Kari circled her little dining room table, setting out silverware and napkins and trying to settle the nervous whirligigs and firecrackers in her stomach. But her pulse gave another jump when the doorbell rang and she took a moment to breathe, her hand on her belly, before she moved to the front door and opened it. Sam stood there, next to a bespectacled, bearded man with sandy hair.
“Come on in, Sammie.” She gave her niece a brief, stiff hug before turning to the man. “You must be Graham. Welcome.” She didn’t know whether to shake his hand or hug him, so she opted for the more formal gesture. But not without a spate of awkward half-waving her hands around in the air while she decided.
Well, it wouldn’t be an evening at her place if it didn’t come with a side of awkward.
Graham had slate-colored eyes that crinkled appealingly as he smiled and shook her hand, acknowledging the embarrassing moment. “Call me Gray. It’s nice to meet you.” He inhaled deeply. “Whatever you have cooking smells amazing.”
“Thank you. Old, reliable pot roast recipe.”
He hefted a cloth grocery bag. “And Sam made a lemon pound cake.”
Kari’s mouth watered as she took the bag from his hands. “Oooh—the buttermilk pound cake recipe?”
Sam nodded, her dark blue eyes glittering with appreciation. “The very one.”
“Well, come on in. Rob should be here any minute.” She ushered them into the living room where Sam stopped, a smile spreading across her face.
“Your doodles.” Sam pointed at the motif over the dining room entrance.
“That’s more than a doodle,” Graham said, his eyebrows rising.
“What Sam means is I used to doodle Scandinavian motifs all over the margins of my school notes and grocery lists and any piece of paper I could get my hands on,” Kari said. She moved over to the bookshelf and pulled out a volume, offering it to Graham. “Like the stuff you see in Carl Larsson paintings.”
Graham took the book from her hands, studying the cover. “Larsson? Ending in -son? Wouldn’t he be Swedish?” He shot Sam a sly look.
“Oh, you’ve trained him already.” Kari’s nervousness redoubled in the face of this tiny bit of unspoken communication between them. They had created an entire relationship and she hadn’t even known. “Have a seat, guys,” she said as the doorbell rang again and she moved to answer it.
Rob was there, in a crisp green plaid cotton shirt, his hair still a little damp from a shower. He smelled delicious, like clean laundry and spicy soap and…him. “Hey there,” he said, hoisting a bottle of wine in each hand. “Am I late for the party?”
“Right on time.” And right on cue, the nervous flutters increased yet again.
“You look gorgeous.” He kissed her on her cheek, heated by his compliment. She’d dug out a casual tunic dress in a bright print that she’d bought a few years ago and hardly ever worn. She had also put on mascara and lipstick in a fit of nerves.
“You’re not so bad yourself. Come on in and meet Sam and Gray.”
She reentered the living room and made quick introductions. “Rob, you want to come back and open one of those bottles?” She felt brittle and too bright. Chirpy, even. Not herself.
“Sure.” Rob’s gaze settled onto her like a weighted blanket. Perversely, it made her want to kick her feet out, free her arms. In lieu of that, she walked through the dining room to the kitchen and set the bag with the pound cake on the counter. Then she leaned on the counter, breathing deeply.
“You okay?” Rob set the bottles of wine on the counter next to her.
“Just…so much change. So fast.”
“You and me?”
She swallowed, nodded. “And Sam and Gray. They’re already exchanging wordless inside jokes. And I didn’t even know he existed before last week.” She inhaled again as Rob’s hand settled on the small of her back. “I just feel like everything is happening so fast. Like everything’s been frozen for a long time and now all of a sudden it’s melting. Changing. Turning into a flash flood.”
“What do you want me to do?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. She had to get through this. She was being ridiculous. What could he do for her? Think. “Open wine? Pour wine?”
His hand moved up to her shoulder, tightened his fingers with the briefest pressure. “I can do that. And you can do this. Things are changing, yes. But does Sam seem happy?”
She nodded. “I think so.” She opened her eyes and turned to peer through the dining room into the living room. She could see Sam on the couch, leaning over the Larsson book. She couldn’t see Graham’s face, but she saw Sam’s expression as it turned up to listen to something he said and her glowing smile made Kari’s heart squeeze. She nodded again. “Yeah. I think she’s happy.”
