“You made it.”
The words were uttered behind him. He didn’t have to turn around to know that the melodic voice belonged to Shana. But he turned around anyway, a tiny part of him hoping that she wouldn’t appear quite as beautiful at their second meeting as she had at their first.
If anything, she was even more beautiful.
Her long blond hair worn loose about her shoulders, Shana wore a peasant blouse and a wide, colorful skirt that easily fit into either one of the two cultures associated with the restaurant. Strategically placed on the white blouse was a small pin that identified her in ornate letters as “Shana.” Beneath her name was the title “hostess.”
“You work here?” Travis heard himself asking in surprise. He hadn’t pictured her showing people to their tables. Did princesses have a day job?
Amused by his question, she inclined her head slightly. “I help out when I can. Besides, Dad’s here every night, so it gives me something to do instead of sitting around just watching him.”
He wasn’t sure that he followed her meaning. “Watching him?”
The smile on her lips seemed to grow a shade tighter. “My father doesn’t like to admit it, but he needs help getting around. So I help,” she said simply. “Do you have a preference?”
He stared at her. “Excuse me?”
She gestured toward the dining area. “Your table,” she explained. “Do you have a preference where you want to sit? Some people like to be as far away from the kitchen as possible. Others want to be in the center of the room so they can see everything.”
As long as he could see her, it didn’t matter. “Anywhere is fine.”
“A man who’s easily pleased. I like that.” Sending a warm smile his way, she picked up a menu from the hostess desk and led the way into the dining area.
Music blended in with the voices of the various patrons, weaving a tapestry of noise that was oddly soothing.
Travis was doing his best to focus exclusively on his role as an impartial family lawyer but it definitely was not as easy as he would have liked. When she spoke, Shana became animated, gesturing to underscore her words. And each gesture caused the neckline of her peasant blouse to dip and move, rendering enticing glimpses of soft, perfect cleavage, the sight of which effectively kidnapped him away from thoughts of all things lawyerly.
“This table all right?” she asked, selecting one that was slightly right of center.
“It’s fine,” he told her, his eyes on her, not the table in question. If she’d offered it, he would have agreed to sit on a toadstool.
Get a grip, Trav, or she’s going to think her father’s employing a babbling idiot.
Taking a seat, he accepted the menu from her. Ambition had always been a driving force in his life. It generated the next question he put to her. “How old are you if you don’t mind my asking?”
She studied him for a long moment before speaking. “That depends.”
He felt his breath catching in his throat and he forced it out. “On?”
“Are you asking the question as our lawyer, or as my father’s guest?”
He tried to gauge which was the better answer and which would get him a response, because he had a feeling that they weren’t equal in her eyes. He went with what was safe. “As your lawyer.”
“Then I’m twenty-five,” she told him.
The first thing that registered was that she was two years younger than he was. He forced himself back on track.
“I’m assuming you have a degree.” She seemed far too intelligent to have just floated aimlessly after high school, living off her father.
“I do.” Amusement entered her eyes as she secondguessed what he was getting at. “You think I should be some fledgling barracuda sailing down the fast lane in pursuit of a mega career.”
That was a little blunter than he would have worded it, but she’d gotten the gist of it. “Not exactly in those terms, but I’d think you would be more motivated than this. Don’t you want to forge a career for yourself?”
She seemed to take no offense from his suggestion. “I have a career, Mr. Marlowe. I’m the hostess here. It allows me to meet a variety of interesting people I might not meet at another job. And, more importantly, I am also my father’s caregiver. With me around, he doesn’t quite feel the sting of his infirmities as strongly as he might if someone else was hovering over him, offering to help when his strength fails him.”
Caregiver.
He understood feelings like that. They fit right in with the way things were done in his own family. It was also nice to discover other people valued home and family the way he did.
He found himself being more and more attracted to Shana. It was a definite conflict of interest, he warned himself.
“He means a lot to you, doesn’t he?” Travis asked warmly.
“He means the world to me,” she corrected and then added, “He’s my dad. I’d walk through fire for him—and he’d do the same for me,” she told him with feeling. “We’ve gotten even closer since my mother died,” she confided. “I couldn’t leave him to deal with things on his own, even if I wanted to—and I don’t,” she underscored in case Travis had another comment to offer about her choice of vocations.
If she had a career the way he seemed to think she should, she wouldn’t have been able to devote as much time to her father as she did. And she wanted to spend time with him. There was this vague feeling buzzing around inside her that time was short.
“I noticed he had trouble getting up from the sofa this morning,” Travis acknowledged. He lowered his voice, as if this was something he understood was private and she didn’t have to answer him if she didn’t want to. “What’s wrong with him, if you don’t mind my asking.”
“If I did, you’d probably only go to the source.” Travis didn’t strike her as a man who backed off until he had what he was after. “My father has a number of things going wrong at the same time.” She deliberately divorced herself from her words. If she didn’t, she knew she would tear up and although he seemed very amiable, Travis was still a stranger. “He has emphysema, a result of a cigarette habit he started at the age of eleven and didn’t stop until he turned sixty-five. Plus there’s angina—he’s on heart medication,” she told Travis before he had the opportunity to ask. “There are also a few other minor conditions, all of which keep him from being the dynamic man he used to be.”
Travis thought of the first impression Shawn made on him this morning. “Oh, I don’t know, he seemed pretty dynamic to me.”
Shana smiled fondly. “You should have seen him when I was a little girl. He seemed to be able to go for days without stopping.” She’d worshipped the ground her father had walked on. “I’d come home from school, rush through my homework and then sit by the window, waiting for him to come home. When he did—and I was still awake,” she added with a laugh because there were many nights when she’d fall asleep waiting, “he’d always pick me up, swing me around and ride me around on his shoulders.
“They seemed like the broadest shoulders in the world to me then.” She let a sigh escape, then flushed ruefully, as if that qualification somehow made her disloyal to her father. “Back then I thought he would go on forever. That he was immortal.” Her voice took on a tinge of sadness. “I think he thought so, too.”
“It’s a common feeling,” Travis told her. He had