Jamie paused on the landing at the top of the stairs and waited for Kirby McNeill to catch up with him. He hadn’t noticed in their previous encounters that the elderly man had problems with stamina, but he supposed that was to be expected in someone his age. It took Cookie almost twice as long to get up to the second floor of his townhouse as it was taking Flannery’s grandfather.
“This will be your room.” Jamie ushered Kirby into the slightly larger of the two extra bedrooms, the one he actually had set up for guests. He set Kirby’s duffel on the low chest of drawers that also served as a nightstand for the bed.
“Thank you.” Kirby sounded winded, as if having trouble catching his breath.
Jamie tried not to let his concern show. “The bathroom is the door directly across.” He stepped across the narrow hall and flipped the light switch on. “I put some extra towels out, and there are some extra toiletries in the cabinet under the sink if you need anything.”
He stepped aside so Kirby could enter the bathroom to put his shaving kit on the vanity. “This is a nice place you’ve got here. So much larger than Flannery’s apartment.”
“Where does she live?”
“High-rise in downtown. The entire back wall of the apartment is windows that give her a view of all the big buildings. It’s pretty at night—until you’re ready to go to bed and all the blinds have to be messed with just to make it dark enough to be able to sleep.”
“She lives downtown and works in Brentwood?” Talk about backward.
Kirby nodded. “Don’t know where that girl got the notion that she’s a city gal, since she grew up in Green Hills before it was all developed the way it is now, but she seems to love it.”
Loved it enough that she had asked Jamie about this neighborhood. “Well, you won’t have to worry about city lights bothering you here. Cookie made sure when she helped me decorate that I installed blackout blinds under the curtains in each of the bedrooms.”
Coming out of the bathroom, Kirby looked into the room right beside the guest bedroom.
“This is my office. I have wireless Internet in the house, but if you’d like to bring your laptop in here and sit at the table”—he entered the room and pulled the box still holding the few items he’d been forced to pack up under guard the morning he left the agency from the second office chair—“please feel free.”
“I should send Flannery a message to let her know I arrived safely.” Kirby stepped from the doorway of this room into his adjacent room and returned a scant moment later with his laptop case.
Jamie sat on the old, wobbly office chair—having rolled his newer, more comfortable, sturdier chair over to the table for Kirby to use—and turned to his desk. He jiggled the mouse to wake the machine up to check his own e-mail.
A new message from Ainslee. Probably another apology for having gotten him in trouble by mentioning to Armando’s executive assistant that Jamie was spending his last week trying to land new business. He’d deal with responding to her later.
Behind him, Kirby’s fingers began tapping on his keyboard. He still sounded winded, but some color began returning to his cheeks the longer he sat.
Jamie turned around at the cessation of typing. Kirby turned toward him.
“Mr. McNeill, I was hoping to—” Jamie’s cell phone began to trill. He turned to pick the phone up off the desk, looking at the screen as he did so.
“Hey, Cookie. What’s up?”
“Is Kirby there with you?”
He turned back to look at Flannery’s grandfather. “Yes, ma’am. He’s right here.”
“Good. So I guess that means he found your place without any problems.”
“It would appear so.”
“Why don’t you both come over here for dinner tonight? I put a corned beef brisket in the slow cooker this morning.”
Mouth instantly watering at the thought of his grandmother’s corned beef and cabbage, Jamie couldn’t pass up that offer. “With parmesan smashed red potatoes?”
“I picked up the potatoes while I was out running errands earlier.”
“I—let me check with Mr. McNeill and make sure he doesn’t have plans for tonight already.” Jamie lowered the phone and extended Cookie’s invitation to him.
“I don’t have any claim on Flannery’s time this weekend, so I have no other plans and gladly accept.”
Jamie relayed Kirby’s acceptance to Cookie.
“And why don’t you call Flannery to see if she’d like to join us, if she doesn’t have any other plans.”
Jamie stole a glance across the room at Kirby. Would Flannery be more likely to come if her grandfather invited her? No telling. But their time at lunch hadn’t been long enough, and he could do with talking to her again, even if just for a brief time. “I’ll do that.”
He hung up with his grandmother and pulled the phone down to look at the contacts list as he scrolled through it. “Cookie wants me to invite Flannery, too.”
