A Valentine Wish (Gates-Cameron 1)

And wouldn’t my guest love to see that? Dean thought wryly. He could imagine the next day’s headlines: Town’s Newest Resident Dines With Imaginary Friend.

Or worse: Cameron Ghosts Make Reappearance. Wouldn’t that bring out the lunatics and tabloid hounds?

“Never mind,” Anna said with a laugh. “I can see you’d rather pretend I’m not here at all.”

That wasn’t true, actually. Dean would very much like to acknowledge her presence. He just wished he could do so under normal circumstances.

“Will Ms. McAlister be joining us for dinner?” Mark asked, his eyes straying toward the kitchen door.

“We asked her to, of course, but she and her daughter prefer to eat in the kitchen this evening,” Mae explained. “I suppose they’re tired after moving in today and then preparing our meal.”

“Her daughter?” Mark repeated.

Mae nodded. “She’s a single mother. Her little girl, Casey, is ten years old. Pretty, like her mother.”

Mark looked thoughtful.

“Do you think he likes children?” Anna asked Dean.

He shrugged faintly. Anna seemed to have a bit of matchmaking in mind. Why couldn’t she be content with haunting him? If she thought she was going to sweet-talk him into helping her get Mark and Cara together, she had another—

Cara entered the room then, carrying a heavy tray. Mark almost broke his neck jumping out of his chair to help her. She thanked him coolly, never meeting his eyes.

Dean risked giving Anna a wry look. Couldn’t she see that Cara wasn’t interested in Mark?

She gave him a smile in return that he couldn’t begin to interpret.

Conversation flowed easily enough during dinner, though Mark seemed rather distracted, his gaze often straying to the closed door that led into the kitchen.

Of course, Mark wasn’t the only one having trouble keeping his mind off a woman. Dean had his hands full carrying on a coherent conversation with his aunt and Mark without visibly reacting to Anna’s frequent observations. She drifted around the room throughout the meal, first in one corner, then another, making Dean dizzy with her movements. He wished he could order her to stay in one place.

Mark told them about the newest computer equipment he hoped to buy for the newspaper soon, his conversation becoming quite technical after a while.

“Do you actually understand what he’s talking about?” Anna inquired incredulously, staring at Mark as though he were speaking Greek. Dean supposed “campuspeak” must sound like a foreign language to a young woman who’d lived at the turn of the century. Even Aunt Mae seemed hard-pressed to follow the conversation, and she had some familiarity with modern technology, though of course, not nearly as much as Mark and Dean had.

He nodded subtly, then tried to pay attention as Mark changed the subject to world events. An avid TV-news junkie, Mae was clearly much more at ease with this conversation, and soon she and Mark were enthusiastically debating national politics, rapidly finding points on which they agreed and cheerfully disagreed. Dean added a word or two, but spent most of the time watching Anna’s changing expressions as she tried to follow the conversation.

“Goodness,” she said with a shake of her dark head. “Things surely have changed.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Dean risked murmuring into his water glass.

Her expression became wistful. “I’d like to see more of this new world.”

Dean couldn’t reply—even if he had known what to say.

They moved into the private sitting room after dinner. Though they’d asked Cara to join them, she had politely refused, conspicuously avoiding Mark’s eyes. She explained that she was tired, and as soon as she finished clearing away the dishes, she and Casey were turning in. Mae insisted on going into the kitchen to help with the cleaning, though Cara protested.

Dean smiled. Cara would soon learn how useless it was to argue with his aunt when she wore that particular look on her sweetly lined face.

“So tell me about Cara,” Mark said as soon as he and Dean were alone in the sitting room, steaming mugs of coffee in hand. “You say she just appeared out of nowhere and asked for a job?”

Dean nodded. “That’s right. No references, no history. Just a little girl at her side and a needy look in her eyes.”

“She’s running from something,” Mark murmured.

“An abusive husband, unless I miss my guess,” Dean agreed.

Mark winced. “Yeah, most likely.”