He wanted to know what had upset her, though. If for no reason other than to be sure it wouldn’t impede her progress with the store. Or so he told himself. He also knew she wasn’t going to say a word about whatever it was as long as her son was present.
Then there was the little boy himself. With Tyler looking all hopeful, he simply didn’t have the heart to say no.
“Mac and cheese, huh?”
Again, the quick nod. “It’s really good.”
“Then I guess I’d better stay.” He looked to the woman at the stove, caught the strain countering the softness of her smile. “That okay, ‘Mom’?”
Her hesitation held uncertainty, and collided with something that looked suspiciously like gratitude for indulging her child. “Of course it is. Tyler?” she asked. “Let’s move your place mat to the table and get another one from the sideboard for Erik.”
Erik tossed his jacket across the stool next to where Tyler sat. As he did, the boy scrambled down and grabbed his pine-green place mat from the island. Intent on his mission, he laid it on the heavy oak table, then pulled a matching one from a long drawer in the printer’s cabinet his mom had pushed to the wall by the stairs.
He’d just set the mat across from the other when he looked back to the man tracking his progress. “Do you want to see my boat?”
Erik hadn’t a clue what had prompted the question. Seconds ago they’d been talking about food. With a shrug, he said, “Sure,” and the little boy was off.
Wondering if the kid’s energy ever ran low, he walked over to where Rory spooned dinner into two shallow pasta bowls.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“You’ve already done it,” she said quietly. “He’s wanted to show you that boat ever since you said you build them. After you told him about the boats outside Cornelia’s office, it was nearly all he talked about.” She turned, a bowl in each hand. “But if you want, set these on the table for the two of you while I slice another tomato. That would be great.”
Handing them over, she slipped past him to take two salad plates from the cupboard.
“Where’s yours?”
“I’m not hungry. What do you want to drink?” she asked, pointedly avoiding his scrutiny as he set the bowls on the table.
Walking toward them with his toy, Tyler announced that he wanted milk.
Rory told him she knew he did. As she set salads of tomatoes, herbs and olive oil above their place mats, she also said she knew he really wanted to show Erik his boat, but right now he needed to sit down and eat his dinner before it got cold.
She appeared as calm and unruffled to Erik as he’d always seen her with her son. Still, he recognized restlessness when faced with it. There was no mistaking the nerves that had her too keyed up to sit down herself. She seemed to be using motion as a means to keep that tension under control as she started pulling measuring cups, flour and a big wooden spoon from cabinets, cupboards and drawers.
Intimately familiar himself with the cathartic effects of movement, specifically his usual morning run or sanding teak until his arms ached, he said nothing about her joining them. While she moved about the kitchen side of the island, he turned his attention to the boy who’d docked his little blue plastic boat on the table between them.
His fork in his fist, Tyler stabbed a noodle. “It’s my Christmas boat.”
It certainly was.
The miniature ski boat held a hunk of clay middeck. A peppermint-striped straw stuck up from the little blob like a mast. More clay anchored a bit of pencil-thin neon-green tinsel from bow to mast and mast to stern.
He’d rigged the tinsel on it just like the lighted boats they’d talked about in Cornelia’s office.
Erik couldn’t believe how deeply touched he was by the boy’s innocent desire to share something of his with him. Or how humbled he felt by the innocent expectation in the child’s eyes.
The silence coming from the table had Rory nearly holding her breath as she waited for Erik to acknowledge what her son had shared.
He finally picked up the toy, turned it in his big hands.
She could have hugged him when he said, “Now that is one awesome sailboat.”
Tyler beamed.
Rory felt her heart squeeze.
Setting the child’s handiwork back on the table, Erik pointed his fork at the bow. “Do you know what that’s called?” he asked.
“The front?”
“That, too,” came his easy reply. “But in nautical terms, the front of a boat is called its bow.”
“What’s ‘not-cul’?”
“Nautical,” Erik emphasized with a smile. “It means things relating to boats and sailors,” he added, which led Tyler to ask what the back was called. That led to a discussion of stern, port, starboard and keel, the latter of which his ski boat didn’t have, but which Erik fashioned out of a paper napkin just so Tyler would get the idea of what one looked like.
When Rory casually mentioned that she was going to have to reheat their dinner if they didn’t start eating, conversation turned to the merits of shell-shaped pasta over elbow while they cleaned their bowls. Over pudding for dessert, talk then turned back to the boat—specifically the differences between sail and motor.
Her child ate up the attention her mentor so generously bestowed while she put cranberry muffins into the oven to have with breakfast and cleared their dishes. By the time she’d finished cleaning up the kitchen and removed the muffins from the oven twenty minutes later, it was nearing Tyler’s bedtime, and she didn’t want to impose on Erik any further.
“It’s time to put the boat away,” she finally told him. “Say good-night to Erik now, okay? And go brush your teeth. I’ll be up in a few minutes to tuck you in.”
She’d thought he would do as she’d asked and simply say good-night. Instead, with his toy under one arm, he walked to where Erik stood by the island and wrapped his free arm around the man’s thigh. “’Night, Erik,” he said.
She wasn’t sure who was caught more off guard by the unexpected hug—her or the man who went completely still a moment before his big hand settled on Tyler’s head.
“’Night, sport,” he murmured back. “Thanks for showing me your boat.”
Tyler tipped back his head, gave him a smile. “You’re welcome.”
Her conversation with her former mother-in-law already had Rory’s maternal instincts on high alert. Torn between allowing the draw her child obviously felt toward someone who would be out of their lives in a matter of months and the need to protect him from it, she took him by his little shoulders and eased him back.
“Teeth,” she reminded him, and turned him around to get him headed in the right direction.
“Can I read?” he asked on his way.
“Until I get there,” she called after him.
“’Kay,” he called back and disappeared up the stairs.
“He’s a neat kid.” The admission came almost reluctantly, as if he hadn’t wanted to be as impressed—or touched—as he was by a five-year-old. “I don’t know how long it’s been since he lost his dad, but you seem to be doing a great job with him.”
It