Evan became Uncle Evan when he was nineteen. All his brothers and sisters had embarked on their careers and banded together into a gang of young professionals. Much like when Evan was still in elementary school and the others were in high school and college, he was suddenly too much the baby for them to bother with--unless he was making them laugh. And they were happy to laugh at him if he wasn't giving them a reason to laugh with him.
He wrote doggerel for Alice's wedding, and again for Ben's. As baby Lizzy grew up, and was joined by her sister Jane and cousin Marcus, Uncle Evan was their go-to for galloping, mock-wrestling, knock-knock jokes, and loud, off-key songs. Every holiday he took during his years as an analyst, and every vacation during his MBA program, Evan came home with another trick. Juggling. Coin sleight-of-hand. Scavenger hunts with rhyming clues that sent the kids dashing from room to room in search of the piñata or water cannons he'd hidden. Just when he thought they were outgrowing the nonsense and he was settled enough in his career to earn some adult conversation with his siblings, Danny and his wife had twins. So back to 'Knock-knock / Who's there? / "Shamp" / "Shamp" who? / It's time to wash your hair!' he went.
He still wrote poems for all the birthday cards, but Rowan and Laurel were four, which meant Evan had retired a few of his broader antics. He could finally refuse to engage. Let the grandparents and other aunts and uncles be the funny ones. But Evan's nieces and nephews clamored for him, and his siblings did appreciate his entertainment value to the kids. Since their other main use for him was as a target for teasing, Evan didn't rock the boat. Unless he was deliberately rocking a rowboat on the lake in front of the zoo, while Lizzy and Jane squealed about falling in.
The limerick for Natalie had come easily, and judging by her rhyming reply she'd enjoyed it. Or at least not thought him a total idiot, which put her a step above Alice, Ben, Chloe, and Danyal. Because Natalie also treated Evan as a fully-formed human being, not some tag-along.
He determined to show Natalie a good time at the theatre, without specifically thanking her for taking him seriously. Because contrary to his siblings' opinions, he wasn't a value-free child. Evan had worked his ass off twice over to get where he was professionally. He'd logged hours researching and compiling reports, networked relentlessly, studied like a demon to graduate at the top of his class, and aggressively applied for the jobs that would bring him up the banking ranks. None of which was abnormal for Marisa and Koray Lee's children, but somehow the older four had managed to miss the fact that Evan was just as much a Lee as the rest of them.
It figured that now Evan was able to relax a bit and bask in his success, the Lee clan acted like he should be seriously considering settling down. All those years of practically being a monk, and he was ready to sow his wild oats. Danny had spent his entire twenties partying and jumping from one woman to another, if the stories he wove for his teenage brother were true. Maybe it was juvenile, but Evan had made a point of remembering a couple of those stories as he dragged himself to work early and home late. Kind of a promise of the rewards to come. A reminder that the path he'd undertaken would be worth it.
Not that he'd been chaste. He'd just picked easy relationships. Women who were equally focused on their careers. Pals willing to enjoy his company and body and vice-versa--no expectations of advancing to the next level, and no need to carve time out for romantic gestures.
Chloe was the other single Lee. She was forty-one now, and had gained immunity from the nagging about finding her life partner. She could kick back in New Orleans, dating someone new every other month, and even their parents didn't blink. Apparently it was only Evan who needed to shop for ethically-sourced diamond rings.
Screw that. He was catching up on years of missed partying. Marisa and Koray could try their matchmaking, but he and Natalie had agreed. It was nothing but friendship and some fun.
Unless he was late picking her up, in which case the fun would be delayed for awkward apologies. Evan pulled over so he could fiddle with his map app again. Dark blue door, he reminded himself, scanning the street in front of him. It curved ahead, well past where his phone claimed Natalie lived, but he eased his car around the bend and spotted her address. He took a sec to brush down his hair--he'd never broken the habit of running his hand through it when he was frazzled--and tucked his shirt more firmly in place as he walked up her sidewalk.
