Kent was a kid he had a new crush every week. Steven would soon forget “Ms. Desi” and all would be back to normal.
After he cleaned up the kitchen he’d take a walk next door and ask Desi if she’d like to come along on Saturday. He wouldn’t say a word to Steven, though, so the kid wouldn’t feel the sting if she said thanks but no.
An hour later, Steven was showered and in his pajamas and planted in front of the TV in the family room.
Kent stared at himself in the bathroom mirror, wondering why in hell he felt compelled to brush his teeth and gargle before heading next door. He cursed under his breath as he headed downstairs toward the door. If he didn’t watch it, next he’d be picking posies from the yard for the substitute teacher.
Nothing made sense about asking the new lady in town along just because his son wanted her to come. One thing was painfully clear, though. He’d been hanging out with eight-year-old boys too much lately. Then one last thought wafted up as he crossed his lawn, heading for Gerda’s place—even an eight-year-old could see Desi was easy on the eyes.
* * *
Desi sat on a wicker glider on the large front porch behind the second arch, the huge living room window behind her. She’d thrown one of Gerda’s warm shawls over her shoulders to ward off the chill from the night air. Under the dim porch light she was barely able to make out the print in the Music Today magazine she’d surprisingly found on her grandmother’s coffee table.
Soon she’d have to switch to her eReader and that novel she’d started before she’d left home if she wanted to stay outside. And she did want to stay outdoors to give herself and Gerda some space. There’d been too many extended silences, too many bitten back questions from Desi and started but abruptly ended sentences from Gerda. So much to ask. So much to say. So hard to begin.
Tonight her grandmother seemed preoccupied with mayoral work, and Desi felt out of place. She stared at her scuffed brown boots, wishing she knew how to broach the subject of her mother. What was she like as a kid? Did she always love chili cheeseburgers? What made her think she had to run away when she got pregnant instead of telling her parents and working things out? But people were tricky. You couldn’t always get right to the heart of the matter without first building trust, and her grandmother was obviously holding back the details.
She looked around the large, homey porch and inhaled the night air, even detected a hint of that jasmine from the side of the house. She twitched her nose. Something about this old house calmed her down, as if it had reached inside and said, Hey, you might just belong here. This is where your mother grew up; these rooms, scents, colors, textures and sounds are your roots.
Soles scuffing up the walkway averted her attention from her thoughts. Her gaze darted to the tall blond man from the bland house next door—the overprotective father with some sort of grudge—Kent.
An unnatural expression smacking of chagrin eclipsed his handsome face. It lowered his brows and projected caution from those heavy-lidded eyes. The sight of him set off a pop of tension in her palms.
He cleared his throat, and she closed the magazine. “Nice night, huh?”
One corner of her mouth twitched with amusement over his awkward opening. “Seems kind of cold to me.”
“That’s Oregon for you.”
She smiled, deciding to toss the poor man a lifeline. “Is it?” When was the last time he’d talked socially with a woman?
“Yup. Unpredictable, except for rain.” He came closer to the porch but not all the way up, one foot two steps higher than the other. He put his palms on his knee and leaned on them, an earnest expression humbling his drop-dead looks. “Listen, I want to apologize in case I came off cranky this afternoon.”
She sputtered a laugh. “Cranky? My grandmother might get cranky, but you, well, you seemed bothered. Yeah, that’s the word—bothered.”
He scratched one of those lowered brows. “Sorry.”
“I was just being nice to your son, not planning on snatching him. Making him feel good about his progress, that’s all.”
“Yeah, and he couldn’t stop talking about what a great teacher you are when we got home, too.”
She smiled and magnanimously nodded her head. Yes, I am a good piano teacher, thank you very much. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Not hardly.”
As he got closer, the tension in her palms spread to her shoulders, and she needed to stretch. Couldn’t help it.
He watched with interest. “So anyway,” he said, “this time every June we have this thing called the Summer Solstice Scandinavian Festival. Maybe your grandmother already told you about it?”
She shook her head.
“But as mayor pro tem she starts off the parade,” he said.
“She hasn’t said a word about it to me.”
Gerda hadn’t been feeling well tonight, and she’d seemed distracted after a hushed phone conversation. During dinner, Desi had talked about the piano students, even though a big question loomed in her mind. Why couldn’t you and Mom ever patch things up?
“Really?” He seemed surprised.
During dinner, Desi couldn’t bring herself to broach the subject about how bad their mother-daughter relationship must have been. Still, every indication—from the way her grandmother had opened the home to her to the way Desi caught her sneaking loving looks at her—suggested she was wanted. Yet that feeling of not belonging prevailed, along with the thought that Gerda was simply doing her duty out of guilt.
She shook her head at Kent. “The subject of an annual festival never came up.”
“Well, the thing is, Steven would really like you to go with us to the parade and festival on Saturday.”
Desi liked seeing the big man so completely out of his comfort zone and sat straighter. “So he sent you over to ask me out?”
Finally, a smile. Well, half of a smile. “Not exactly.”
“He doesn’t know you’re asking, and you’d rather die than ask a tall, dark stranger to come along, so you snuck over behind his back to ask me to say no?”
The look he shot her seemed to ask, Are you a mind reader? Or she could be reading into it, just a wee bit.
“Not it at all. And, man, you’ve got quite an imagination.” So much for her theory. He shook his head with slow intent. “I was thinking more that you’d rather pull weeds than be stuck with me for an afternoon. But Steven... He’s a kick. He wants to spend his allowance on you.”
She tilted her head, charmed by her young absentee suitor. “Not every day a male wants to spend his allowance on me. How can I refuse?”
Kent scratched the corner of his mouth. “You were right—I didn’t tell him I was asking you in case you didn’t want to come with us.”
“How thoughtful of you, protecting Steven.” Maybe he wasn’t as bad as the vibes he gave off. “And thanks for giving me an out...but
