Oh. Meaning you don’t like my policies, I take it.”
Blythe blew out a breath. “This isn’t my district. I have no idea what your policies are.” Liar, liar … “And I really don’t feel up to talking, if you don’t mind. At least not until I get some food in my stomach.”
“Of course, I … Never mind. Come on.”
Wes let her go through the automatic doors ahead of him, and the dry, warm air in the lobby enveloped her like a grandmother’s hug—not her grandmother, but somebody’s—as she joined Mel, April and the kids, clustered in front of the registration desk. Which was littered with every Valentine’s tchotchke ever invented. Great.
“See you later?” Wes said shortly afterward, key card in hand. “In the restaurant?” When she frowned, that eyebrow lifted again. As well as the corners of that mouth. “You said you needed to eat?”
Blythe’s eyes cut to the others, who were too busy yakking among themselves to witness the little exchange, thank God. “Depends on what Mel got at the store,” she said. “Truthfully, all I want is to stretch out in a dark, quiet room until this blasted headache goes away.”
His eyes twinkled. “Quiet? With that group?”
“If the gods are kind, they’ll all congregate in the other room and leave me in peace.”
“Well, if you change your mind—”
“Not likely,” Blythe said as an infant’s wail pierced her cousins’ chatter, and Wes gave her something like a little bow.
“Have a good night, then,” he and his dimples said. Then he ushered his son away, her gaze trailing after them like a confused, dumb puppy.
The puppy hauled back by the scruff of its neck, Blythe was about to break up the jabberfest when she noticed the bedraggled young father clutching the counter in front of the frowning clerk madly clicking her computer keys. Beside him, two young children clung like possums to his even more bedraggled wife, who was jiggling a wailing infant in her arms. Poor things.
“You guys ready to go up to the rooms?” Blythe said. “Don’t know about you, but I’m about to crash.”
“We figured we may as well hit the restaurant first,” Mel said. “Since it’s not as if we have luggage or anything.”
“But …” Blythe frowned at the grocery bags, still in Mel’s hands. “Didn’t you buy food?”
“Munchies, mainly. Although there is a rotisserie chicken in there—”
“Close enough,” Blythe said, grabbing the bags. “Give me a card, I’ll see you guys later—”
“I’m so sorry,” the clerk said to the little family, her words carrying across the lobby like she was wearing a mike, “but we just booked our last available rooms …”
April and Mel exchanged a blink-and-you’d-miss-it glance—which Blythe didn’t—before April marched back to the clerk. “Give ’em one of our rooms. We gals can all bunk together. Right?”
So close. And yet, so far, Blythe thought, even as her hurting head threw a hissy fit. Then she looked again at the woman and her kids, and her heart kicked her throbbing head to the curb.
“Of course!” she said brightly. “Not like we all haven’t shared a room before.” If many, many years ago.
“Are you sure?” the wife said, shifting the bawling babe in her arms and managing to look miserable and grateful at the same time. “We wouldn’t want to put you out.”
“You’re not. At all.” Blythe smiled. “I swear.”
Tears in her eyes, the young mother shifted the baby to hug all three of them in turn, and her cousins trooped to the restaurant and Blythe up to their room, where, for the next hour, she consoled herself with rotisserie chicken, potato salad and the eye-roll-worthy shenanigans of a bunch of surgically enhanced TV housewives whose lives were far more drama-ridden than hers.
Now, in any case. And considering what she’d gone through to get to this point, her hormones could just go hang themselves.
The next morning, Blythe wrenched open her eyes to total darkness, save for the pale gray chink in the closed draperies. As the others slept, she cautiously eased out of bed, cracking open the drapes enough to see the snow already melting, even in the weak winter sun. Hallelujah.
Then she caught her reflection in the mirror over the dresser and grimaced. Fortunately her sweater and jeans were wear-again-worthy, even if she had to fend off the ickies of not being able to change her undies before facing the public again. But her hair … eesh. She could, however, wash up and brush her teeth—bless her hide, Mel had bought them all toothbrushes and a few essential toiletries—even if the only makeup she had in her purse was lipgloss.
Meaning, even cleaned up and redressed she looked like a vampire who hadn’t had a good feed in a while. Or access to any decent hair care products, she mused as she doused her head with water from the spigot, then yanked a comb through her cropped hair until it looked … not horrible. With any luck, though—she clicked the door shut behind her and headed down the carpeted hall—she’d be the first one in the restaurant, and nobody would see her. Because the way her stomach was growling, Pringles and grapes weren’t going to cut it. Especially when the elevator doors opened on the ground floor, and the scents of bacon and coffee and pancakes hauled her toward the restaurant’s entrance like those little aliens did to Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters.
Blythe stood inside, breathing deeply for a moment until the hostess told her to sit anywhere she liked, and she rounded a huge potted plant to see that Wes and Jack had apparently beaten her by several minutes. Well, hell. She froze, watching, as the boy chattered away, his father leaning over his plate as he ate—bacon and eggs, Blythe saw—clearly intent on whatever Jack was saying. Occasionally, Wes would chuckle, pushing at those dimples, and the adoring expression on his son’s face twisted Blythe inside out.
Then some woman barged in on the scene, interrupting Jack in the middle of a sentence to introduce herself to his father, and Blythe watched the kid’s face collapse. True, apology flickered across Wes’s features as he glanced at his son before standing to graciously acknowledge the woman, briefly introduce her to Jack, then listen as intently to her as he had a moment earlier to his child. Also true was the conflict evident in Wes’s body language, that despite his graciousness he wasn’t happy about having his private time with his son interrupted. But far worse, from her perspective, was the hurt and annoyance bowing Jack’s slender shoulders as he frowned at his pancakes, shredding rather than eating them.
“Really, sit anywhere at all,” the hostess said as she breezed past, and Blythe realized with a rush of heat to her face that she’d been staring.
“Right,” she said, watching Wes hand the woman a card, along with a warm smile and a firm handshake before sending her on her way—
“Blythe!” Jack boomed. “Over here!”
So much for slipping into a booth out of their sight. But the way the child’s face lit up … how could she say no? Although naturally they were sitting right next to a window, through which streamed that particularly bright, revealing, après-snowfall light.
Then
