“How many years has it been since you’ve come to see me?” Gina demanded after a spate of Italian delivered with a Texas twang. No one knew for certain which language was her first, English or Italian, but she managed to keep up a steady stream in both. “I’ll tell you how many. Too many. Come, come. You will sit at our very best table, right beside the kitchen so I can visit with you when it is quiet and Anthony can see you as he goes in and out.”
When Kelly, Dani and Jordan were settled in the booth, Gina beamed at them. “It is like old times, yes? The two of you here together. Now, tell me, what can I get you? Is it still the large pizza with everything and the largest soft drinks in the house?”
“No anchovies,” Kelly reminded her emphatically.
“And I’d like a beer,” Jordan added.
She smiled down at Dani. “And for you, little one? A small soda, perhaps?”
Dani shook her head. “A big one, just like them.”
Kelly grinned at her daughter. “I think a small might be better. You can have more if you want it.”
Dani sighed heavily. “Okay, Mommy.”
Jordan laughed. At a quizzical look from Kelly, he said, “She reminds me so much of you. Sometimes it’s spooky. It takes me back so many years.”
Suddenly nostalgic, Kelly asked, “They were good times, weren’t they, Jordan?”
He reached across the table and captured her hand in his. “The best.”
Dani studied them intently, moving from Kelly’s face to Jordan’s and back again. “Tell me,” she insisted. “Tell me about way back then.”
Jordan finally released her hand and leaned back in the booth. “It wasn’t that long ago, munchkin,” he informed Dani indignantly. “Your mom and I are hardly old codgers.”
“What’s a codger?”
Kelly grinned at Jordan’s apparent loss for words. Obviously he wasn’t used to a five-year-old’s insistence on explanations for everything she didn’t understand. Why and how come were among Dani’s favorite words.
“A codger,” she explained, “is a cranky old person.”
Dani nodded sagely. “Okay, you aren’t that cranky, I suppose. Except when I forget and leave my markers all over the floor and you slip and fall down.”
“Yes,” Kelly admitted. “I am definitely cranky then.” She leaned close to her daughter’s perfect face. “But I am not old!”
“How old are you?”
“You know,” Kelly said, not particularly wanting to be reminded that she would turn thirty in a few months. If she had the same kind of early mid-life crisis Jordan had experienced, who knew what craziness she was likely to indulge in.
Dani looked at Jordan. “You know how old she is. Tell me,” she commanded with all the imperiousness at her disposal.
Jordan waggled a finger to encourage her to come closer. Dani knelt on the seat and leaned across the table.
“She is almost thirty,” he confided in a stage whisper.
“Isn’t that old?” Dani asked.
“Very, very old,” he confirmed.
“You’ll pay for that,” Kelly warned him. She couldn’t really get angry at the lighthearted byplay. Watching the exchange between her daughter and Jordan warmed her heart. If only... She brought herself up short. That way lay heartache.
Jordan looked intrigued by her mild threat. “Oh?”
“When you least expect it,” she added.
“Something to look forward to,” he noted, clearly not the least bit worried.
A slow, lopsided grin crept across his face. There was a knowing twinkle in his eyes that made Kelly’s stomach flip over. Obviously she’d chosen to taunt a master and he’d managed to turn the tables on her with no more than a dangerous look.
The moment might have lasted far longer, if Dani hadn’t grown impatient at being ignored. She tugged on Jordan’s sleeve. “What was the baddest thing Mommy ever did?”
His eyes were still sparkling. This time, though, it was clearly at some memory Kelly had the feeling she didn’t want him sharing with her precocious daughter. Thankfully, Anthony came out of the kitchen just then with their pizza. Kelly prayed that the distraction would get Dani’s mind off the past.
It worked, too, for another five minutes. Long enough for Dani to take her first bite of pizza and her first sip of soft drink. Long enough for Anthony and Jordan to spend time catching up, before Anthony retreated to the kitchen. Long enough for Kelly’s nerves to get entirely rattled in anticipation of which memories were crowding into Jordan’s head and which he might choose to share.
Lord knew, she had her own. She remembered lazy summer days beside the creek, fishing poles in hand, as she and Jordan talked about their hopes and dreams. She’d been the first he’d told about his hunger to work the oil fields. She recalled winter skating parties at the same creek, with a bonfire and mugs of hot chocolate and Jordan’s arm casually thrown around her shoulders to keep warm. She recalled the two of them racing each other and the wind on horseback. Jordan always won, but it was the ride itself that was exhilarating, that and being with the boy she knew she loved.
Sometimes it seemed what she remembered most was the sense of anticipation, the belief that at any second Jordan would look into her eyes and discover the woman he loved. She remembered, too, the bitter disappointment at each and every lost opportunity. More, she’d never forgotten the sense of having failed dismally because not even the man who knew her best wanted her.
“Tell me, Jordan.”
Dani’s command cut through her reverie and Kelly studied the two people she loved most in the world. Dani had a streak of tomato sauce on her face and a faint soda mustache. Jordan wore a faded chambray shirt, open at the collar. He hadn’t bothered to tame his hair into the style he wore in Houston. Just from the one day in the sun, she thought she could detect blond highlights scattered in the rich brown. A few more days of outside work and it would be
