One Summer’s Knight

Looking as fresh and lovely as a field full of daffodils. And his words, his breath, and it felt like his whole beating heart, somehow wound up stuck in his throat. “Ready?” he asked in a garbled croak.

She nodded and said breathlessly, “Mrs. Johnson, thank you so much,” but her eyes were on Riley’s face.

And he couldn’t take his eyes away from hers. He thought, Why not? At least…dinner? And he was seeing her sitting across the table from him, candlelight shining in her eyes and in her hair.

“Can we go now?” Helen whined, shuffling in from the waiting room. “I’m hungry.”

“Yes, honey, we’re going.” And Summer turned her face away from him, reaching out to pull her child against her in a one-armed hug, leaving him feeling strangely off balance and bereft, as if something precious had been wrenched from his grasp. “Do either of you need to use the rest room before we leave?” That was directed at the children, of course.

“Uh-uh,” said Helen with a decisive shake of her head, and David elaborated without looking away from the monitor, “We just went.”

“Why don’t I take you out for dinner?” Riley said to Summer, ignoring Danell’s smirk. He was still thinking of nice restaurants-one of Charleston’s less touristy seafood places, perhaps. Somewhere the children wouldn’t be too out of place…

“Pizza!” yelled Helen, doing her bunny-hop thing, and David looked up long enough to echo, “Yeah, pizza! Can we, Mom? We haven’t had pizza in a long time. Please?”

Riley’s vision of a romantic dinner vanished like a puff of smoke.

“There’s a very nice pizza place right down the road-would you like me to call and make you a reservation?” Danell purred with a perfectly straight face.

Riley looked pointedly at his watch, then said with a pained grimace, “Danell, it’s past quittin’ time-don’t you have someplace you need to go?”

“Yessir, boss-” she shut off the computer’s monitor to David’s yelp of disappointment “-I am goin’ home to mah man an’ mah kids.” She made two syllables out of both “man” and “kids,” which she could do when she chose to lay the Southern molasses on thick. She swooped down to collect her pocketbook from under her desk and slung it over her shoulder. “Hey-I’m serious about that pizza place. Down the road to the left, ’bout a mile on your right. Poppa Joe’s.” She gave them a wave, and Riley a wink. “Y’all have a nice evenin’, now.”

“It was nice of you to do this,” Summer said an hour or so later as she dropped a crust onto the pizza platter with a small, replete sigh. “They’ve had a good time.” Her eyes were on the children as she said it; they were across the room in an alcove that held a dozen or so video games, and she could see David’s head jerking as he worked the controls, and Helen’s head bobbing up and down beside him as she watched.

She didn’t want to look at Riley; she didn’t have to know how uncomfortable he was in these surroundings. His look of abject misery was like a black storm cloud on the horizon-enough to cast an uneasy pall on the picnic, but not enough to cancel it. She almost felt sorry for him-the suave and elegant Riley Grogan, brought to this. Pizza and video games! What next? Almost. To her surprise, what she did feel was annoyance. Even anger. Like a mild undercurrent of electricity running just beneath her skin.

“It’s all right,” she said, unable to keep that little burr of irritation out of her voice, “the effects aren’t permanent, you know.”

He came back from the dark place where he’d been with a small start and a puzzled “What?”

“This place…us…our life-style. It won’t rub off on you-unless you wanted it to, I suppose-which I’m sure you don’t. Once this is all cleared up and we’re out of your life, you’ll have no trouble at all going back to the life you’re used to.”

He shifted uncomfortably, but didn’t smile or deny. Instead he held her eyes with a long, dark look and said quietly, “I’d rather not talk about my life right now, if you don’t mind.” Then, in abrupt reversal of that, he looked down, released a long, audible breath. “It’s just that sometimes places… things…remind me of places I’ve been in my life…places I’d just as soon not be reminded of. Do you understand?”

Summer nodded, the anger tremors inside her becoming something else-tension…awareness…anticipation. But she didn’t want to let it go. “A pizza place?” she murmured, smiling a little, letting him see the compassion-and a little of the sadness-in her heart. “Can that be so bad a memory?”

