Wood ordered a burger. He didn’t eat out a lot. And at home usually ate healthier dinners in deference to the grocery choices he made for his housemate’s sake. True, in the past few months, Elaina had no longer needed his financial support, but neither did it make sense throwing money away on two sets of meals.
Cassie had a chef salad—full size, not the discounted lunch version. He liked that she wasn’t shy about her appetite and reminded himself that she’d have no reason to be. She wasn’t out to impress him. Just to meet him.
A man who happened to be the father of her baby.
Technically.
Giving himself a mental shake as he watched her talk to the waitress, he allowed that the situation was a bit confusing. A kind of battle of wills between emotion and mind. His heart racing ahead on one track—attached to his child, family, in trouble. And his mind knowing that the child wasn’t his. He knew that mind had to win this one.
And that his mind would. Extricating his emotions from situations so that he could do what must be done was one of his greatest talents.
“I have questions,” he said when the woman taking their order was finally satisfied that she had their choices correct down to bottled water, not tap, and sugar-free ranch dressing for Cassie’s salad. “If you’d rather not answer, just say so. It won’t hurt my feelings.”
Because this was a mind thing only for him. A supportive role. The only kind he really knew how to do well.
And something he actually liked to do, too. Helping others had just rewards.
“I actually have questions, too,” she told him, smiling in a way that made him more aware of the natural beauty of her features. “A lot of them.”
He’d give her whatever she needed as long as it was at his disposal to share.
“But you go first,” she told him and then, elbows on the table of the booth they shared, clasped her hands together, looking at him expectantly. Like she was prepared for some kind of interview.
Odd, since she was the one who’d chosen him.
In a manner of speaking.
He started out with the basics. Was reminded that she was a lawyer. Doctors and lawyers: his life seemed to be anchored with them.
And, lately, with confusion, too. Why would a woman of her intelligence choose an uneducated man to be the father of her child?
He’d get to that. Later.
She owned her home in a neighborhood he’d helped build, not that he told her that. A neighborhood still above his price range, but one he’d set his sights on. Assuming Cassie’s baby didn’t need his savings.
The home he and Elaina currently shared had always just been a temporary landing place. Until she finished med school and residency. He’d built some equity there, though, which would allow him to put down a nice sum on his next home.
When she—and he—were both ready to move on. In the meantime, there was comfort in sameness, comfort in watching over Elaina until she wanted to stand alone. Comfort in family.
“Did you grow up in Marie Cove?” he asked. He and Peter had been raised in a sleepy little burg east of LA, but when Peter had been offered a residency in Marie Cove, he and Elaina had talked Wood into moving to town with them. They’d been together for a few years at that point. He’d had his own small place by the beach those first few years. Until the accident had changed everything.
She shook her head. “Not officially. I was born in San Diego but went through all twelve grades of school in Mission Viejo,” she said, naming a somewhat affluent town between Marie Cove and LA.
“Are your parents still there?” A man of his thirty-six years really shouldn’t be so fascinated by those who’d raised the people he was spending time with. But there you had it. Family was fascinating. Especially when you didn’t have much of it.
“My mom and stepdad are.”
“What about your dad?”
“He died when I was sixteen,” she said. “Killed by a suicide bomber when he was deployed overseas.”
Her manner, as she spoke, was matter-of-fact. She looked him in the eye. Didn’t tear up. And yet Wood understood that look as though it had been coming from him, not to him. Just because a person was able to compartmentalize didn’t mean that they didn’t feel.
He just hadn’t met a lot of people who seemed to be as good at it as she was. As he was, as well.
Or he was so far out of his element that he was building castles in the sky over her. Something he hadn’t done since before his own father had died of a heart attack. He’d been five. Peter, two. And Wood’s castle building had abruptly ended.
“Did you see him much when he was home?” he asked, though he sensed that she’d have been more comfortable if he’d moved on.