Pressing the phone to his ear, he heard just one ring before she picked up. “What now, Jamie?”
He sure hoped that was feigned exasperation in her tone. “My grandmother just called and invited me and Big Daddy”—he grinned at purposely using her nickname for her grandfather when she’d teasingly told him not to in that e-mail—“to dinner at her house. She’d like it if you could come, too.”
Flannery groaned. “I’d love to—because I’d love to experience some of what you’ve seen between the two of them. But I can’t.”
“Big date?” His voice held enough humor that she hopefully wouldn’t notice the catch of vulnerability.
“Don’t I wish. No—a project blew up at work today, and now I’m going to have to spend my whole weekend re-proofreading a book. I can’t let the schedule get off, so it has to be finished before we all get back to work on Tuesday. Which probably means all-nighters tonight and tomorrow night just to get it done. So much for my holiday weekend, huh?”
When she’d said she was passionate about being an editor, she meant it. “I’m sorry to hear that. Have you gotten a break at all since Memorial Day?”
“A few hours here and there on the occasional Sunday afternoon. But…this is the life I chose, so I just have to suck it up and pick up the slack when necessary. Is Big Daddy there?”
“He got here about thirty minutes ago. He just sent you an e-mail to let you know he arrived safely.” Across from him, Kirby nodded.
“Oh—well, I turned off my modem so I wouldn’t be tempted to get online while I’m working. Tell him I’ll call him tomorrow to let him know what the rest of the weekend looks like.” She yawned. “ ’Bye.”
“ ’Bye.” Jamie passed Flannery’s message on to her grandfather, who’d risen and moved over to look at the items displayed on the shelves over Jamie’s desk.
Kirby picked up one of the still-boxed Arthurian action figures, looked at it from several angles, and then returned it to the shelf. He turned and looked around the room. Jamie did, too.
More action figures—all still in collectible condition in unopened packaging—framed posters from several different movies, and the costume he’d made for the movie premiere, which he’d mounted on the wall.
“I see you’re a King Arthur fan.” Kirby sat down again, continuing to look at all of the collectibles in the room.
“Yes, sir. Those are some of the first stories I remember reading as a kid.” Looking at his office decor, he considered that to someone like Kirby, a retired pastor, it probably looked quite juvenile.
“Those were Flannery’s favorite stories growing up as well.”
Jamie went quite still, not wanting to do or say anything that might keep Kirby from continuing.
“It always annoyed her sisters that when they were told to play together, she never wanted to play school or house or with baby dolls. She wanted to act out the stories from Arthurian legend. When she was quite young, she would pretend she was Guinevere—after all, that was the female character who had the most stories about her. But then as she grew older and she read more than just the children’s versions of the stories, she changed who she pretended to be. She wanted to be Reggie or Raggie or something like that. And when I asked her why, she told me she didn’t like the fact that Guinevere cheated on King Arthur. And then she told me she liked Sir Gawain better anyway. So she wanted to be this other character, because this other character was the girl Sir Gawain ended up marrying.”
“Ragnelle.” Jamie could barely breathe.
“Yes—that’s it. I should have guessed you’d know it. She made up all kinds of stories about this Reg …”
“Ragnelle.”
“Ragnelle. Yes. She made up stories about Ragnelle because, she said, there wasn’t really much about her in the legends. Once she hit her teens, when she still indulged in this playacting, her older sisters teased her unmercifully about it. For a while, I believed she gave it up. But then she told me when she was fifteen or sixteen, when I saw her highlighting something in one of the books, that she was studying it for the story she was writing. But she made me promise not to tell her sisters, because she didn’t want to be teased about her continued interest in the stories.”
It couldn’t be—could it? No. There must be thousands of fans out there who wrote Ragnelle-centric stories. He’d thought, maybe, that the e-mails he and the writer had been exchanging sounded a little like Flannery—but that had just been wishful thinking. Hadn’t it? He’d read too much into them in his desire that she wouldn’t be so freaked out by that part of his life.
There was absolutely, positively no way Flannery was LadyNelle, his favorite fan-fiction author. Was there?
