agree to stay for dinner, without the buffer of Maddy between them? Did she even feel the same tension he felt every time they were alone together?
“Ready to go, baby?” he asked Maddy when he’d finished putting her hair up in a neat ponytail.
“Come with us, Daddy.”
“I can’t, sweetie. Your mama wants to take you to dinner all by herself. And besides, if I go, Miss Kristen will have to eat dinner all alone. You don’t want that, do you?”
She looked inclined to argue, but he hurried her out to the living room, where he found Kristen and Norah standing about as far apart as they could manage.
Norah smiled at Maddy. “You look so pretty, Maddy,” she proclaimed, although Sam could almost see her mind clicking off a list of ways she’d have dressed Maddy differently. He hoped she’d keep her constructive criticism to herself around Maddy.
He resisted the temptation to walk Maddy and Norah out to the car, appeasing himself by watching them drive away through the front window, his heart in his throat.
“I think she’ll be fine with your ex-wife,” Kristen said softly. Her voice was close; when he turned to face her, he found her standing only a foot or so away.
“I know. I’m being an idiot.” He managed a smile. “You know, the dinner invitation stands. I have a big pot of chicken soup and nobody to share it with. Do you have dinner plans?”
She shot him a wry smile. “No plans.”
He held out his arm. “Your table awaits, madam.”
She cocked her head, surprise tinting her expression. But she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and smiled up at him, letting him walk her over to the table.
She didn’t sit immediately when he pulled out her chair. “Don’t you need help in the kitchen?”
“Are you impugning my culinary skills?”
“No, of course not.” She sat when he waved his hand insistently at the chair, but her voice followed him into the kitchen. “But I could at least get some ice in the glasses.”
He turned to look at her, amused by her obvious unease at being waited on. “Let me do this for you. Consider it a thank-you for what you’re doing for Maddy.”
She looked as if she wanted to argue but finally gave a nod of assent and settled in the chair, her hands folded primly in her lap. She looked nervous-adorably so, like a teenager on her first formal date. Well, except for the teenager part. There was nothing girlish in the way her curvy body filled out her faded jeans and fitted gray blouse.
He spooned soup into two bowls and carried them to the table. “Today’s chicken soup includes a dash of sea salt, a delicate sprinkle of chicken bouillon powder and a bold, ambitious canned vegetable blend.”
She grinned up at him. “Don’t you hate when waiters do that? Like it’s going to make the entree taste better if you know the mushrooms were grown in the basement of a tiny monastery in France.”
He grinned back at her, pleased she got the joke. “Especially when you know they were probably grown accidentally in the leaky basement beneath the restaurant.”
“Exactly!”
He returned to the kitchen for the iced tea, still smiling. Maybe this evening would turn out even better than he had hoped.
AN HOUR LATER, KRISTEN HAD finally let herself relax. Sam was a funny, entertaining dinner companion, seeming to instinctively steer clear of touchy subjects during the meal. Instead, he told her stories about his time in the JAG corps, with himself as the butt of most of the jokes. By the time they moved to the living room for the whipped cream and strawberry dessert, Kristen had begun to wonder why she’d felt so nervous about sticking around.
“My mother grows strawberries in a little garden beside the house,” he told her, setting the bowl of fruit and cream in front of her. “She has an amazing green thumb. The garden is tiny-maybe twenty feet long by six feet wide, but she gets the most out of the soil. Strawberries, blueberries, turnip greens, green beans, tomatoes-one year she even grew corn.”
“I always wanted a garden,” Kristen admitted. “I tried once, when I was about ten. I wanted to grow flowers- daisies and irises and roses. Our neighbor down the street, Mrs. Tamberlain, had the most beautiful rose garden. One day she gave me a cutting and told me how to get it to root in water so I could plant it myself.” She smiled at the memory. “When the roots started to sprout from the cuttings, I was so excited I started jumping around like I’d won the lottery or something.”
“Did it grow?”
Her smile faded. “Mama got angry at me about something-I don’t even remember what now. She threw the glass holding the roses at the refrigerator. It smashed all over the place. And she just stomped over the roses to make me cry.” She pressed her lips to a tight line, anger and hurt bubbling up from a place deep inside her, a place she thought she’d shut down a long time ago. “But I didn’t cry.”
She felt his gaze on her, knew what she’d see if she looked at him. Pity. Maybe horror. Probably both.
She cleared her throat and picked up the bowl of strawberries and cream, even though her appetite was long gone.
“You don’t talk about your childhood much, I imagine,” Sam said. He didn’t sound pitying or horrified, just curious. She dared a quick look at him. He met her gaze almost impassively.
“No, I don’t,” she admitted.
“I should warn you, I talk about mine all the time. Growing up here by the lake was any kid’s dream come true.” He took a bite of dessert. “I know I’m lucky.”
“You are.” She took a bite of the strawberries and cream, as well. The flavor was the perfect blend of sweet and tart, and the appetite that had fled with her memories came roaring back with a vengeance. “These strawberries are amazing.”
“Told you.” He gave her a light nudge with his elbow. “Next time we’re up at the main house, get Mom to show you her tomatoes. She might give you a cutting so you can grow some of your own.”
“Nowhere to grow tomatoes at my apartment.”
“Not even a sunny balcony or porch?”
She did have a small, sunny patio at the back of her apartment, facing the grassy courtyard of the apartment complex. “I guess I could grow them in large planters.”
“That’s the spirit. You’ll be a gardener in no time.” Sam set his empty bowl on the table in front of him. “Sometimes you don’t get exactly what you want in life, you know. But if you’re creative and maybe a little brave, you can usually get pretty damned close.”
He wasn’t just talking about gardens anymore, she knew. But he was talking as someone who’d had a pretty good life. Maybe his first marriage hadn’t worked out, but he had the kind of family background that made it easy to pick himself up and move on to the next challenge.
She didn’t have that kind of foundation. She didn’t even know what a normal life looked like.
“You and Maddy seemed to be having fun when we got here.” Sam reached across the coffee table and picked up the drawing Kristen and Maddy had been working on earlier. “I guess you’re developing a little resistance to your kid allergy, huh?”
“I don’t have a kid allergy,” she replied. “They just-”
“Bring back bad memories?”
She looked up at him. “Yeah.”
He nodded, his expression solemn but mercifully devoid of pity. “I figured it might be something like that.”
She didn’t want to talk about her childhood, but the emotions roiling inside her chest were clamoring to get out, and she was tired of fighting them. Sam Cooper would understand, she realized on an almost visceral level. He’d keep her secrets if she asked him to.
“I was all my brothers and sisters really had, in the end.” She had to push the admission past her closed throat. “Mama wasn’t herself at all by then. She-she didn’t exist in the same reality as the rest of us.”
“You were a teenager by then?”
“Thirteen. Barely.” She’d felt much older by then, however. Ancient. “It was like juggling a million flaming clubs all at once, while wolves were snapping at your heels. Trying to keep everyone fed and clothed, trying to get them to school on time, trying to keep social services from finding out our situation, trying to keep the little ones from