“Well then. Let’s go get to know Gray.”
Rob eyed Kari nervously as he opened a bottle and poured wine into the glasses Kari retrieved from a high cupboard. “You’re ready?” he asked, voice low to keep their conversation from the younger couple in the living room.
She nodded, picking up two glasses. “Yes. Sam and I will move beyond everything. You and I will figure out what we’re doing. I’ll come to grips with the fact that I actually own this place.”
That’s right. He tended to forget that the very fact of homeownership gave her the heebie-jeebies. He picked up the other two glasses and nodded toward the living room. “Okay then.”
Her chin came forward. “Yes.” She nodded, seeming to try to convince herself.
Rob set the glasses back down on the counter and turned to face Kari, placing his hands on her shoulders. “You don’t sound like you’re ready.”
“I have to be. I love Sam. And she’s all I’ve got. I have to make it right.”
You have me too, he thought but didn’t say aloud. “You won’t be able to make anything right if you’re forcing it. You need to find a way to relax.”
The shoulders under his hands sagged. “I don’t know how to do that right now.”
He mustered what was probably a cheesy grin. “Yeah, we don’t have time for me to relax you the way I did yesterday. Plus, if we snuck off for a shower, I think that would be a big giveaway.”
Her mouth pursed sideways. “Thanks a lot. That’s the kind of statement that is the opposite of relaxing.”
“But now you’re irritated at me instead of stressed about the situation with Sam. So…win?”
“Way to throw yourself on the grenade there, Mr. Fox.”
“I’m a giving sort of guy.” He picked up the glasses again. “Back into battle. Just be yourself. Sam loves you too. You guys will get through this.”
She sighed and straightened her shoulders. “Yes.” She marched from the room and Rob followed. Sam and Graham were sitting on the sofa, poring over a coffee table book of some kind. They both looked up as Kari and Rob entered. Graham closed the book, straightening the slipcover and setting it down before standing to take the glass of wine Rob handed him with murmured thanks. Rob examined the couple with the practiced eye of a father who had had a few young men brought home for his inspection.
Graham was dressed almost identically to Rob, in the workaday business casual uniform of button-down shirt and cotton pants. He had an earnest air, black-rimmed spectacles, a neatly trimmed beard, and slightly shaggy hair. And when he looked at Sam, the soft expression in his eyes was what Rob would want to see in any suitor of Mia’s. He was besotted. Proud.
Preliminary verdict: decent guy. Dad-approved.
Rob glanced at Kari, who had handed off her second glass of wine to Sam and was standing talking to her. Sam was saying something about a job interview and Kari was reacting with enthusiasm. A little too much enthusiasm. She glanced at Rob and he leveled his palm at the floor, dropping it down a couple of times in a “tone it down” gesture. She swallowed and looked back at her niece, her smile dimming back from its klieg-light glare to a more normal wattage.
“So that’s how it is?” Graham’s soft voice recalled Rob to the younger man’s presence.
“How what is?”
Graham gestured his wineglass at the two women. “Halvorsen women. They’re pretty amazing if my experience holds up.”
“Um. Yeah.” Rob took a gulp of his wine. Crap. Was he that obvious? This evening was supposed to be about Kari getting to reconnect with Sam, for her to meet Graham. Not about Kari and Rob. “It’s really early. And Kari’s mostly nervous about making sure she repairs her relationship with Sam. Not sure if she’s ready to go public about us.” But if Sam was as perceptive as her new boyfriend, she’d probably figure it out too. And the pair was sure to compare notes after the evening was over.
Graham smiled as Sam turned to him, holding out her hand to draw him into the conversation with her aunt. “I was just telling Kari about my interview with the RiverKeeper’s Alliance.” Graham responded to her gesture and Rob moved to join the rest of the group, feeling like a third wheel somehow, even though that math didn’t work out. He shoved down a swell of irritation at the feeling.
Kari’s smile was now like an eager, dancing flame, natural and unforced. “Sam’s almost finished with a master’s degree in water resources management. She has a professor who hooked her up with an interview with an environmental advocacy group and it sounds like it went very well.”