Flannery grabbed Liam and set him down on the floor for the umpteenth time. “No, you can’t lie on the keyboard.” For all that Ragdolls were supposedly “floor cats,” Liam liked to be up—on the bed, on the coffee table, on the sofa, on the treadmill, and especially on the desk if Flannery had docked her laptop to be able to use a real keyboard, mouse, and monitor for working. Fortunately, the kitchen counters were too high for him to heft his considerable bulk up onto—which was a good thing. The idea of a cat walking around on the surfaces where she might set food down grossed her out.
Liam started his crying meow, winding around and between Flannery’s ankles. She glanced at the lower corner of the screen.
How had it gotten to be seven thirty already?
“Sorry, buddy. Didn’t realize how late it was.” She pushed the wooden-slat chair back and stretched, feeling her back pop in several places. The movement dislodged the pencil she’d used to hold her hair in a bun. She grabbed it before it could fall completely out, shook her hair out, massaged her scalp for a moment, and then finger combed her hair back and twisted it around into a tighter knot before sticking the pencil back through it.
She fed and watered Liam, then stood with the fridge door open for several minutes—long enough that she started to feel chilled. Closing the door, she turned and opened the top left drawer in the island.
Chinese. Thai. Chinese. Pizza. Pizza. Chinese. Chicken wings.
Blech. Why were these the only options for delivery? She could call in an order to Past Perfect and run up the block to go pick it up…but that would steal time from her work—and necessitate energy she just didn’t have.
The doorbell rang. Had she ordered delivery and lost all memory of it? She skirted around Liam, who took up considerable space at his food dish at the end of the island, and answered it.
Jamie grinned at her from the hall. He hefted two canvas grocery bags. “Cookie sent me with leftovers.” He stepped into the doorway and breathed in deeply through his nose. “Hey, do I smell coffee?”
He entered and left her standing there, holding the door open. He set the two bulging bags on the island then crouched down. Liam lifted his head from his bowl and meowed at Jamie. Jamie scratched the cat behind his ear and along his jaw.
Flannery could hear Liam purring from where she stood—with the door still open. She closed it and drifted over to the bar.
“How did you get in here? There’s security. The concierge—”
Standing, Jamie held up a building security card. “Your grandfather loaned me this.”
He washed his hands and dug into the first bag, setting disposable plastic containers on the island’s granite countertop beside the sink. “Let’s see…we’ve got corned beef and cabbage—packaged so that you’ll have a good four meals from that. Roasted red potatoes”—he pulled out a lumpy, foil-wrapped package—“which need to be eaten tonight. We’ll warm those up in the oven in a minute. Irish stew she made earlier this week—again, four meals’ worth.”
He stacked the four containers of stew next to the four containers of corned beef and cabbage and then pulled out a large glass casserole with its own plastic lid. “And a leftover shepherd’s pie that didn’t get eaten last night.” He grinned at her across the island. “You can’t call yourself Irish and not love my grandmother’s shepherd’s pie.” He moved on to the second bag and continued pulling more plastic containers out.
Flannery hoisted herself up onto one of the tall bar chairs and rested her chin on her fist. Having grown up with a father who did most of the cooking—because of her mother’s long hours first as a medical student and then as an intern and surgical resident—contentment and coziness embraced her at the sight of a man working in the kitchen, relaxing the muscles in her shoulders and neck.
“Where are Big Daddy and your grandmother? I thought you were all having dinner over at her house.”
“There’s some big-band, swing dance thing that she’d heard about that one of the churches in town holds every month for their senior adult group. So Cookie asked Big Daddy to take her dancing.”
Her grandfather…dancing? Flannery wished she were there to see it. But then, she would have missed watching Jamie working in her kitchen.
Jamie stepped to the other side of the walk-through kitchen and studied the back of the stove for a moment before pressing some of the buttons on the black panel between the knobs for the five burners.
The appliance started beeping at him, and he looked over his shoulder at Flannery. “How do you get this thing to preheat?”
She shrugged. “I think the manual’s still down in it.”
He opened the oven and pulled out a deep metal pan that had a plastic sleeve filled with stuff taped to it. Straightening, he turned to face her. “Flannery, did you just get this range?”
“No. It’s been here since I moved in.”
He set the pan on the counter on the other side of the sink from all the food. “And how long have you lived here?”