Her house was appealing. Classy neighborhood, upscale cars in the drives, eclectic but well-maintained homes. Hers was red brick with black shutters and trim painted a creamy off-white. It suited the version of Natalie he'd first met in Black Gold Coffee. Neat and timeless.
And he was on time. She opened the door to his double rap, invited him in. "I like your style," he told her, leaning in for a kiss to her cheek. That wildflower scent was stronger than ever, as he stood with her in her element.
"Thanks." She did a spin, showing off the flare of her sundress's skirt.
"I meant the decor, but you look great, too."
Natalie tilted those cat eyes at him. "Watch it, mister. I've got your number now. By which I mean, I've got your dad's number. I will absolutely interrupt his birthday dinner to tell him how rude his son is."
"No you won't." If she did, his folks would know they were going out again. As friends. Which they'd interpret as something more.
"Keep hoping." But she was shrugging into a light silk cardigan that picked up the yellows in her dress pattern, and made her eyes glow with a deeper green.
"I think you're willing to risk going out with me despite my many bad qualities."
Natalie shouldered her bag and allowed him to open the door for her. "Only because I want to see this play. And Leticia."
"Yeah, yeah." He waited while she locked up, then took her arm to escort her to his car. "Murder mysteries more than make up for my appalling manners and regrettable relatives."
He rounded the car and got in beside her. She said, "Don't forget your awful puns."
"Right, bad puns and bad poetry. The double kiss of death for this friendship."
"No, I like the poetry," Natalie said, not missing a beat in their banter. "So we're only at one kiss of death. I think we can survive that, don't you?"
Maybe it was being enclosed in his car with her. Evan inhaled, feeling like sharing Natalie's space helped his lungs fill more deeply than usual. The air in his chest was effervescent.
"You know," he said, "I really think we can."
It felt to Natalie like they'd passed some threshold of wariness. She'd been joking with Evan since their first phone call, but it was tempered by a layer of tension. His not recognizing her in the coffee shop. Her mother's prying. Worry about setting boundaries. Now they'd interacted enough to put some trust in each other.
She suspected Evan felt, like her, more secure in their ground rules. She'd set him straight over Elaine's wrong-headed conviction that Chris's sudden departure had broken her. And debunked the five-year settling-down plan her mother had invented, as well.
Evan could relax around her. It made dining with him fun. Instead of the charged barbs they'd exchanged at the art gallery, when they'd both reverted to defensive one-upmanship, Nat simply enjoyed Evan's company.
He lounged back in the booth, legs stretched out, no matter that his posture meant his knee kept bumping Nat's calf. Across from them, Luke scooted his chair towards Leticia's, only to stop and shoot Evan a look. Natalie felt Evan's leg muscles stiffen and caught, peripherally, his faux-innocent smile. Surmising that Evan's feet were quite deliberately in the way of Luke's amorous intentions, Natalie leaned across the table to ask Leticia about her earrings.
In shifting so she could show them off, Leticia moved even further away from Luke. Evan tapped Nat's leg with his knee, and she used her crossed leg to push him away. Evan's snort of amusement was barely audible over Leticia's story about the friend whose jewelry crafting hobby had turned into a cottage business.
The waiter delivered their beers and took their orders. Natalie asked for a side salad and an order of fries.
"That's it? Yelp said the buffalo burger is excellent," Evan said.
"Probably the buffalo is real proud of that," Nat replied. "But it's not really worth changing my entire diet to find out."
When Evan pushed himself up straight, Luke wasted no time in colonizing the freed inches next to Leticia. Evan scanned the menu. "There's no veggie burger? You're a vegetarian and you came out for burgers? Why didn't you tell me?"
"He'll have the buffalo burger," Nat told the waiter.
"With cheddar and grilled onions," Evan added.
She took the menu from him and let the lovebirds across from them claim the waiter's attention.
"You didn't tell me you're a vegetarian."
"I make my own choices, Evan. If I minded coming here, I'd have spoken up. Besides, I'm not."
"Not what?"
"Vegetarian. I don't eat meat, but I eat free range chicken and sustainably caught fish."
