finally gotten her message. Better late than never.
April called both her father and her mother before they arrived, to warn them that Mike would be there, and not to say anything to him about the baby, or their situation. Both her parents thought his coming to dinner was a hopeful sign of some kind of involvement on his part, but neither of them dared to comment. They knew how sensitive April was about it, and they didn’t want to upset her. But they were both anxious to meet him, and see what they thought of him. Pat warned Maddie and the girls on the way to the restaurant to be careful too. They all promised they would be.
Pat and his contingent were the first to arrive, and Valerie a few minutes later. She looked better but still tired after her shocking ordeal. Pat and Maddie hugged her and told her how happy they were to see her, as did their daughters. They could have been having a very different Christmas, if she and the other hostages hadn’t been rescued. There had been services that day for many of those who hadn’t survived it, and there would be all through the coming week. It was sobering to still see it on the news.
The whole group was in great spirits as they sat down at the table, and just as they did Mike arrived, wearing a blazer and tie, and looking very serious and respectable. He had correctly guessed that he needed to show up looking proper for dinner. Valerie was the first to hold her hand out to him with a broad smile.
“Thank you for keeping April company for that awful day.” Mike returned the smile, and was stunned by how beautiful she was and how young she appeared, even more so than on TV. She looked like a real star, and he could easily see the resemblance to April, despite their different styles. He preferred April’s natural look, but her mother was a lovely-looking woman too.
“I’m just glad you’re okay. That was one hell of a day,” Mike said with obvious sympathy, and then shook hands with Pat and Maddie, who greeted him warmly, and he said hi to the girls. April had seated him between herself and Annie. She thought it might be too intense to seat him next to either of her parents, who might not be able to resist asking him pointed questions, in spite of her request. But Mike seemed totally comfortable in their midst. They were kind people and put him at ease.
He talked to Annie about MIT, and Heather about the colleges she had applied to. He got into an interesting discussion with her father about medieval history, which Mike seemed to know a lot about, and he and her mother chatted amiably, and he spoke to Maddie on several topics, and everyone teased him when his pancakes arrived instead of the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding they were all eating. And he liked his pancakes so much that he ordered a second stack and ate them all. And as usual, the wines Jean-Pierre picked out for them were excellent. By the end of dinner, everyone was in high spirits, and Mike decided to have one of her Yule logs and ate all of that as well. He had made a total pig of himself, and thought her family were the nicest people he’d ever met. Her father even scolded him for the bad review he’d given the restaurant, and Mike admitted that he was deeply embarrassed about it.
“I was a total jerk,” he confessed readily. “I just didn’t get what she was doing. I could tell what a great chef she is, and how well trained, from her CV, and I thought she was underachieving. Instead her idea is sheer genius. Look at what I just ate.” He had waved at the crumbs of the pancakes dripping in maple syrup as he said it. It had been all he had craved for dinner, and he admitted that her mashed potatoes and white truffle pasta were the best in the world. “I’ll make it up to her one day,” Mike promised her father, who looked mollified as they drank champagne with dessert. Some of them ate her Yule logs, and the others had plum pudding, delicately lit. And both girls ordered s’mores.
Jean-Pierre offered her father a glass of cognac after dinner, and Mike accepted one too. The two men got along much better than April had expected, and her mother put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her and whispered “I like him,” and April whispered back, “Me too.” And when he went to the bathroom, both of her sisters agreed that he was cute. That didn’t mean that they’d wind up together, but at least her judgment hadn’t been totally off when she’d gone to bed with him, it had just been premature.
The entire group left the restaurant after midnight, and they weren’t the last to leave. Mike thanked them all for allowing him to join them, and he didn’t say it, but it had been the best Christmas Eve of his life. He liked them all. And before Valerie got into a cab, April told her mother that Jack Adams was coming to dinner the day after Christmas, so he must be doing all right.
“I know.” Valerie smiled at her daughter. “I’m having dinner with him here. He called me today. He’s still on crutches, but he says he’s feeling fine. He attributes it to your mashed potatoes and meat loaf.” She laughed, and April looked surprised.
“He invited you to dinner? That’s nice of him.” She didn’t tell her mother that he usually showed up with girls half his age or younger. The two were obviously becoming friends after he rescued her from the terrorists. Once everyone had gotten into cabs, April went back inside. Everything was under control in the kitchen, so she went upstairs.
Mike called her on her cell phone just as she was getting into bed. He sounded relaxed and happy, not like a Grinch at all.
“Thank you for a wonderful evening. And I think your family is great. Everyone was really sweet to me, and they didn’t have to be. They could have been really pissed.”
“They’re not. And they liked you too,” she said honestly. “Heather thinks you’re ‘hot,’ ” she said, and he laughed out loud.
“I think your mom is ‘hot.’ She looks incredible.” He suspected she’d had a little help, but the results were great. She looked fifteen years younger than she was. And he liked Pat and Maddie too. He liked them all. They were intelligent, interesting, loving to one another, and they obviously had a great time together. It was easy to see why April loved them as much as she did, and they just as clearly loved her. And they had warmly welcomed him into their midst. “Would you like to have dinner one of these days?” he asked out of the blue, and April was surprised. “The only problem is that yours has become my favorite restaurant, so I don’t know where we’d go. Do you like Chinese?”
“I love it,” she said, sounding delighted.
“I’ll figure something out. Or maybe Thai. We’ll see. How about next week?”
“Anytime you like.”
“Perfect. Good night, April. Merry Christmas,” he said, and meant it for the first time in years.
“Merry Christmas, Mike.” She smiled as she hung up. It was funny to think about, she was almost four months pregnant with his child, and he had just asked her out for their first date. And she was thrilled.
The day after Christmas, at the appointed hour, Jack showed up at Valerie’s building in a Cadillac Escalade SUV, with a driver. He was sitting in the backseat, and she hopped in beside him. He was wearing a big shearling coat and a turtleneck sweater, and she had dressed casually too. He had warned her that dressing was still difficult for him. They had both worn jeans, and she was wearing a short fur jacket. One of the nice things about April’s restaurant was that you could wear whatever you wanted.
She and Jack chatted easily on the way downtown. He said that he had spent Christmas with his son, who had left to go skiing with friends that morning. He said he was on good terms with his ex-wife, who had remarried shortly after their divorce sixteen years before and had three young boys. Valerie said she was on great terms with her ex too, whose second wife she liked immensely, and they had two daughters.
Jack admitted readily that he hadn’t been a great husband. “In fact,” he said, looking sheepish, “I was awful. Too much temptation. And I was way too young. We were married for ten years, and I have no idea why she stayed as long as she did. It’s heady stuff being a quarterback at the top of your game. I thought I was hot stuff, and I guess back then I was. I had way too much fun, and I have to admit, I have since then too. This last birthday kind of got me thinking. Could be it’s time to get out of the fast lane and slow down. The night before my birthday damn near killed me.”
She smiled at the memory. “You looked pretty bad when I saw you.”
“I thought I was dying. I was in bed for two weeks with that disk. That never happened to me before. I figured it was some kind of message.”
“And what would that be?” she teased him. He looked in good spirits despite his recent injury, and he didn’t look like he was slowing down to her. He was out for dinner less than a week after he’d been shot.
“I’m not sure what the message is,” Jack said, smiling at her. “Get thee to a monastery maybe. Or at least slow down. I’ve been raising hell for a long time. I was thinking about it in the hospital too. We could have all been killed. I think I want to put more thought into how I spend my life, and be a little more selective about
