Instead, he directed his attention deliberately to a last check of the table. He thought he’d done a halfway decent job with the simple meal’s presentation, using colorful Fiesta Ware plates and bright napkins he’d found in the cupboard. Liz smiled when she saw the clashing colors that somehow worked.
“Trying to impress me? Paper plates would have been fine for such an informal meal.”
“I like these,” he admitted. “They seem to go with summer.”
She looked at the table quizzically, then nodded. “They do, don’t they? I’ve found most of them in antiques stores one by one, so they don’t match, but I think they’re cheerful.”
Aidan had noticed something while he was preparing the meal and searching for things in her cupboards. They were surprisingly bare. He’d found only a few cooking utensils, even fewer pots and pans, and what looked to be a set of four discount-store wineglasses and four matching tumblers. He’d realized then that he hadn’t noticed any fancy china cabinet in her dining room or matching furniture in the living room, not the sort of carefully chosen sets that most women would have after the end of a marriage. The sparse, slightly worn furnishings didn’t add up.
He took a bite of his sandwich and closed his eyes. “These really are the perfect tomatoes, nothing like the red sawdust you buy in the produce section of most grocery stores, even at this time of year.”
Liz gave him an approving look. “I’ll report back to my mother that she made you swoon.”
“I’ll put it in writing, if you like.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” she said before taking her own first bite.
Aidan noticed it brought an immediate smile to her lips.
“Pretty good, huh?” he said.
“No need to beg for compliments. You did a great job. You can be the official BLT maker around here from now on.”
“Works for me,” he said readily. “Do you think your mom would ship you more tomatoes?”
“I’m sure she would, but I’ve had pretty good luck at the farm stands out on the highway. And you might not want to suggest to Sally that my mom’s tomatoes are better than hers. Hers are grown organically and delivered three times a week by a local farmer. She prides herself on using produce from nearby farms. So does Brady.”
Aidan nodded. “Good for them. My mother would have loved that. She was into that whole farm-to-table movement to use whatever’s available locally.”
They ate quietly for several minutes until Aidan couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “Can I ask you something?” he said.
She glanced up from her last bite of the sandwich and nodded. “Isn’t that what tonight’s supposed to be about?”
“I suppose, in a way, but I’m not sure how this fits in to the rest.”
“Just ask,” she said, pushing the plate aside and studying him warily as if afraid of where he might be heading. She put both hands around her glass of tea as if needing something to do with them to keep him from noticing how jittery she’d suddenly become. All three dogs seemed to sense her distress, because they moved closer, creating a protective circle around her. Even the cat got on board, jumping into her lap to purr contentedly.
Her obvious case of nerves was almost enough for him to back off and leave the heavy stuff for another time, but as she’d said, tonight was supposed to be about filling in some of the blanks in their lives.
“It dawned on me earlier that these dishes, the furniture you have, none of it looks as if it was something you might have gotten at a fancy bridal shower or to start your married life. Not that it’s not cozy and exactly right for you,” he added quickly, hoping not to insult her with the observation.
To his relief, she smiled.
“I sold every stick of furniture from my house in North Carolina,” she explained. “I put my fancy dishes and the outrageously expensive crystal on consignment in a local shop and moved here with my clothes and not much else. I did keep my silver because it was an heirloom from my family, but I packed it away and left it with my mom.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want anything that would remind me of that time of my life,” she said, a startlingly bitter note in her voice.
It wasn’t the first time that Aidan had seen through her veil of apparent grief and suspected her marriage hadn’t been as rosy as she’d led everyone in town to believe, but the depth of her bitterness was new.
“Then you really, really wanted a completely fresh start,” he said carefully.
“Down to every detail,” she said. “I’ve told you how I found the dishes. I’ve done the same with the furniture and accessories, adding things as I found them. I’ve been in every antiques store, junk shop and consignment place within a hundred-mile radius of Chesapeake Shores.” She gave him a surprisingly defiant look. “My husband would have hated every piece in here.”
“And that mattered to you?”
She nodded. “When I got married, we did it all his way. We had the over-the-top wedding with at least a hundred of the guests turning out to be people that I’d never set eyes on before. They were all business associates and top corporate clients at his firm. We moved into a house in the best neighborhood and filled it with high-end furniture, set our table with expensive china and crystal. It was all about appearances. Josh was an up-and-coming lawyer hoping to make partner. Material things—the best material things—were proof that he was successful. It wasn’t till the end that I realized none of that was a substitute for the one thing we didn’t have.”
“What was that?”
“Honesty.” She held Aidan’s gaze. “Are you beginning to see why I don’t know if I’ll ever be able
