Sandra Steffen – A Bride Until Midnight / Something Unexpected: A Bride Until Midnight (страница 12)

“I think I met Harriet’s secret tonight,” he said, scraping the bottom of his bowl.

Summer’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Her secret?”

“Walter.”

“You met Walter?”

“He joined us for dinner.” Kyle emptied his bowl only to have it miraculously refilled. It happened again before he’d finished telling Summer about the evening.

Walter Ferris was a large man with beefy hands, thick gray hair and bushy eyebrows. He’d probably been a handsome devil once. In his late seventies, he was straightforward and astute. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Harriet all night. Harriet had given Kyle plenty of attention, but he’d caught her eyes going soft on Walter a time or two when she’d thought Kyle wasn’t looking.

They had history, no doubt about it. And since they had the same last name, and they didn’t act like kissing cousins, Kyle wondered what their connection really was.

He didn’t normally give relationships more than a passing thought. It had been a long time since he’d been in one that lasted more than a month or two. He’d never stood in a woman’s kitchen eating warm crème brulee at three in the morning. Maybe there was something to the adage that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, although Kyle preferred other more evocative ways.

“Do I have crème brulee on my chin?” she asked.

He shook his head but didn’t apologize for staring. “What were we talking about?”

She seemed to have forgotten, too. It made them both smile.

“Walter,” they said in unison.

Walter Ferris had a story for every occasion but, other than a vague recollection of Summer mentioning a mother and sister who’d died before she’d moved to Orchard Hill, neither he nor Harriet seemed to know a lot about her past.

“I’m a little surprised Walter joined you tonight,” Summer said. “They usually have dinner together on Tuesdays and Fridays.”

Kyle stared at her, his spoon poised between his mouth and bowl. “Are you saying Harriet and Walter have regular dinner date nights?”

She’d spooned another bite into her mouth and therefore couldn’t answer. He wondered if evading questions was intentional or automatic.

“Are they married then? Ah,” he said, finally understanding the dynamics. “They’re divorced. If I were to harbor a guess, I’d say Walter wants her back. Men are easy to read that way.”

“I don’t like to talk about people behind their backs,” she said.

“If you’d rather we can talk about us.”

Summer used the ruse of carrying Kyle’s empty bowl to the sink to buy her a little time. It also gave her a little much-needed space.

By the time she’d rinsed the bowls, he was leaning against the countertop in the inn’s main kitchen again, his ankles crossed, arms folded. If she’d stopped there, she would have believed he was completely at ease. But it only required one look at his lean face, his lips firmly together, his green eyes hooded, and she knew the ease was secondary. He was a man who took nothing for granted, a man who didn’t rush or gloss over details. He was the kind of man who would take his time pleasuring a woman.

“There is no us,” she said. What was wrong with her voice?

“Not yet, you mean.”

It was the perfect opening for her to say, “You and I don’t know each other, Kyle. You’re just passing through Orchard Hill, but I live in this town. My livelihood is hinged on my reputation.”

He uncrossed his ankles and straightened, leading her to assume he was going to take the rejection with a grain of salt and go back upstairs. Instead he joined her in front of the sink.

“Sunrise or sunset?” he asked.

“What?”

“Sunrise or sunset?” he repeated.

She’d turned the radio down when he’d first joined her in the kitchen. Now the low hum barely covered the quiet. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

“I’m getting to know you. I think the modern terminology refers to this stage as the date interview. You’re right, that’s an easy one. You are sunset all the way. It’s your turn. Go ahead, ask me anything.”

She started the faucet and squirted dish soap into the stream. “This isn’t a date,” she reminded him sternly, but she couldn’t help thinking he was right about her and sunsets.

What could it hurt, she thought, to participate in a little harmless middle of the night conversation? After considering possible safe topics, she said, “Bourbon or Merlot?”

“Bourbon, hands down.”

She was surprised. She’d have pegged him as the kind of man who had an extensive wine collection.

“Hard rock or Rap?” he asked when it was his turn. “First, what are you doing?” He pointed at the sink she was filling with sudsy water.