Rob raised his glass. “I think this calls for a toast. To Sam Halvorsen, may she get the job of her dreams.”
The group clinked their glasses together and a rush of near-giddiness flooded through Kari. Her interactions with Sam were different, but with Rob’s presence as ballast, she could see that it was possibly because Sam was excited about the job interview and nervous about her meeting Graham and not necessarily because Kari had kept Mor’s secret.
Maybe things weren’t as broken as she had feared.
Kari caught Rob’s eye and he winked as he sipped his wine, sending a zing of energy through the parts of her that had previously just contained raw nerves.
“So,” Sam gave Graham a sidelong glance before looking at Kari and Rob, making Kari wonder if a more serious announcement was on the way. Too fast. Too soon. “You guys seem cozy.”
Kari coughed and color flamed on Rob’s cheekbones.
“Rob’s been over here a lot. Helping me with the house.” Kari indicated the dining room. “I didn’t know how to paint a wall, for instance. But he helped.”
She glanced back at Rob, but his cheeks were still red. And his eyes were hard. “Yeah,” he said. “It all started with the kitchen sink and ended with paint.”
Ended? Kari’s brain whirled. “Um. Could you give me a hand in the kitchen while I plate everything?” she asked Rob.
“Sure.” But even in agreement, his voice was clipped.
“Sam, feel free to put on some music.” Kari strode through the dining room and into the kitchen. Out of immediate earshot of her other guests, she asked Rob, “Are you mad at me for some reason?”
His jaw clenched and he put his wineglass down on the counter with a snap. “I don’t know. Are you ashamed of me for some reason?”
“What?” Kari fought to keep her voice from rising. This was the last thing she expected tonight.
“I’m just your handyman? Jesus, Kari. If that was the way you really felt about me, maybe you should have told me first.”
Anger and embarrassment welled up in her. “That wasn’t what I meant at all.” But she could see how he took it that way. Shame and defensiveness mixed in her belly, a toxic brew.
“Then why did you basically contradict Sam when she inferred that we were seeing each other?”
“Weren’t you the one worried about ‘giving us away’? Wasn’t that about not telling them that we’re together?”
“No.” Rob’s jaw clenched. “It was about not having sex with them in the house.”
“For crying out loud, I thought I was keeping the focus on them. Tonight was about them.” Why was he flipping out like this? His extreme reaction wasn’t the calm, measured Rob she thought she knew. At all.
“There’s room in people’s heads for more than one thought at a time,” he rasped, the anger in his low tones unconcealed. “And both Sam and Gray seemed to think that our being together was a good thing. I guess you’re the only one who disagrees.”
“I don’t disagree.” Kari’s voice started to rise and she slapped a hand over her mouth. Taking a breath, she removed her hand and whispered. “I also didn’t know how you would react to me taking us public without talking to you about it first. Maybe you would be ashamed of me.”
“That’s horseshit and you know it.”
“I don’t know it. I know you didn’t date for ten years.”
“And I broke that streak very consciously. For you. I have your art—signed by you—hanging on my wall. And you think that means I would be ashamed of you?” Rob’s fists settled on his hips.
Kari flung her hands wide, exasperated. “You didn’t exactly run out and tell Mia. She basically inferred it too. I don’t know how your mind works.”
“Well I obviously don’t know how yours works if you take what I’ve done and boil it down to that conclusion.”
Kari closed her eyes, pinched her lips together, trying to figure out how this had gotten out of hand so quickly and completely. “Okay. Can we start over? I’m perfectly happy to march in there and tell them that yes, we’re seeing each other. That it’s very new. So new that I was nervous about talking about it. Would that help?”
“Help what? Help get through the evening or help things long term? If there is a long term?”
Ice shot through Kari’s veins. “Hopefully both. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Okay. Fine. Apology accepted.”
But he didn’t look any happier.
Rob helped Kari portion the meal and plate it up, but anger still simmered through him.
This was exactly what he’d been afraid of. Everything going off the rails and them living right next door to each other, forced to see each other all the time no matter how much it hurt.
Kari shot him a nervous look and picked up two plates, carrying them into the dining room without a word. He had two choices right now. He could go home, leave Kari to explain what had happened, or he could make the best of the rest of the evening.
