“Give it your best shot.” A corner of his mouth lifted. “Tell me about yourself now. I know what you do. I’ve seen your work. I didn’t have to track you down to do that,” he said flatly, she supposed in case she thought he’d been interested enough to do so. “But I don’t know why this sudden shift.”
“What shift?”
“From fiber artist and international businesswoman to little lady in search of a family.” His tone was almost sarcastic but not quite. And she thought maybe if she explained, it would help, that he’d understand.
“I was in Seattle when my dad had his heart attack. I hadn’t seen him in ten years.”
“Your opening—”
“He didn’t come.”
PJ swore. “What the hell was the matter with him?”
Ally shrugged. “He wasn’t ready to let go of his views, still wasn’t ready to believe I could be someone other than the woman he thought I should be then. But he was actually glad to see me when I came home.”
She’d been afraid he wouldn’t be. Afraid he would turn away from her and shut her out in the cold. “We talked,” she told PJ, “for the first time. Not a lot. But it was a start. And I … couldn’t leave after that. He was all I had. I realized how much I’d missed him. How much I missed family. Even when it was just the two of us.”
PJ opened his mouth, then closed it again. He leaned back against the fence and waited for her to go on.
“It was the first time I’d stopped moving, planning, ‘achieving’ in years.” She sipped her wine reflectively and recalled those days and weeks vividly. “Being there with him for days at a time, first at the hospital, then at home, I was forced to stop and think about what I had achieved and what was missing, and—” she shrugged “—I discovered that I wanted to be more than Alice Maruyama, fiber artist and businesswoman.”
It was true. All of it. But Ally stopped, astonished that she had revealed so much. She shot a quick glance at PJ to see his reaction. He hadn’t moved. His eyes were hooded but focused directly on her. He nodded, listening.
That was always the way it had been with PJ. He was also focused, always intent, always listening.
“The steaks,” she said abruptly, seeing the smoke from the grill.
He turned toward them. “I’ll deal with ‘em. Go on.”
“And we talked—my dad and I—about family. About our relationship.” That had been difficult. Neither she nor her father were good at that sort of thing. “And it made me realize how much I’d missed. How much I would continue to miss if I didn’t— Anyway,” she said briskly, “that’s when I met Jon.”
“And fell in love?” PJ said. The edge was back in his voice again.
“And fell in love,” Ally confirmed. “Why wouldn’t I? Jon is great.”
PJ flipped the steaks. He didn’t reply, just concentrated on the steaks, moved the foil-wrapped corn, totally absorbed in what he was doing. So absorbed that Ally wondered if he had even heard her.
Or maybe he had no comment. That was more likely the case.
And really, beyond “Where do I sign?” what did she want him to say?
“Can I help?” she asked. “Make the salad? Set the table?”
“Why don’t you make the salad. Use what I bought and whatever you want from the refrigerator. Stick the bread in the oven, too, will you? Then it will be ready when the steaks are.”
Grateful for something to keep herself occupied, Ally hurried back into the kitchen. Like the living room and the dining area she’d passed through on the way, it had walls of exposed brick, too. The cabinets were a light oak, the appliances stainless steel. They were all a far cry from the apartment-size stove and bar-size fridge he’d had on Oahu, and despite her insistence that she just wanted his signature and then she would be out of his life, she found that she was curious about how he lived, who he’d become.
She set about making the salad, periodically glancing back at PJ, who stood silently watching over the steaks. On one level it seemed so natural, so mundane—a husband and wife making supper at the end of a day.
On the other, to be casually cooking dinner with PJ Antonides, as if they were a simple married couple, seemed almost surreal.
She finished the salad and put it on the table, then opened the cupboards looking for plates. His kitchen was rather spare but reasonably well equipped. Obviously he was no stranger to cooking. Did he do it often? Did he have girlfriends who came and cooked for him?
A vision of Annie Cannavaro flashed through her head.
She’d told him about Jon, but he hadn’t said a word about the women in his life. The newspaper article had made it clear that there were plenty of them. No one special, though?
Would he tell her if she asked?
She didn’t get a chance. When he came back with the steaks a few minutes later, he said, “So tell me about how you got started with the fabric art. I remember you made some funky stuff back in the ‘old days,’ but I was surprised when you turned it into your profession.”
She wondered if he was going to have another dig at her for her behavior at the opening in Honolulu. But he seemed actually interested, and so she explained. “When I was in California and I got a job in a fabric store while I was going to school, it seemed like something to explore further. I had access to stuff I didn’t ordinarily have. So I got to try things. Experiment, you know.”
He put a steak on her plate and one on his, then unwrapped the corn from the foil and added an ear to each of their plates. She dished up the salad, then cut the bread. He refilled her wineglass and got himself another beer. They sat down. “Right. Experimenting. I did that with the windsurfer. I know what you mean. Go on. I’m listening,” he prompted.
She hesitated, torn between wanting to tell him how she’d gone from being a mere girl with dreams to a woman who had realized them and wanting to know more about his windsurfer, which had ultimately brought him here. And of course at the same time she realized that neither one was the reason she’d agreed to have dinner with him.
He gave her a patient smile across the table. “We’ve got ten years to catch up on, Al, minus one night. We’re going to be here a while. So talk. Or are you—”
“—chicken?” she finished for him with a knowing smile.
He gave her an unrepentant grin.
“Fine. Here it is in a nutshell.”
And she began to talk again. Maybe she could bore him into signing the divorce papers. While they ate, she began the canned account of how she got into her business, the one she hauled out whenever she was interviewed.
But PJ wasn’t content with that. He asked questions, drew her out. “Were you scared?” he asked her when she was describing the start-up of her first shop.
“Chicken?” she asked wryly.
“No, really nervous.”
She understood the difference. And she nodded. “Felt like I was stepping off into space,” she agreed, and recounted the scary times she’d spent on her own, learning what she was capable of, learning what she liked and what she didn’t, learning who she was, apart from her father’s not-so-dutiful daughter.
It wasn’t something she usually did. Ally had learned early that too much reflection meant that she wouldn’t get anything done at all. She’d think about things too much, worry about them too much, and so she’d taught herself to weigh her options just long enough to see a clear direction. Then she moved ahead.
She didn’t spend a lot of time looking back or analyzing what she’d done. She’d just done it