“Just a little over three years—I was one of the first people to move in when the building was finished.” Flannery slid off the bar chair and crossed to her desk—only a few feet away—to retrieve the cup of coffee she hadn’t finished yet.
When she came back, Jamie stood with both arms locked, his hands braced against the edge of the counter. “You’re telling me that in the three years you’ve lived here, you’ve never once used the oven?”
She paused, halfway back up onto the chair. “What? You’re telling me that you bake all the time?” Settling onto her seat, she pointed to a small appliance on the strip of counter between the stove and fridge. “I have a toaster oven. It’s big enough for pizzas and a six-cup muffin pan. What would I need to use the big one for? It’s just a waste of electricity. The toaster oven doesn’t take as long to heat up, and it doesn’t put as much heat out into the room.” At least that’s what the materials that came with the device had said.
Jamie’s head dropped, and he shook it vigorously. But he smiled when he raised it again. “Point taken. But just in case you do decide to use the oven someday, I’m going to put the broiler pan in the storage drawer down here and let you file the owner’s manual and instructions wherever you have those for the rest of your appliances.”
Flannery took the paperwork and watched curiously as Jamie pulled open a small drawer under the oven. “That’s a storage drawer? I thought it was another oven.”
“It amazes me that you’ve survived living by yourself for this long.” Jamie straightened and leaned over to turn the toaster oven on. He pulled the top of the foil package open, set it on the rack, and closed the door.
She stuck her tongue out at his back and then smiled as she carried the booklets over to her desk. Opening the file drawer, she found the file labeled APPLIANCES and stuck everything down in it. She stayed kneeling by the drawer for a moment when it finally caught up with her that Jamie O’Connor was here, in her condo, fixing a meal for her on a night when she’d started thinking that just skipping dinner would be the easiest thing to do.
Jamie O’Connor was here. She glanced around, making sure that everything looked okay. A sweater lay draped across the arm of the sofa. Her tablet computer and a stack of papers took up one side of the small dining table. She hadn’t made the bed this morning; but even though it didn’t have a door to close it off from the rest of the apartment, she didn’t think she’d be showing Jamie her bedroom.
Knees beginning to ache against the wood floor, she stood and walked the few paces back to the kitchen. Jamie had started whistling as he moved the food containers from the counter to the fridge.
“This is just sad, you know.” He jerked his head toward the fridge’s interior. “A few takeout boxes, a bunch of sodas, a lot of condiments, and not a vegetable in sight.” He clicked his tongue. “We’re going to have to do something about that.”
His we sent a tremor of anticipation rushing across her skin. “Big Daddy said that as soon as his vegetables start coming in, he’s going to bring me some when he comes up for the weekends.”
“Have you ever been to the farmers’ market over at the Bicentennial Mall?”
“A couple of times. There’s a really good Jamaican restaurant there.”
Jamie sighed loudly. “I know you can’t go tomorrow because of this editing project, but next Saturday, I’m picking you up early, and we’re going to the farmers’ market.”
“I don’t like vegetables.”
“I watched you eat a vegetable sandwich yesterday along with broccoli soup.” He popped the corner of one of the single-serve containers of corned beef and put it in the microwave, which hung over the stove.
He had her there. “Well, okay, yes. But that’s pretty much my quota of vegetables for the week.”
Jamie came over and leaned his crossed arms on the counter directly across from where she sat. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. I don’t like most vegetables, either. But there are a few I do like, and those are the ones I concentrate on. The rest…Cookie does a pretty good job of hiding them in dishes like stew and shepherd’s pie—which she tops with creamed cauliflower instead of mashed potatoes.”
She could almost see Maureen standing over Jamie, forcing him to eat veggies. “Does she cook for you a lot?”
Gray eyes soft, the corners of his lips raised in a tender smile. “Sort of. She cooks a lot. She always makes more than she needs to for the different Bible studies and ladies’ luncheons she goes to every week. And I know she’s concerned that I’m not taking good enough care of my health, so I think she always makes a little extra, especially of the healthier stuff, just to make sure that I’m not eating hamburgers or pizza for every meal.”
He turned and went to the left side of the stove, to the coffeemaker. “Do you mind if I help myself?”
