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Saturday afternoon, he took Gwen and Annie to see the house.
It wasn’t his yet. Even without the delay of applying for a mortgage, the process of transferring ownership of the property took time. The deed had to be authenticated. A lawyer had to ascertain that there were no liens on the property. T’s had to be crossed, i’s dotted.
But Dylan was already thinking about it as his house. Sometimes, he even thought about it as their house—his and Annie’s and Gwen’s.
He’d had to wait until Saturday afternoon to show it to them. Gwen worked weekdays and Saturday mornings. Dylan kept himself busy during the days, conferring with Brian on licensing deals, reviewing promotional schedules for the upcoming Galaxy Force film, which was scheduled for release on Memorial Day weekend, and haggling with the screenwriters over issues he had on the next Galaxy Force film, which was slated to start filming early in the new year. He had to admit that Brian had a point: dealing long-distance with these things and accommodating the three-hour time difference made his job harder than it would have been if he were living in California. But he’d sworn to Gwen that they could make this work, and he was determined.
He’d spent every evening with Gwen and Annie, at least. He wasn’t used to cooking, but he’d asked Gwen for a shopping list and driven to a supermarket on Route One, sparing her a chore and contributing to her pantry. If she was going to include him in her dinners, the least he could do was help pay for them.
Of course, he’d have preferred to do much more. If she’d let him, he would have hired a cook for her, someone who could do all the shopping and food preparation so she wouldn’t have to do that herself. But he didn’t dare to suggest it. Gwen was a proud woman. She would have taken such a gesture as presumptuous, the actions of an arrogant rich guy throwing his money around.
So instead, he’d bought potatoes and fresh tuna steaks—an indulgence she could rarely afford, she’d admitted to him—and a basket of locally grown apples. He’d peeled and cored the apples while she and Annie had prepared a pie crust. Annie had wielded the rolling pin like a pro. “I want to be a chef when I grow up,” she’d announced, and when Gwen had reminded her that she also wanted to be a dentist and an artist, she’d insisted that she could be all three.
He and Gwen didn’t have sex again. Every evening, he would play with Annie or read to her or watch a video with her, and then Gwen would take over, giving Annie her bath and tucking her into bed while Dylan tidied up the kitchen or caught up on emails or otherwise sat around idly. He was willing to help out with Annie’s bedtime—not the bath, of course, but the tucking in, the bedtime story, the quiet, intimate moments when a parent might plant a dream seed or two. But he respected Gwen’s desire to have that time alone with her daughter. He knew he was an imposition on them. He didn’t want to encroach even more.
So he’d wait until Gwen descended the stairs alone, having launched her daughter into slumber-land. He’d give Gwen a hug, a kiss or two—and he’d sense her withdrawal. He’d see desire in her eyes but feel fear in her body.
“I won’t hurt you,” he vowed on Friday night. He’d kissed her, and she’d returned his kiss for a luscious moment before pulling back and stepping away from him.
“You don’t know what you’ll do,” she responded.
“Can you trust me?”
“Can you give me some time?”
He understood. He had to earn her trust. Patience wasn’t his long suit, but for her—and for Annie—he’d be patient.
He was glad she’s agreed to visit his house with Annie on Saturday afternoon. He’d arranged with Andrea to meet them at the house with the key, and the four of them entered the house together. Both Gwen and Annie appeared awed by the size of the entry foyer. The great room beyond impressed them even more. “Look, Mommy!” Annie had crowed. “This is so big! I can run around here.” She extended her arms as if they were wings, and sprinted in loopy circles around the empty room.
“She runs around in our house, too,” Gwen muttered. But Dylan knew Annie couldn’t run so swiftly or so freely in their cozy little house, not without crashing into the walls.
“Look at this,” Annie continued, racing to the fieldstone fireplace. “It’s bigger than me! You could build a fire and roast marshmallows. My friend Lucy has a fireplace,” she added for Dylan’s benefit. “Her mommy doesn’t let us roast marshmallows in it, though. She says they’ll drip on the floor and make mess.”
“She’s also afraid you’ll get hurt,” Gwen reminded Annie. “You have to stay behind the screen, or you can get burned.”
“I’m careful. I love roasted marshmallows.” Annie did another arm-flapping turn around the living room, her sneakers squeaking against the polished wood floor.
“Want to see the kitchen?” Dylan asked Gwen.
Andrea had been quietly observing Dylan, Gwen, and Annie, her expression a mix of bemusement and calculation. No doubt she was trying to figure out what Dylan had to do with the owner of the Attic and her rambunctious daughter. But she apparently felt the kitchen was a subject for women, and she spoke up. “It’s a bit outdated, but I think you’ll see it has enormous potential.”
Gwen arched an eyebrow and followed Andrea past the formal dining room to the spacious kitchen.
Dylan understood that arched eyebrow and the sentiment behind it. Andrea seemed to think Gwen would be in charge of the kitchen. She’d reached the assumption that this house would signify something to Gwen, that Gwen would have some say in enabling the kitchen to reach its potential.