"Huh." He took a pull of his longneck. "No meat, though."
"Nope. And for the record, I don't keep kosher, but I don't eat shellfish, either."
"Huh," he said again.
She patted his arm. "This isn't a huge deal, I swear. I happen to really like French fries."
"But no cow, no shrimp, no buffalo."
"No. But I'm not offended if others do."
"Well, damn."
He didn't have to sound so flabbergasted. She'd swear his upset was genuine. "It's not anything that affects you, Evan."
As he sunk back into the corner of the booth, she felt his legs shove forward. Luke's chair scraped across the painted concrete floor. Evan sighed. "Problem is, it does. All this time since the art show, I've had this one desire."
"You have?"
"Yep. And now it's thwarted. Permanently, irrevocably thwarted."
She side-eyed his petulant posture. "What's this big desire of yours, then?"
"It's just that I was so inspired by the art, you know? So ever since then, I've been dying to take you out for pork chops."
If Natalie hadn't swallowed her mouthful of beer milliseconds before his comment, her favorite summer sweater would be destined for an immediate trip to the cleaners.
He hid his grin behind a bite of buffalo burger. Yelp was spot-on about it. And it was better to focus on his meal than on the flirting across the table. Luke kept pretending to steal bites of Leticia's salad, and she giggled every time. She was cute enough, as gigglers went, but it wasn't that charming a move. He was getting embarrassed on his friend's behalf.
Natalie's foot tapped him under the table. He glanced her way. Without a word, she shoved a forkful of cucumber in his mouth. It was dripping with dressing, and Evan scrambled for his napkin to catch the overflow heading straight for his shirt. He wiped his chin and gave her a look.
"Thought you'd like the creamy Serrano. It's got a good bite to it, right?"
"Mmm. Yeah. Quite a kick."
He nudged her with his foot.
He heard a muted thump under the table. She ran her foot up his pants leg. He reached for his beer and slugged some back, aiming to stay cool. When her toes crested his sock and hit his calf, he confirmed his suspicion. She'd dropped one of those golden sandals to the floor so her bare skin slid across his.
Manful. He was manful in his stillness. But then Leticia giggled again, and Luke's ears flamed red, and Leticia leaned over to brush a kiss right on his scarlet earlobe, and Natalie's toes dug into his calf. Evan's shoulders shook.
"You okay?" She was all innocence, dipping her fry in ketchup, like she had no idea what her lower limbs were up to.
"You seem to have caught my leg hair in your pedicured piggies."
"Got you by the short and curlies, do I?"
He refused, no matter how provocative she sounded, to picture his short hair caught up in her toes. Or any other part of her. They had an agreement. He thought. He thought they had an agreement about no relationship. No letting interfering parents turn them into an item. No short hair.
He straightened and slid his leg away from her foot. It was the smart thing to do.
And he was a smart man.
Reaching over to snag three of her fries right out of her hand was perhaps not the wise move. But as any one of his siblings would say, he wasn't nearly as bright as he thought he was.
She hadn't meant to flirt. It was dumb. And she had to fess up to full-on flirting, from the footsie at dinner to the fact that she'd floundered for Evan's hand in the dark theatre when the stagecraft included a crack of thunder and one of those Masterpiece-style screams of horror. All very dramatic, if expected--it was a Christie mystery after all, and she'd been to several of the Alley Theatre's Summer Chills productions over the years. So maybe Leticia burying her head in Luke's shoulder was genuine nerves on her part, but Natalie wasn't wrapping her fingers around Evan's long, smooth, warm ones totally out of fear. And after the detective bumbled onto the scene, tripping over evidence despite the restored lights, keeping her hand in his was, by any measure, unnecessary.
Fun, but unnecessary. It crossed the line from comfortable friendship to...something more. And she'd already established that she wasn't crossing that line. As had he, mutual smirking about his friend's inept romancing of Leticia notwithstanding.