And then he smiled, too, finally. “Not the place-the time. Reminds me of when I was in college, if you want to know the truth.” The smile slipped sideways and he abandoned it in a swallow of beer. “My college days were a time of-” he searched for a word and found it “-struggle. Not the best time of my life. Nor the worst.” He laughed suddenly. “Even the music’s the same.” And he tilted his head, listening to the song-an old one of Olivia Newton- John’s that had just come on the jukebox.

Summer sat up straight “I remember that It’s from the movie Grease. I was in high school when that came out.” She began to sing softly, and after a moment, he did, too. Then they both stumbled over the lyrics and stopped at the same time, laughing together.

“Hey,” said Riley suddenly, “would you like to dance?”

She blinked and said, “What?”

“Dance. You know-man, woman, step-together, one-twothree…”

Dance? Oh, God, thought Summer. I will not think of Cinderella… I will not! She felt an overwhelming desire to laugh, but there was no room in her chest for anything except her rapidly beating heart. She made a small, desperate sound. “I-I don’t think they do that here.”

He looked around. “Don’t see why not-there’s plenty of room.” It was true; at that hour on a weeknight the place was nearly empty. He slid off the end of the bench, braced his hands on the table and leaned close to her. His voice, when he spoke, was low and held a current of urgency. “Come on, Mrs. Robey, dance with me.” And he tilted his head and smiled with heart-melting charm. “You know, I was gonna take you out on the town, after that ordeal this afternoon, but… well, that seemed a little impractical under the circumstances. So this looks like the only opportunity I’m gonna have. Dance with me.”

Why do you want me to? It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him that. But she was too afraid of the answer. And it was on the tip of her tongue to say yes. She wanted to-oh, how she wanted to. But her tongue, her whole body felt heavy, weighed down by the wash of memories of all the times and ways he’d touched her, heart, soul and body…of Cinderella’s Prince, Rhett in a blue silk dressing gown, and a wounded hero with her child in his arms…of his hands enclosing hers around a perfect sand dollar, the feel of his mouth on hers. Her lips had felt swollen, hot, on fire, that day. Now she felt like that all over.

“Could I dance?” It was Helen, who had come without either of them noticing. She was standing at Riley’s elbow, smiling up at him and squirming with unwonted shyness, winsome as a kitten, and as irresistible.

For a moment longer his eyes clung to Summer’s, burning with a strange, wild light. Then he dragged them from her and in one graceful motion, straightened, turned and swept Helen’s small hands into his. “Can you…? Sure you can.” He bowed low over their clasped hands, making her giggle. “Miss Helen, may I please have this dance?”

Helen wriggled, almost overcome with shyness, pushed her tongue into the side of her cheek and finally mumbled, blushing rose-pink, “But…I don’t know how.”

“Ah,” said Riley. He thought about it. “Okay, I think I have it.” He winked at Summer as he led his diminutive partner to the open space next to the jukebox. “I think I saw this on a television commercial once…okay, missy, stand on my feet-that’s right, put your feet right…there.”

And he carefully guided Helen’s Marvin the Martian sneakers onto the tops of his polished leather dress shoes, wincing only slightly as her weight settled onto his injured instep. Then, with a grace and ceremony worthy of a palace ballroom, he danced the utterly dazzled little girl around and around while Olivia Newton-John sang sweetly of hopeless devotion, and Summer, watching, pressed her hand over her mouth and struggled with all her strength to hold back tears.

Oh, God, what have I done? They’ve fallen in love with him. And so have I.

The song ended, the music stopped. Helen immediately cried, “More! I want to do it again! Please, Mr. Riley, can we?”

But he shook his head and said firmly, “Nope-now it’s your mother’s turn. Here, tell you what-” he fished a coin out of his pocket and gave it to her “-you put this in the jukebox. Yeah, right there, like that. We’ll find that song again…okay, here it is. Now.” And then he was beside Summer, and her hand was warm in his grasp. She felt