He yanked an old pair of jeans and a black knit turtleneck off the hangers. Hopefully wearing them wouldn’t send any messages one way or the other.
He got to Mindy’s house twenty minutes late because he belatedly remembered to stop for a bottle of wine as an offering for Wayne.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said when Mindy opened the door.
“No problem. I’m doing lemon-pepper chicken and marinated vegetable kabobs on the grill, nothing very fancy.”
Since his usual bachelor fare ran to omelettes or salads and submarines from the supermarket deli, it sounded elaborate to him.
“I was expecting leftovers from Mountain Monty’s.”
She laughed lightly, an altogether pleasing sound. “Dad had steak and eggs for breakfast, then polished off the last of the leftovers for lunch. Apparently his low cholesterol diet is on vacation.”
“I heard that, young lady,” Wayne said from the couch where he was lounging with his foot resting on a mound of pillows. “I’ll go to the store with you tomorrow and cash some traveler’s checks so you can stock your kitchen.”
“Dad, you don’t have to buy groceries. I make a good living.”
This had the ring of an old argument. Eric presented the wine to Mindy and ambled into the living room to sit opposite the patriarch in a high-backed Boston rocker.
“How’s your ankle?”
“Fine as long as I treat it with RICE. That’s rest, ice, compression and elevation.”
Eric knew that. He’d done enough track and field sports even before he got to college to be familiar with trainer’s lingo, but he was here to be the deferential suitor. From where he sat, he could see Mindy in the kitchen struggling with the cork in his bottle of wine.
“Let me,” he offered, walking over to her.
The nice thing about having the living room and kitchen as one large room was being able to see her as she worked. The bad thing was Wayne had a front-row seat to watch them together. Eric remembered his deal and moved up to her intending to carry out his end.
“Something smells nice.”
He nuzzled the back of her neck, soft and fragrant under her short-cropped sable hair. It seemed natural to wrap one arm around her waist, which looked slender and sexy in a long black skirt with big splashy yellow, red and green flowers. Her midriff-baring yellow top rode up so his arm was circling warm silky flesh. He should’ve braved an icy cold shower.
“I need to put the chicken on,” she said, pulling away.
“I’ll help you.”
He picked up a tray of foil packets and followed her down the hallway between the back rooms. They walked out through sliding glass doors onto a small flagstone patio, where she had a propane gas grill and a round white-metal table with two matching chairs and umbrella.
“This is nice,” he said.
“Except for having neighbors so close I can’t use the grill without attracting people who want to give me cooking advice.”
She kept her eyes averted. So far she hadn’t looked directly at him, not even when she answered the door.
“You know,” he said softly, “if you want your father to buy our act, you’re going to have to gaze longingly into my eyes.”
They both laughed self-consciously.
“I’ve had some second thoughts,” she admitted as she carefully laid the packets of chicken on the barbecue, still not meeting his eyes.
“And?”
Was she going to let him off the hook? Did he want her to?
“This is terribly unfair of me, expecting you to give up your free time like this.”
“Can’t complain about the eats.”
“Really, Eric, we can call this off right now. I’ll still help as much as I can with your committee, but I can’t ask you to—”
“Mindy,” he interrupted, even though he didn’t know what he wanted to say.
“You’re so busy,” she went on.
“When I agree to a deal, I keep my word,” he said, trying to sound resolute and committed.
“But I feel like I’ve trapped you into this.”
She kept fussing with long kabobs of potato, onion, mushroom and colorful yellow, red and green peppers.
“Look at me.”
He wanted to talk to her face, not the back of her head.
She looked at him over her shoulder, just long enough for him to see miniature bolts of green lightning in her intriguing hazel eyes.
“Enough fussing,” he said. “The food is fine.”
She turned and faced him squarely, then reached up and straightened the collar on his turtleneck. One minute she was willing to let him back away from their bargain, and the next she was fixing his shirt. The woman just couldn’t leave him alone. He took her hands in his and stared so intently she dropped her eyes.
“Sorry,” she said meekly.
“I’m going to go inside and talk to your dad,” he said gruffly.
“I meant what I said. You don’t have to do this….”
He went into the house without answering.
5
DAD WAS ONLINE AGAIN when Mindy got home from work late Friday afternoon. She’d moved the patio table into the living room and set up the computer there so she had access when her father was sleeping in the spare bedroom. Still, the arrangement wasn’t working well from her point of view. She did all her planning, organizing and accounting on her computer, usually in the evening. But after being home alone all day, her father was more chatty then he’d ever been before.
“How was your day?” he asked in a hearty voice from his spot on the couch.
“Fine, Dad.” Except for a crabby caterer, a carpenter whose wife had been in labor for twenty-one hours and counting and a client whose check bounced. “Did you find things to keep you busy today?”
“I found a list of e-mail addresses from my class at Penn State. I connected with a guy who lived next to me our freshman year. Now he’s right here in Phoenix. We had a good online chat.”
“Sounds like fun.”
Peaches did her welcoming dance while Mindy kicked off her sandals and enjoyed the cool tiles on the soles of her feet.
“Don’t leave your shoes where I can trip over them,” her father warned.
No, I certainly don’t want you to fall again she thought. “Did you get to your doctor’s appointment all right?”
She still felt guilty about not driving him there herself, but the day had been impossibly busy.
“The cab was twenty minutes late, but I allowed an extra forty-five for the trip.”
When had her father ever been late for anything, unlike Dr. Eric Kincaid who made a specialty of keeping people waiting? And not calling the woman