She directed him onto the winding parkway towards her house, then fell silent. The moon was full enough for her to see a lot of detail about the trees lining the road, and she counted the oaks they passed, as an alternative to another internal lecture about not needing a man in her life. Especially not one who would so obviously suit Elaine's agenda. She decided to abort her online dating scheme. If proximity to one hot guy left her crossing lines so readily, she wasn't as over her mom's brainwashing as she'd hoped.
"What are you up to this weekend?"
She turned. The moonlight was nice about letting her see his face, too. "Work."
His glance was lit with cynicism. "I'm not asking you out, Natalie. I'm just making conversation."
She spoke slowly, to force calm and the pretense that they shared a mindset. "Okay, sorry. This weekend, I'm working. I work every weekend. It's part and parcel of my job. Saturday I've got showings with two clients, and Sunday I'm staging a new listing so we can take photos Monday morning."
"No wonder your mom is so set on this five-year plan of hers. I seem to remember it involved a man who would let you quit your job to raise his babies."
"She's in favor of becoming a grandmama, but mostly she hopes for the taking care of me part. She respects my career. I'm thinking of changing jobs and it just hit me that if I do, we'll have another topic for her to kvetch over. If I'd made the switch when Chris was around, she'd have adapted. But when he left, all her crazy came out of hibernation."
"Chris is the ex?"
"Yep. He and I were together for a few years. Elaine took his departure badly."
"Only Elaine? How did you take it?"
Natalie watched the trees cede land to strip centers. "At the time, not great, I suppose. It was a pretty big shock. Not only being broken up with--the way it happened."
"How did it happen? Unless that's too intrusive."
"Your parents didn't tell you? I forget sometimes that you don't know everything they know about me."
"I forget the same thing. Or forget it in reverse. Or however the syntax works out." She could hear the grin in his voice and glanced away from the side window to take in his profile.
"We sure had a unique introduction to each other, didn't we?"
"Yep. So, this breakup?"
After turning over and over Chris's crap move as if it were a compost heap in need of aeration, Natalie had the basics down pat. "Chris is a pilot, and we had a routine for when he was home between legs. He was usually tired after a few days of flying, so we would go for an early movie or drinks, then hole up at his place with take out. I went to pick him up for the movie, and he wasn't there. He wasn't answering his cell, or his door, and his car wasn't in his parking space. I gave up and went to my house, where I found a Dear John in the mailbox. Haven't seen him, or heard from him, or heard anything about him, since. I did find out he wasn't with the airline anymore. The guy I asked had no idea what happened."
Evan blew a long breath between pursed lips. For a few seconds, the only sound in the car was the clicking of his turn signal. When the light turned green, Evan spoke. "I can't believe Mom and Dad didn't tell me this. What good are they as matchmakers if they won't play the sympathy card?"
She let her spine sink against the seat. This guy, taking the wind out of her sails again. "Oh, so my tale of woe would have been enough to get you to look past my harem pants?"
"Well, sure. If they'd told me back when I lived in Tampa. But too bad, now I know you. I even know where you live. Almost."
"Keep going, it's around the corner. And thanks. Charming to know that my sob story isn't sad enough for a pity date."
Evan pulled into Natalie's driveway, putting the car in park but making no move to get out. His voice quieted, no longer teasing. "You're probably the least pitiful woman I know. Elaine has it all wrong. The last thing you need is a man to take care of you. You're too independent, and I think, too good at taking care of others. When you find an upgrade to replace Chris, he's going to surprise your mom with how little you need him."
Natalie swallowed against the lump of longing for his words to come true, and reached into the foot well for her handbag. "Flatterer. Thanks for the play. I had fun."
Evan's bell laugh rang once. "Maybe not as much fun as Luke and Leticia, but still fun." His hand on her arm stopped Natalie from retreating from the intimacy in the car. His fingers flexed on her bicep, a subtle encouragement to lean towards him. She closed her eyes, hoping to not give away more of her tender emotions. Evan's palm skimmed up to her shoulder blade and he leaned in for a two second press of his lips on hers.
"See you around, Natalie."
She nodded and got out of the car. If she was careful, her body blocked the glow of her porch light enough that even as he watched her get safely inside, Evan would have no chance to read her face.