Dylan would like nothing more than for Gwen to design the kitchen to meet her needs and wants. He’d happily hand her a blank check and tell her to go crazy. Six-burner professional gas stove. Sub-zero refrigerator. Temperature-controlled wine rack. Two sinks, one against the wall and one in the center island. Counters of granite, engineered stone, marble, whatever she wanted.
But he couldn’t even get her to sleep with him. Allowing him to coronate her queen of the kitchen implied much more of a commitment than simply having sex with him.
Gwen wandered around the kitchen, angling her head to scrutinize the sink, craning her neck to inspect the vent above the stove. “This is the biggest kitchen in the world,” Annie announced as she pranced through the doorway. “It’s bigger than the kitchen in a castle. It’s giant.”
“I don’t think it’s the biggest kitchen in the world,” Gwen told her.
“It’s bigger than our kitchen.”
“By a bit,” Gwen agreed.
“By a lot. It’s so big, you could have a party here. The biggest party in the world.”
Dylan appreciated her enthusiasm. “Come on, Annie—I’ll show you upstairs.” He took Annie’s hand and ushered her past the pantry to the back stairs. Behind him, he heard Andrea say, “Dylan has discussed some of his ideas for renovating this kitchen, but I’m sure you’ll want some input, too.”
“No, that’s all right,” Gwen responded. “It’s his kitchen.” He imagined that must have bemused Andrea even more.
He should have U-turned, stomped back down to the kitchen and told Gwen this kitchen could be hers if she wanted it. The whole house could be hers. She could made the decorating decisions. She could choose the furniture, the fixtures. She could dress up the place with objects from her store. A framed mirror in the foyer. A pewter vase on the dining room table. A captain’s clock on the fireplace mantel. A colorful silk scarf looped over a door knob. “Squeeze Pleeze” bottles on the kitchen counter. He still had the set he’d bought in his room at the Ocean Bluff Inn, but he would display them prominently on the kitchen counter.
Whatever Gwen wanted. Blank check, carte blanche. His only goal was for her to feel comfortable about this house. And about him.
But Annie had already raced to the top of the stairs and swept into one of the bedrooms. “This is the biggest bedroom!” she shouted. “I can see the ocean!”
That can be your bedroom, Annie, he thought as he chased after her.
*
What struck Gwen most forcefully about the house was not its size or its location but the fact that Dylan was sharing it with her.
She had tried all week to maintain a dignified distance from him—and she thought she’d been reasonably successful. He’d been doing everything right: playing with Annie, talking with her, forging a relationship with her, and all the while respecting the boundaries Gwen had established. He didn’t try to spoil Annie, or to undermine Gwen’s discipline. He questioned Annie about school and looked as if he actually cared about her answers. Gwen still couldn’t quite believe he wanted to settle in this quaint New England town and be a quaint New England dad, attending soccer games and volunteering for carpools, debating lawn care products with the neighbors and sitting through town meeting every spring.
She sensed that sharing his house with her was his way of convincing her that, yes, he was ready to be a typical suburban father. Not that there was anything typical about Dylan... But it was clear that Gwen’s opinion of the house mattered to him.
The real estate agent’s chatter implied that she saw things that way. “I know of some terrific contractors who could redo the cabinets here,” she said, gesturing around the kitchen. “New countertops, new appliances—this could be a true chef’s kitchen.”
“I wonder if Dylan could be a true chef,” Gwen said, not adding that Annie was the Parker female aiming toward true chef-dom, along with all her other career aspirations.
The agent faltered for a moment. “Well, I suppose men enjoy cooking as much as women do,” she said, a feeble nod toward sexual equality. “Would you like to see the master bedroom?”
Gwen would like to see the bedroom Annie was screeching about, a bedroom apparently large enough to hold Red Sox games inside. But unfortunately, she also wanted to see the master bedroom. She wanted to see the room where Dylan would sleep at night. The room where his long, strong body would sprawl across a big, comfortable bed. A room where a woman could find herself sprawled out beside him, his arms wrapped possessively around her.
Much as she’d hoped to resist him, Gwen was falling hard for Dylan. He was everything he was supposed to be, everything she could ask for. A father for Annie. A partner for her. Quiet and low-key, yet endowed with a firm will and a determination to get what he was after, to accomplish his goals. To win.
He was smart. He was successful. He was gorgeous.
He wanted her. He probably knew she wanted him, too, but he didn’t push or pressure her—which only made her want him more.
A week wasn’t long enough for her to know what to do about him. It wasn’t long enough to know what she felt about him. But her feelings didn’t wear a watch. They were divorced from time. And they told her that having Dylan in her life—and Annie’s—would be a lot nicer than shutting him out.
The master bedroom was lovely, just as Gwen had expected it would be. It had broad windows along one wall that offered a glorious view of the grassy slope that descended from the house’s patio to a stretch of sand and the ocean beyond. She imagined waking up early and pulling back the curtains to watch the sun rise out of the sea.
She imagined waking up early and finding Dylan beside her.
Dylan was certain he and she could make this thing work. Bit by bit, his certainty was rubbing off on her.
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