now don’t be envious, Mindy. Maybe you’ll go some place exotic for your honeymoon, maybe a Caribbean cruise. I might be persuaded to spring for the trip as a wedding present.”
“Dad, I have no plans whatsoever to get married in the near future.”
Peaches ambled away and went to her favorite hidey-hole at the far end of the couch where only the white tips of her paws revealed her location. Even the