He did what he always did when he was in a moral quandary: he thought about what kind of example he would have wanted to model for Mia when she was a kid.
Dammit.
Gritting his teeth, he followed her with the other two portions. Graham and Sam came in as he was setting the plates down on the table. Sam commented favorably on the wall color as they sat down.
“Yeah. Rob did it all in here when I was doing the motif in the living room.” She shot him another nervous glance, exasperating him. What did she think he was going to do?
Then he remembered that he’d been one short, sharp decision away from just walking out the back door and leaving her swinging. The realization shamed him. He looked across the table at Graham. The younger man’s brows were drawn together and he was looking at Kari, but his expression smoothed when he met Rob’s eyes. The change in his face seemed to say, “I don’t like any of this but it’s none of my business and I’m staying out of it.”
Rob picked up his fork and took a bite of roast, nearly moaning out loud at the tender, savory meat. Absurd as it was, he wasn’t sure he could stay mad at Kari and eat food this good. He swallowed. “Delicious, Kari.”
“Thank you.” Her face relaxed just a little and the other two chimed in with praise for the meal.
“Kari’s always been good at anything creative,” Sam said. “Cooking, drawing, painting, music, knitting, hardanger… Anything.”
Kari ducked her head. “I don’t know about anything. I know I enjoy creating something out of ingredients or paint or yarn. What about you, Gray? Do you have hobbies?”
Graham looked at Sam, warmth in his expression. “Well, fishing obviously. I enjoy hiking as well. But I don’t have a creative bone in my body, I’m afraid.”
“Kari got all the creative genes in our family too,” Sam said.
“Untrue. You tie flies,” Graham retorted. “She’s been experimenting with some original designs, too.”
Kari’s face glowed with pride. “That’s great, Sammie. What a neat accomplishment.”
Sam shrugged. “Some traditional patterns just weren’t working on some rivers. I had some ideas about why. That’s all. No big deal.”
Rob chewed, a smile spreading across his face as he watched this byplay, shoveling another bite into his mouth. His daughter’s voice seemed to resonate in his ears. Dad, I told you you should have something to eat before you went over. Hangry again.
He almost let his hand slam into his forehead. That was why he’d flown off the handle at Kari. His blood sugar level was probably hovering somewhere around his toes. Add his impulsive nature to that and bingo, he’d overreacted.
He looked at Kari. She was looking at Sam with pride and affection, her expression open and relaxed. She seemed to feel his gaze on her and she glanced at him, her face going taut.
Nothing for it but to try to row back to normal interaction. “You work at Montgomery University?” he asked Graham.
“Yeah. I’m head of technical services in the library,” Graham said.
“Rob is the head of I.T. for a gaming company,” Kari said. The anxious look on her face as she made the attempt to connect them almost broke Rob’s heart.
Graham’s fork paused between his plate and his mouth and he shook his head at an apparently common misconception. “Not at all the same thing. We have an I.T. department too. Library technical services are the things you—hopefully—don’t see as a patron. Cataloging. Acquisitions. That kind of thing. Stuff that happens behind the scenes so you can get what you need.”
“And you’re in charge of all that?” Kari’s gaze flicked from Graham’s face to Sam’s. Rob read the message there. Impressive.
Graham chewed, swallowed, shrugged. “It’s a small department.”
“Being in charge of a department is a big deal, no matter the size,” Rob said.
Graham’s head lifted and he looked Rob in the eye. “Being responsible for people is always a big deal.”
Point taken. “You’re right.” He glanced at Kari. She swallowed and looked at her plate.
“We are seeing one another. Rob and I,” she said.
“And I was kind of a jackass about it in the kitchen,” Rob said, reaching out to wrap his hand around hers. Kari looked up, her mouth falling open in surprise.
He wanted to kick himself for his thoughts earlier.
He’d been ready to chuck everything because she’d had a moment. His throat went tight. He squeezed Kari’s hand and looked at Sam. She was regarding him with an interested frown. “Why were you a jackass?” Sam asked.
“Because I deflected when you asked about us. I hurt his feelings.” Kari poked at her food with her fork, her eyes on her plate.
“You going to be a jackass again?” Sam asked.
He smiled at her fierce expression “No ma’am.”
“Good.”