“It was a safe, quiet, wholesome place to grow up.” As long as you didn’t venture out when the Dargin brothers had been drinking. “People didn’t lock their doors, kids hung out at the Dip-Delite ice cream and candy store, and everyone knew everyone else’s business.”
She gave a laugh as if the last was a quaint and lovely trait, whereas she’d found it a suffocating junior high existence.
Ryan was listening politely, but watching her with a blue-eyed intensity that unnerved and excited her at the same time. What was he thinking?
If she had her way, he’d be thinking thoughts that had nothing to do with her childhood past and everything to do with her womanhood and her future. Especially because being across the table like this for so long, she’d barely been able to keep herself from imagining their first kiss, though she doubted it would happen tonight. But maybe soon? They’d had a nice time so far, talking easily, laughing together and sharing food.
Or was he wondering why he’d asked her out in the first place, this small-town girl from nowhere with nothing of real substance to say? Should she embellish her life? Beef up her education from a two-year degree earned in four years to a four-year degree earned in two? Casually drop some mention of her mom’s catering business and her dad’s club? Ryan would picture elegant cocktail parties, pools and golf courses—things he could relate to. He didn’t need to know Vera Bayer threw kids’ birthday parties, and that the pool at Dick Bayer’s men’s club involved cues and drunken betting.
No. She’d keep to the bare-minimum truth. Any false picture she painted would come crashing down when he met her parents.
“What kind of girl were you?”
“Shy. Lonely. A dreamer.” With iron determination driving her life. “But I knew what I wanted.”
“Which was?”
“To leave Charsville, live in New York and see the world someday.” And marry someone exactly like you.
“Why New York?”
“After small-town living?” She lifted her eyebrows, thinking no other answer was needed, but he still seemed to be waiting for an explanation. “The bigger the better as far as I was concerned. But L.A. has earthquakes, and Cairo and Tokyo were too far away and exotic for me.”
“Makes sense.” He nodded seriously where she expected him to laugh. Was it her imagination or did he look disappointed? What had she said? What was wrong with loving New York?
“So I came here.” She forced herself to calm down. Ryan could undoubtedly live anywhere in the world he wanted, so he must love the Big Apple, too.
“I’m getting tired of the city.” He picked up his beer and tipped it absently back and forth, staring at the shifting liquid. “I’ve been thinking it’s time to move on, maybe back to Connecticut. I’m thinking of looking at houses in Southport or Fairfield.”
Dang, darn, hell and damnation. How was she going to get herself out of this one? It would be so nice when her time with Ryan no longer felt like a job interview.
“Well.” She gave a laugh that, thank the lord, didn’t betray her dismay. “I was just going to say, now that I’ve lived here even this short while, I’ve been thinking I didn’t know myself all that well wanting to come here. But I thought I should give Manhattan a year at least, before I did anything I’d regret.”
“Very sensible.” He nodded slowly, eyeing her speculatively over his glass. “Would you like to go back to a smaller town someday, to settle permanently?”
“Oh, yes.” Sweet Jesus. Was she dreaming? “Definitely.”
“Back to Georgia?” He seemed anxious about her response.
“Oh, no. Not Georgia.” She beamed, her heart enjoying a Texas two-step. “I’d feel like I failed if I went back.”
“I understand.” The tension left his face; he lifted his beer across the table, eyes warm. “Here’s to a new future for both of us.”
“To a new future.” Together. She clinked her glass with his, wanting to shout a few rounds of her sister Iona’s favorite cheer: “Hey, go, go, go, hey, go. Charsville Chiefs…hey go!” Unless she was wrong, she, Teeny Bayer, was under consideration for the position of Mrs. Settle Down In Connecticut.
Please don’t let me blow it.
The waiter came to clear their plates and returned with the check, which he put on the table between them. Should Christine offer to pay? Some men were insulted—as if the woman thought he wasn’t capable of taking care of her. On the other hand, if she wanted to keep the “friends” pretense up, she should probably not assume Ryan had planned to take her out.
She reached for her purse at the same time he slapped a credit card on top of the bill and shook his head at her. “My treat tonight.”
Tonight? As if there would be others? She withdrew her hand from her purse and beamed at him. “Thank you, Ryan. The meal was delicious.”
“My pleasure.”
And there they were, smiling at each other across the table, and warm joy started flooding Christine’s body and her heart. His pleasure. Ohh, she’d love to show him pleasure of all kinds. Pleasure at the front door welcoming him home, pleasure in the kitchen eating the dinner she cooked and pleasure in the bedroom later that night.
One step at a time, Christine.
The waiter brought back Ryan’s receipt; Ryan thanked him and shoved it into his wallet. “Ready?”
“Yes.” She got to her feet, hoping her yellow linen sheath didn’t have too many horizontal wrinkles across her lap, and picked up her purse, even more pleased when he waited for her to precede him out of the restaurant. The last guy she dated had been in such a New York hurry all the time, he’d rush off without even glancing to see if she’d followed. The day she met Ryan, she’d ended that relationship, which was going nowhere in that same New York hurry.
Out on the sidewalk, they strolled along 14th Street. Christine forced her feet, which wanted to skip, to keep a slow, even pace. Strolling meant Ryan intended to prolong the evening. He hadn’t hustled her into a taxi, or fled down the sidewalk so she could barely keep up. Strolling was another good sign in an evening that had already been full of them.
They passed a street musician playing a saxophone, and stores with bins of perfect produce laid out on the sidewalk stands. She loved New York, especially at night. The energy, the lights, the natives out enjoying their city. She loved feeling part of something so huge and so important and so vital to the world. If she and Ryan worked out, she hoped Ryan would want to come into the city often after they left.
“I’m curious about something.”
“Mmm?” She imbued her voice with a touch of sensuality and was rewarded out of the corner of her eye with the sight of him turning to look at her. She made sure she appeared calm and peaceful.
“You grew up in Georgia. What happened to your accent?”
“I lost it on the way here.” She did turn then, to smile at him. “Somewhere over Virginia.”
Her accent had been disposed of deliberately, starting when she was a girl, imitating TV or movie personalities, practicing over and over in her favorite spot, a copse near a stream a short way from home. A place where she could escape two brothers and three sisters and two parents and the all-too-frequent visiting aunts, uncles and cousins, and have room and quiet to think her own thoughts and dream her own dreams. She’d even taught herself rudimentary French from books and tapes she’d gotten from the library, to be ready for the trip she’d someday take to Paris.
She always knew she’d come north