His glass refilled, Aidan returned to his seat. Winnie looked up, grinning full out, breathless, her cheeks flushed, and Thank God you’re leaving and Too bad you’re leaving collided underneath his skull like a pair of daft footballers.
“Dad! Dad! Guess what Winnie taught us?”
“Three-card monte?” Aidan said drily, and Robbie said, “Huh?” as Winnie said, “Honestly, Aidan, give me some credit,” and Robbie said, “No—chess!”
Aidan looked at Winnie. “Chess?”
“Yeah, he had that beautiful set on the shelf in his room, I asked him if he knew how to play and he said no, so I taught him. Him and Jacob,” she said with the kind of smile for Robbie’s friend that young boys had been falling in love with since God did that little hocus-pocus thing with Adam’s rib.
Aidan swallowed down the flare of annoyance, that June had ordered the Harry Potter set for Robbie for his eighth birthday with explicit instructions that Aidan teach their son how to play. That Winnie knew how to play chess.
Not to mention everyone who crossed her path.
Except Aidan, of course. Aidan was immune to being played—
“It’s so cool,” Robbie said. “Almost as cool as Mario Galaxy—Hey!” he squawked as a bit of black olive bounced off his nose. “Who did that?”
“Who did what?” Winnie said, all innocence as she took a sip of her iced tea, and Aidan opened his mouth, only to close it again, refusing to let himself feel…
Alive?
“Somebody threw an olive at me!”
“It was you!” Jacob yelled, eyes alight, pointing at Winnie. “I saw you!”
“Was not,” Winnie said, picking a pepperoni slice off her pizza and chucking it at Jacob, which set off a whole new round of giggles. Then a mushroom bounced off Aidan’s forehead and the boys roared, and from the other end of the kitchen Flo threw her hands up and muttered something in Spanish that Aidan only half heard, and when he met Winnie’s gaze she cocked her head at him, grinning, her eyes full of mischief and mayhem, and he thought, No.
But not before the sucker punch hit. With far more devastation than the mushroom. Because from somewhere deep, deep inside him, a funny, fuzzy feeling bubbled up, like inhaling helium.
Go with it, babe…
Aidan picked up the artillerized fungus. “Lose something?” he said, his gaze locked with hers.
She grinned, full of herself. Smug. Dangerous. “Consider it a gift,” she said.
Only to shriek with laughter when he threw it back.
An hour later, Aidan sneaked a glance at Winnie’s face as his truck jostled down the mountain to take Winnie and Annabelle back to the Old House, then Jacob home. Behind him, the boys squealed every time the truck hit a bump. Beside him, Winnie smiled, thinking more secret Winnie thoughts. Aidan jerked his head back around, telling himself he wasn’t interested. In her thoughts, or…anything else.
Now there’s a lie for you.
Feeling his nostrils flare, a certain swift, hot kick to his groin, Aidan shifted gears as they navigated a particularly steep part of the road. Two years ago he wouldn’t have believed it possible that the time would come when he wouldn’t miss sex. Until June got sick, and things changed, and Aidan basically put his libido in cold storage.
Then June died, and what would have been the point in taking it back out?
Not that he didn’t occasionally still think about That Side of Things, as his mother would say. But not so much about having sex—or not—as how strangely easy it had been to simply disconnect one or two crucial wires. That he hadn’t felt deprived so much as disinterested.
Until tonight.
Which was making him confused as all hell. Not to mention cranky. Crankier.
The truck bumped up in front of the Old House; when Winnie opened the door, Aidan told the boys to sit tight, he’d be back straightaway, and got out before he caught Winnie’s look. Because he knew there’d be a Look.
Sure enough, as soon as they were out of earshot her eyes slid to his. “Walkin’ me to the door’s kinda overkill, don’t you think?”
“I’m just setting a good example for the lads.”
“Ah.” She pulled the persimmon-colored jacket closed, shivering; nightfall had sucked all the warmth out of the air. At least, that provided by the sun.
“I just…wanted to thank you for watching the boys. And for the pizza, it was great.”
“You’re welcome—”
“And for gettin’ Robbie out of himself like that.”
Her grin was cautious. “Yeah, nothin’ like a good food fight to shake things up. Although Flo may never speak to any of us again.”
Aidan smiled back, telling himself that her lips were just lips. That this was a helluva time for That Side of Things to kick in again. “She’ll survive. Besides, the dog cleaned most of it up already.”
“Good old Annabelle,” Winnie said warmly to the beast, who barked up at her. Then burped.
“It should’ve been me, though,” he said.
“To lick the food off the floor?”
“No,” he said on a half laugh, then sighed, raking one hand through his hair. Which really was getting too long. “To teach Robbie how to play chess.” He paused. “To make him laugh again.”
He caught her gaze dipping from his hair to someplace below his neck. “I didn’t mean to step on any toes, honest—”
“And I didn’t mean to imply you had. Well, not too much anyway. What I mean to say is, what’s important is seeing Robbie happy. How that came about is immaterial. ” Tamping down the tremor of disloyalty, he said, “I think June would be pleased.”
Her eyes lifted, glittering in the half-assed porch light. She nodded, then turned to unlock the door. “So. What time should I be ready tomorrow?”
“So you’re really going, then?”
Winnie twisted around, at least as shocked as he. Then she sighed. “I had a blast today, Aidan. I really did. But it wasn’t easy.”
“No, I don’t suppose it was,” he said, appalled to discover how badly he wanted to hold her. To rub her back and tell her it would be okay. “Well, then. Is eight too early?”
“No, eight’s fine—”
“I’m going t’do better, Winnie. With Robbie, I mean. Whatever’s still goin’ on inside my head, Robbie’s only a child. And I know he needs to be getting on with things. With bein’ a boy, enjoying life. If y’know what I mean.”
After a moment, she crossed her arms, shivering slightly, her eyes soft with concern. “This is only a suggestion, okay? But Flo was talkin’ about the Day of the Dead, about how it’s not morbid at all, but instead a way to celebrate those who’ve gone on. So maybe, I don’t know…you should think about you and Robbie holding some kind of vigil for June? Because maybe remembering will help ease the pain? Because…because if I were her, I sure as heck wouldn’t be happy knowing that you and Robbie weren’t.”
A sudden gust of woodsmoke-laced air made Aidan’s eyes burn, a shiver lick at his spine, even as those guileless eyes did their best to melt something long frozen inside him. “Y’might be on to something