“Cups are in the cabinet right above it. So’s the sugar. There’s half-and-half in the fridge.” She finished off the last bit of her coffee and, careful not to tip the chair over, stood on the bottom rung, leaned over, and put her cup on the counter beside the sink.
The microwave beeped, and the toaster oven dinged. Jamie pulled out the potatoes first and then the corned beef. “Plates are…?” He made a slow turn in the middle of the small kitchen.
“Upper cabinet between the microwave and fridge.”
“Ah. Logical placement. I’m impressed.” He shot her a wink over his shoulder.
A month ago his teasing would have annoyed her—did annoy her. Now…well, she didn’t want to think about how much her reaction toward him had changed in just a few weeks. “I can be that way sometimes.”
“Logical or impressive?” He scooped the meat and cabbage out onto the plate and poured a little of the liquid left in the container over it. He then set the potatoes—still in their foil nest—onto the plate, which she appreciated, because they weren’t down in the meat juice that way.
“Both. Aren’t you fixing a plate for yourself?” Eating in front of him—knowing he’d be watching her—was not really her idea of comfortable.
“I ate over at Cookie’s house before I came.” He set the plate in front of her and then faced the other side of the kitchen again. “Now, if I were silverware, I’d be …” He opened the drawer between the stove and fridge. “Yep, you’re right. Logical and impressive again.”
He handed her a fork and table knife. “The meat has already pretty much fallen apart, but there are still a few chunks you might need to cut up. Do you want more coffee, or do you want one of the cans of soda from the fridge?”
“Lemon-lime soda, please.” The first bite of corned beef melted like ambrosia in Flannery’s mouth, tender and juicy, with spices that coated her tongue and filled her nose with their pungent aroma. She closed her eyes and chewed.
“Told you it was good.”
She didn’t open her eyes, even at the clink of the aluminum can against the granite bar. “Don’t watch me eat, please.”
When he grunted, she finally opened her eyes. “You’re a heavy guy, aren’t you?” He straightened, holding Liam. He picked up his large, bright-green ceramic mug of coffee. “We’re going to go sit in the living room and get better acquainted. That way, I can’t watch you but we can still talk if you’re so inclined.”
“Be careful. Liam likes coffee.” The first bite had triggered Flannery’s hunger, and she ate quickly but still enjoyed the wonderful flavors and textures of the soft meat and cabbage and the crisp edges of the parmesan-sprinkled, smashed, roasted, baby red potatoes. He was right, she should eat like this more often. And she would if someone else cooked for her.
Liam’s tags jingled in the living room. “Liam. That’s interesting. Where’d his name come from? Is that a nickname for a longer name?” Jamie sat with his back to her in the chair-and-a-half that faced the wall of windows.
Flannery almost choked on a mouthful of cabbage. She finished chewing and swallowing. “His name is Liam. Just Liam. It’s Irish.”
“But why Liam?” Jamie persisted. He took a drink of his coffee and then set the cup on the end table to his right. “Of course, one could make the leap that you named your cat after Liam Neeson, who played Sir Gawain in Excalibur.”
The last bite of potato stuck in Flannery’s throat. She coughed and wheezed, eyes watering, trying to dislodge it. When that didn’t work, she took a swig of soda to wash it down. Finally, it cleared, and she caught her breath just as Jamie made it to her side and started pounding her between the shoulders.
She waved him off. “I’m okay. Just inhaled when I should have swallowed.” She cleared her throat, trying to get rid of the croakiness. No one could have ever made that connection. She’d picked the actor’s first name because she knew it connected back to her favorite character, but for everyone else it seemed like just another way in which she embraced her Irish heritage.
Jamie pulled out the bar chair beside her and turned it then sat facing her. He took the fork from her and set it on the now-empty plate and took both of her hands in his, making her turn slightly in her seat to face him.
“Flan, there’s something I need to ask you.”
Oh, dear Lord—no. He can’t. We haven’t been…. She knew she’d been flirting with him a little bit, but surely he didn’t think they were there yet! She started running rejections through her head—not wanting to hurt him, but not ready to make any kind of commitment yet.
“You don’t, by any chance, write Sir Gawain fan fiction under the username LadyNelle, do you?”
She would have preferred the premature proposal.