No Matter What

AT THE SOUND OF THE BELL over the door ringing, Molly swiveled in her seat. She was ridiculously nervous. The new arrival was Richard Ward himself, tall, imposingly handsome, glancing around the sandwich shop until he spotted her at the table in the back corner. And, damn it, there was that loose-hipped walk that always stirred something in her.

She’d been the one to suggest they meet for lunch, completely separate from their kids. He hadn’t argued, hadn’t asked why.

She half rose when he reached the table, then sank back down. She wasn’t in the office. “The waitress left you a menu,” she said inanely.

He nodded and pulled out a chair next to her, not the one across the table. Their knees might bump. They would bump. He took up way more than his fair share of space, and that, too, unsettled Molly. She was a big enough woman; she was taller than most men with whom she dealt.

Oh, get a grip! You’re not an adolescent. But she was feeling a lot like one right now.

“Mr. Ward, thank you for coming,” she said with more composure. This is Trevor’s father. Trevor’s father, Trevor’s father. She’d chant it as many times as she had to. This was not a date.

A faint smile touched his mouth. “Don’t you think we’re past Mister and Missus?”

“Richard,” she amended.

He chose quickly from the menu and they both gave their orders. Then he regarded her gravely. “Has Caitlyn—no, Trevor says she prefers Cait—has she made a decision? Or are you wanting to tell me to butt out?”

“I’d have suggested coffee instead of lunch if I were going to do that.”

Now he outright grinned, and her heart damn near stopped. “Not option B, then.”

“Or A.” Molly looked down at her place setting. “Partly I’m back to apologizing—”

“No. Let’s not get mired there.”

He was being more generous than she deserved. She swallowed and met those dark eyes again. “Okay. Thanks. Really I only wanted to talk. Listen to you, since I didn’t the other night.”

“Have you told anyone else?”

Molly shook her head. “Cait and I agreed not to for now. She swears she won’t tell even her best friend. If she decides to get an abortion, she could move on more easily if no one knows but you, me and Trevor.” She paused. “Assuming Trevor will keep it quiet?”

“I think I can vouch for him.” He studied her for a moment. “He says now Cait won’t talk to him.”

She made a helpless gesture. “She’s hurt, scared, confused.... Do you blame her?”

“No. Neither does he. He said he guessed it was justice, after the way he dodged her.”

“Really?” she said, surprised. “That sounds…”

“Almost mature?”

Molly laughed. “I was trying to think of a really tactful way to say it.”

He smiled, too, mouth and eyes both. “Surely as a high school administrator, you must have a thesaurus worth of euphemisms at the tip of your tongue.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you.”

Their drinks came. Richard waited until the waitress was out of earshot. “Will you tell me about you and Cait? I asked Trevor if you were churchgoers, for example, and he had no idea. Is Cait’s father in the picture? Trevor thought you were divorced.”

Her first uneasy thought was, why does he want to know about me? Was there any chance some of this chemistry she felt went both ways?

Get a grip, she told herself again. Remember the way he stared at you that day when he had to wait for you to park. Inimical. Remember? If they’d been adversaries then, they were more so now.

“I am divorced, and have been since Cait was a little girl. She was four when her dad and I separated and five when the divorce went through. She gets birthday and Christmas checks from him, and that’s about it. He started out with more enthusiasm. You know, the usual every other weekend thing, but that became once a month, then once every few months, and then…” She shrugged. “Church? We go, but not as faithfully as we should. I didn’t grow up in a church. I started when she was little, thinking Sunday school was one of the things parents did.”

“Even though yours didn’t?”

He was sharp, she had to give him that. “I didn’t have a father. Don’t remember my mother well. She was killed in a car accident when I was seven. I grew up in foster homes after that. I guess you’d have to say I learned parenting from the book. Literally.” She was trying hard to make it light, almost if not quite a joke. “I have quite a library of Now Your Child is Eight, Now She’s Eleven books. Either I skipped a few chapters in the Now She’s Fifteen one or the author left out some essentials.”