Ashley mulled over the options, finally deciding, “Peanut butter and banana.”
Cam watched as Maddie carefully selected three pinwheel sandwiches from the plastic container and arranged them in a semicircle on the plate. Then she added two cookies—peanut butter, of course—and a small cluster of green grapes.
“That looks absolutely delicious,” Ashley said, accepting the plate.
Maddie beamed in appreciation of her praise, and Cam felt his heart swell. Until he’d started spending time with Maddie and Ashley together, he hadn’t realized how much his daughter needed a woman’s attention. She missed out on so much not having a mother involved in her life, and though his mother tried to spend as much time as possible with her granddaughter, it wasn’t the same thing.
Gayle had mentioned—several times in recent years—that he should think about getting married again, that he needed a wife as much as Maddie needed a mother. But even if he’d agreed with her assessment—and he was definitely on the fence about the wife part—none of the women he’d dated had tempted him to think any longer term than the next date. There certainly hadn’t been anyone whom he’d wanted to wake up beside every morning for the rest of his life, and there hadn’t been anyone who’d ever made his daughter smile as she was smiling at Ashley now.
Not that he was thinking in terms of marriage with Ashley. Definitely not.
And yet, he knew that if there was a woman who could tempt his thoughts in that direction, it was Maddie’s first-grade teacher. Yes, Ashley tempted him. But he knew it was going to take some time to figure out if he could still tempt her.
Tearing his thoughts back to the picnic, he noticed that Maddie had taken a second plate and was loading it up with all of her favorites.
“What about my lunch?” Cam asked, indicating the last empty plate.
“Ladies always get served first,” she informed him primly. “And you can get your own.”
Ashley’s cough sounded more like a laugh, and when he looked at her over his daughter’s head, he saw the amusement that danced in her eyes.
Those beautiful, sparkling violet eyes.
The same eyes that had haunted his dreams for years, and that continued to haunt his dreams now.
He held her gaze for a long moment, a moment that spun out between them, until there were no birds chirping in the trees, until there was no wind rustling through the leaves.
Until there was nothing but the two of them.
Until Maddie broke the silence by asking for juice.
Ashley blinked and looked away, and the moment was gone.
Something had happened between them at Eagle Point Park. Ashley wasn’t exactly sure what, except that something had changed. Until that moment, she’d managed to convince herself that the feelings she had for Cameron were only remnants of a long-ago attraction. And maybe there were still remnants of that attraction, but there were also new feelings stirring inside of her. Stronger and deeper feelings that she’d managed to ignore because they were only her feelings.
In the space of a heartbeat, with the heat of just one look, Cam decimated that belief. And the realization that there was still a connection between them, a simmering awareness that pulled at both of them, terrified her.
So when Maddie approached her desk at the end of the day on Monday, it was an effort to smile, to pretend that everything was the same. And then the child’s question shattered even that illusion.
“Are you dating my daddy?”
The marker Ashley had been using to prepare a math chart for the next day’s lesson slipped from her fingers.
She bent to retrieve it, wishing she could pick up an easy answer to the little girl’s inquiry at the same time. Instead, she responded with a question of her own. “Why would you ask something like that?”
“Because I told Victoria that we went on a picnic on Saturday and she said that you must be dating my daddy and maybe you would marry him and be my new mommy.”
She had worried that agreeing to go on a picnic with Cam and Maddie was a bad idea—she just hadn’t known how bad. And the desperate yearning in the little girl’s big green eyes nearly broke her heart.
Ashley carefully recapped the marker and set it aside so she could give Maddie her full attention.
“I’m not dating your daddy,” she said gently. “But he and I are old friends and you and I are new friends, and friends spend time together.”
The light in Maddie’s eyes dimmed. “So you’re not going to marry him?”
“No.” She swallowed. “I’m not going to marry him.”
“But if you’re friends, you must like him,” she insisted, with the unequivocal reasoning of a first grader. “And if you like him, then you should marry him.”
“Lots of people like one another without getting married.”
Maddie sighed. “But Grandma says that Daddy needs a wife who will make him happy and I need a mother who cares more about me than her career.”
Out of the mouths of babes, Ashley thought, and cautiously asked, “She said this to you?”
Maddie shook her head. “She said it to Grandpa, but I could hear them talking.”
“Sometimes adults have conversations that they don’t mean for children to overhear, and what your grandma said probably wasn’t intended to be repeated.”
Maddie nodded. “But I think Daddy should get a new wife, too, ‘cause then we could be a family.”
The crack in Ashley’s heart split open a little wider. “That’s something only your daddy can decide.”
Cam’s daughter sighed again. “I need to go now. Grandma will be waiting for me.”
“Okay.” And because she figured they both needed it, she gave Maddie a quick hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Being summoned for a conference with the teacher wasn’t quite the same as being called to the principal’s office, but Cam had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach just the same when he heard the message from Ashley on his answering machine.
He glanced at the calendar before he called her back. “I have about an hour at seven o’clock tonight while Maddie’s at ballet,” he said. “Can I buy you a coffee at Bean There Café?”
“That works for me,” she agreed, but still gave him no indication what it was she wanted to talk about.
So he worried about it while he cooked spaghetti for dinner, and though he gently tried to elicit details from Maddie about her day at school, his daughter was uncharacteristically close-mouthed, a fact which only increased his apprehension. They loaded the dishwasher together after they’d finished eating, then she washed up and went to get changed for her dance class, but there was no enthusiasm in her step and no sparkle in her eye.
When he got to the café, he noted that Ashley looked almost as apprehensive as he felt.
“What did she do?” he asked without preamble when he brought their drinks—regular black coffee for him, a cinnamon dolce latte for Ashley—to the table.
“She didn’t do anything wrong,” she hastened to reassure him. “I just thought you should be aware that your daughter is expressing an interest in you finding a new wife.”
He exhaled a sigh of relief. “I thought maybe she’d stabbed that annoying Charlie Partridge with her safety scissors.”
Her eyes flashed. “I’m glad you think this is funny.”
“I