Ken nodded sympathetically. “What did you do with it, if you didn’t eat it?”
Lucy looked at him suspiciously. “How do you know I did something with it?”
“Lucky guess.”
Lucy giggled. “I gave it to Tommy Hostrup. Beth Ann Cristo gave hers to him. And Sally Winthrop. And Audrey Schtek. We gave him all our spaghetti, and we told him we’d give him a dollar if he could eat it.”
“Did he eat it?”
“He tried, but he couldn’t get it all in. It was awful. There were noodles hanging out of his mouth, and he had sauce all down his neck.”
“When I was your age they served spaghetti in my school cafeteria, too,” Ken told her. “We used to empty our milk cartons and fill them with the spaghetti. Then we’d take the cartons and put them behind the wheel of the principal’s station wagon. When he drove away at the end of the day, he’d run over the cartons and all the spaghetti would squish out.”
“Oh, gross!”
Ken leaned across the table and whispered to her conspiratorially. “There was this big bully in my school, Larry Newfarmer. He was really fat, and he used to pick on all the little kids. Everybody hated him. One day when we had spaghetti, I got his spelling workbook and put spaghetti noodles between all the pages without him knowing it.”
Lucy’s eyes got wide, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to control the giggles. “Then what?”
Ken leaned back in his chair and grinned sheepishly. “Then I sat on it. And the noodles got smashed between the pages. And when Larry Newfarmer went to spelling the next morning, those pages were stuck together forever.”
Aunt Edna had bent her head and tried not to laugh. “Sh-sh-shame on you!” she managed when she was finally able to speak.
Chris’ mouth curved into an unconscious smile. Her family was thoroughly enjoying Ken, and he seemed to be enjoying them. Other male guests had always politely tolerated Lucy-Ken actually liked her. He had a place in his heart for childish activities. That’s a nice trait to find in a man, she thought, watching him in open admiration. He was lean and hard with broad shoulders and muscles in all the right places-but it was his face that intrigued her the most. There was an inherent strength in it. A magnetic confidence that could only be found in a man who had come to terms with himself and was not unhappy with what he saw. The fledgling beard enhanced the aura of virility that radiated from compelling blue eyes and a wide mobile mouth. An easy man to fall in love with, she mused…if you were the sort of woman who wanted to fall in love.
Ken raised a forkful of spaghetti to his lips and caught Chris watching him. His eyes searched her face, reaching into her thoughts. She decided to partially oblige him. “I was thinking about Mike Mulligan. You really enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
The tips of his ears reddened. “I…uh…I’ve always liked steam shovels.”
There was a loud rapping at the front door followed by a mournful howl.
Ken looked puzzled. “That sounds like Dog, but I know I left him in the backyard.”
Edna got to the door first. “Well, Mrs. Thatcher,” she smiled, opening the door wide.
Mrs. Thatcher stood flat-footed and ready for battle on the porch. She held the cowering Rottweiler by the collar. “Someone told me this dog came from the truck parked in front of your house. Is this your dog, Edna?”
“I don’t know. What’s he done?”
“He’s destroyed every bush in my yard chasing rabbits, that’s what he’s done.”
“Then he ain’t my dog,” Edna told her.
Ken took Edna by the shoulders and removed her from his path. “That’s my dog, Mrs. Thatcher.”
The huge black beast looked at his owner mournfully. Telltale sprigs of evergreen and pieces of bark clung from his collar.
“I’ll be living here for a while,” he told the woman. “Have the landscaping repaired, and I’ll pay for it.”
“Hmmm,” she said, handing the dog over to him.
Ken closed the door and shook his finger at the dog. “You were bad.”
Lucy bounded over. “A dog! I didn’t know you had a dog.”
The Rottweiler thumped his tail against the floor. It stood on all fours and looked Lucy in the eye, waggling its body side to side as it followed the happy tail.
Lucy hugged the dog enthusiastically. “What’s its name?”
“Dog.”
Edna sniffed disapproval. “Dog? What kind of a name is that?”
Ken shrugged. “He was given to me as a puppy a year ago, and I was so busy I never had time to think of a name. I just always called him Dog.”
“Poor creature,” Chris murmured, patting the sleek ebony coat. “Imagine if someone named you Human,” she scolded Ken.
The slight curve at the corners of his mouth indicated his amusement at her concern. “Would you like to choose a better name? I don’t think it’s too late.” He looked affectionately at the dog. “What do you think? Would you like a new name?”
Lucy looked at Ken with large round eyes. “Could we call him Bob? I always wanted a dog named Bob.”
“I think Bob would be a great name for him. Why don’t you take Bob into the kitchen and give him a breadstick while I talk to your mom a minute.”
They both watched Lucy trot off with the dog. Chris felt Ken step closer to her. An electric flash ran along her spine and tingled at her fingertips. She felt his breath in her hair. “Uh”-she blinked in warm distress-“you wanted to talk to me?”
“Mmmm,” he hummed in a raspy whisper, “but the words I want to say to you can’t be said in front of Aunt Edna.”
Without turning to look, Chris knew Aunt Edna had taken her position in the rocker and was keeping her eye on them. “Thank God for Aunt Edna.” Chris laughed shakily.
He leaned away from her and assumed a more casual attitude. “If you don’t have plans for the truck tonight, I’d like to make a trip out to Loudoun County. I’ll leave Bob there. I think his style might be cramped in a townhouse. And I have to pick up some clothes.”
“That would be fine. I don’t have any lessons scheduled for tonight.”
He whistled and called, “Bob!”
The dog bounded up to him. “He’s so smart,” he bragged. “You see how he knows his new name already?” He grabbed his vest from the hall coat rack, kissed Chris full on the lips, and swept out the door. Halfway down the sidewalk he turned. “I called your auto club and had them tow the car to a garage. The garage owner said he might be interested in buying it. Give him a call-the number’s on the chalkboard.”
Chris stood, rooted to the spot, as man and dog climbed into the truck and drove off. Lucy stood beside her, enthusiastically waving good-bye to Bob. When they reached the corner Chris closed her eyes tight in a sudden return to her senses. “Oh, darn!” She smacked her fist against her forehead. She was going to kick him out after supper. Why did she let him go off to get his clothes?
Chris lay perfectly still under the patterns of silver moonlight that spilled through her bedroom window. The digital clock on her round, lace-covered night table read twelve forty-five. She was thinking about her marriage… about pain. She had blithely hurtled herself into a marriage that had brought her more pain and anger than she’d ever thought she could endure. But she’d managed to get through it. She had cried until there were no tears left in her body…for her unborn daughter who would never know her father…for her broken dream of sharing the joys of her pregnancy with the man she loved…for her terrible love for a man who really didn’t exist. Her husband had been vain and shallow and ruthlessly ambitious-all gilt and no substance-and she had married him. She had fallen in love with falling in love. And it had taken years before her eyes were no longer clouded with being in love. Years before she’d been able to see the man for what he was and exorcise him from her life.
A tear slid down her cheek over the loss of what might have been. Another tear gathered in the fringe of her lower lashes. It was for the empty future, and for the ache of wanting to love Ken Callahan and knowing it would never be. She was not a good judge of men-that much was clear. She couldn’t trust herself to fall in love again, because this time she wouldn’t be the only one hurt. This time, when the love of her life turned out to be a rat, it
