Christy Joy pulled on a pair of oven mitts, removed the pan of chicken and set it on a trivet. Then she remembered the asparagus and slid it into the microwave. “Thank you, but for the time being, I don’t want to upset J. Lyle any more than he already is.”
“You’re a beautiful woman. He has to know other men will appreciate that fact.”
Blushing slightly, she took the rice off the stove and fluffed it with a fork. “Thank you. Intellectually he might agree, but he still believes that I’ll ‘come to my senses’ and return to him.”
Jeremy struggled to make his question sound casual. “Is that even in the realm of possibility?”
“No. What he wants is a Barbie doll wife he can trot out to impress his partners and clients, not someone like me who’s always up to her knees in one project or another and far too busy to keep having acrylic nails redone. Believe me, it was a spectacular mismatch, and if we’d not had Twink so soon, I’d not have stayed with him as long as I did.”
“Then J. Lyle will have to get used to me, or another man, being with you sometime. What’s the J. for?”
“John, which he claims is far too common to use. He’s a gifted attorney, there’s no doubt about it, but he’s never made a decision without first considering his own self-interest. Now let’s just forget him for the rest of the evening, please.”
“That’s fine with me.” Jeremy stepped out of her way as she prepared their plates, then he carried them to the small dining table at the end of the living room. It was covered with a yellow-and-blue tablecloth, matching napkins and set with sterling silver utensils with a floral design. The blue water glasses were already filled, and he again refused the offer of wine.
Christy Joy removed a tossed salad from the refrigerator and then swore, “Oh, damn. I forgot to heat the rolls.”
“We don’t need them,” Jeremy assured her.
“I know, but I wanted everything to be perfect.” She sat and filled his salad plate with a generous scoop of green salad topped with cherry tomatoes, avocado slices and croutons.
He winked at her. “Relax. It was already perfect when you were serving peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
She spread her napkin across her lap. “If I’d known that, I’d not have tried so hard to impress you tonight.”
He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. “I’m already impressed.” He released her to take a bite of chicken and murmured appreciatively, “This is every bit as good as it smells. Thank you for doing this. I know a dozen ways to prepare fish, and it’s so nice to have something else.”
She also thought everything tasted especially good and attributed it to the charming company. Jeremy was not only handsome, but helpful and sincere, traits sadly lacking in J. Lyle, and she made a hasty vow not to compare the men any further. After a few bites, she thought of her daughter.
“I don’t want to put up obstacles, but I’m worried about leaving Twink to go out on dates. One of our clerks has offered to babysit, and I could leave her with George and Marge, but when she spends so much time either in preschool or with a sitter…”
“I understand the two of you are a package deal,” Jeremy replied. “I’m also sure there are a lot of things the three of us could do together. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s just have a good time tonight.”
“Yes, thank you for being so sensible. I’m afraid I like to line up problems and then check them off, but the worst problems, like Twink getting lost, can’t ever be foreseen.”
Jeremy wasn’t sure how to respond to that ghastly reminder. He reached for a forkful of salad, but barely tasted it as he chewed. He glanced toward Christy Joy, who was still eating as though she hadn’t just lobbed a grenade into the middle of the table, and realized she didn’t blame him for the incident at all.
She looked up and caught him observing her. “I know I talk too much, but you really seem too good to be true. If there’s something important you’ve not told me, I wish you’d reveal it now.”
Jeremy sat back in his chair and took a sip of water. “You mean if I have four illegitimate children with four different women, you’d like to know?”
“My God, you don’t really!”
He laughed at her shocked expression. “No, not even one, but no one expects guys in the Merchant Marine to be saints. I pulled my share of wild stunts in foreign ports, but there aren’t any I recall clearly enough to share now. Which is undoubtedly a blessing.”
Christy Joy could so easily imagine him being a cocky twenty-one and avoiding arrest by m
ere seconds. “You’ve not served any time in jail, then?”
“Nope, not a day, and insanity doesn’t run in my family either.”
“That’s certainly a relief,” Christy Joy teased. “It looks as though the two of us are downright normal.”
“Normal’s good.”
Christy Joy reached over to catch his hand. “Then why am I so scared?”
That she would admit to being afraid caught him by surprise, but he squeezed her fingers and managed a smile. “Maybe you just need a little time. I’m willing to take things real slow.”