“The dishwasher’s broken, and there won’t be money in the budget to have it repaired until July,” she explained. “Hard rock and Rap are both okay on occasion, but my favorite musician of all time is Leonard Cohen.”

As two iridescent bubbles floated on the rising steam, he said, “So you’re a romantic at heart.”

Had he moved closer? Or had she? Putting a little space between them again, she scoured a saucepan.

Kyle said, “I’d offer to fix your dishwasher, but I’m afraid my brother Braden is the mechanical genius in the family. I’m good with my hands in other ways.”

“I’m sure you’ll be very happy with yourself.”

His laugh was a deep rumble, the kind that invited everyone to smile along. They were standing close again, her shoulder nearly touching his arm. This time he was the one who moved slightly. Picking up a towel, he began to dry. “I believe it’s your turn.”

Hmm, she thought as she washed measuring cups and spoons. “Baseball or football?”

“Football, but I like races the best. European Auto Racing is my favorite, probably because my youngest brother is trying to break records and hopefully not his neck. Chicken or fish?”

“I’m more of a pasta girl. Dogs or cats?”

“Dogs,” he said. “Friends or family?”

Rinsing her wine glass and carefully handing it to him by the stem, she said, “I don’t have much family.”

“Then it wasn’t a family connection that brought you to Orchard Hill?”

Keeping her wits about her, she said, “Madeline likes to say Orchard Hill found me. The elderly couple that used to own The Orchard Inn had been looking for someone to take it over. I applied, and the rest is history.”

“So you work for this old couple?” he asked.

“I bought the inn from them with the money my grandmother left me. She’d been very ill and died right after I moved here.” Summer’s grandmother had been the only one who knew where she went, and the estate attorney had promised to keep her location confidential.

“The grandmother you and your sister spent summers with on Mackinaw Island?” he asked.

She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised he’d been listening when she’d mentioned that. Keeping her eyes on the dish she was washing, she said, “I wasn’t kidding when I told you I don’t have much family.”

“If you’d like, you can borrow some of mine. Other than Riley and Braden, most of our relatives are female. One mother, two stepmothers and too many grandmothers, aunts and family pets to count. Action-adventure or horror?”

She laughed at the awkward segue. “I live alone in a hundred-and-twenty-year-old inn. Definitely not horror.” It was her turn to ask a question. She took her time deciding which one. “Crime dramas or reality TV?”

“Could I get another choice here?”

“You don’t watch much television?” she asked.

He made a sound universal to men through his pursed lips. “Three hundred channels and there’s still nothing on half the time.”

She looked up at him and smiled, for she’d often thought the same thing.

“See what I mean?” he said, his voice a low croon befitting the dark night. “We have a lot in common. We’re practically soul mates.”

She wished she could blame the warm swirl in the pit of her stomach on the lateness of the hour or the wine. “Out of all these questions,” she said, “we’ve found only one thing we have in common. I don’t believe in soul mates.”

His gaze went from her eyes, to her lips, to the base of her neck where a little vein was pulsing. He folded the towel over the edge of the sink and got caught looking at her lips again. He didn’t pretend he didn’t want to kiss her. And yet he waited. A man who had enough self-confidence to want a woman to be sure wasn’t an easy man to resist.

A gentle breeze stirred the air. Somewhere a night bird warbled. Moments later an answering call sounded from across the river. Summer didn’t recognize the bird-song, but she understood the language of courtship. It seemed to her that birds had a straightforward approach to life. They built a nest in the spring, raised a brood and, as if guided by some magical internal alarm clock, they gathered in flocks and flew south to a tropical paradise for the winter, only to return and start all over again in the spring.

Summer had started over once. She never wanted to do that again, which brought her right back to where she and Kyle had started. Whatever this was, be it a date interview or simply a pleasant interlude, it was ending. It had to.

Taking a deliberate step back, she said, “Good night, Kyle.”

He handled the mild rejection with a degree of watchfulness and his usual charm. She wasn’t expecting the light kiss. Little more than a brush of air, it was over by the time she’d closed her eyes. The dreamy intimacy lingered as he walked to the door.