“So they’re both afraid to trust each other.”
This was uneasy territory for Trevor. Only girls talked about relationships and things like trust. He shifted in his seat. “I guess,” he said finally. “It might be something like that.”
“If your dad won’t call, do you think he’d do something like send her flowers and an apology? Write a note?”
“He’s being really stubborn.”
Frowning fiercely, Cait scooped up a gob of the melting ice cream and sucked it up. “Well, then,” she announced, “we have to trick them.”
Alarmed, Trevor stared at her. “What do you mean?”
She told him.
* * *
WHEN THE DOORBELL RANG, Molly was sitting at the breakfast bar immersed in the never-ending paperwork—state employees apparently did nothing but issue reams more of it. She sighed, rubbed her eyes and got to her feet.
She opened the front door to see a huge bouquet of flowers. A gorgeous bouquet, held at eye level. Lilies and roses and Queen Anne’s lace. She breathed in the scent of the Asian lilies and realized that a gawky kid was holding the arrangement out to her.
“For Molly Callahan.”
“Thank you. Who…?” she asked, accepting it.
“There’s a card.” He bounded down the steps, cut across the lawn and jumped into a white delivery van.
“Well.” Molly bumped the door shut with her hip.
“Who is it, Mom?” asked Cait, who was sitting on the living room sofa painting her toenails.
Molly detoured into the living room. “Somebody sent flowers.”
“Wow.” Cait took a wide-eyed look, blew on her toes and carefully set her feet on the floor. “Those must have cost a bunch.” Then she cackled. “That’s a pun. Get it?”
“I get it.”
“Who are they from?”
“I don’t know.” Molly set the enormous arrangement in the center of the coffee table and extracted a small white envelope clipped to the cream-colored ceramic vase. With Cait watching avidly, Molly opened it.
The dark scrawl was unfamiliar, but then she’d never seen more than Richard’s signature. And this was signed “Love, Richard.”
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.
And then the “love” part.
“Can I see?” Cait waggled an impatient hand.
Numb, Molly handed over the small card.
“That’s really nice,” Cait said after a minute. “Are you going to call him?” Inexplicably, she sounded nervous, or as if she didn’t really want her mother to call. Despite all the lecturing about how she should talk to Richard, was it possible Cait was happy the two of them had broken up?
It was possible, Molly admitted. Teenagers were, by their very nature, selfish. Then she winced. Not her favorite word right now.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It was nice of him, though. They smell glorious.”
“I wonder how much they did cost.”
“What? You want to be sure he wasn’t stingy?”
“No. I just… Um, I’ve never gotten flowers, so I didn’t have any idea. That’s all.”
Molly’s eyes narrowed. Something was going on. Cait was a lousy liar. But Molly couldn’t imagine what she could have to do with the floral arrangement. The handwriting definitely wasn’t hers. It was distinctly masculine. And why would Cait do something like this anyway? It didn’t make sense.
“Well, we might as well enjoy them. I suppose I could write him a thank-you note.”
“That would be polite,” her never-prim daughter said primly.
Had she and Trevor bludgeoned Richard into sending flowers? Cait, at least, could be annoyingly persistent. So maybe.
I didn’t mean it.
The words stuck with her for the rest of the evening and were still on her mind when she went to bed. Which part hadn’t he meant? That she’d be tormenting all of them if she kept the baby? That she was selfish?
Did it matter now?
It was an exceedingly handsome apology. She was surprised by it, on several levels. As furious as he’d been, she hadn’t expected an apology at all. And flowers didn’t seem to be his style. He’d been kind, thoughtful, passionate, even tender, but never romantic.
So I’m obsessing about it. Sue me. No one had ever sent her flowers before. Colt had brought home a small bouquet a few times, when they were first married, but they were the kind you picked up at the grocery store or a stand in a vacant lot right before Valentine’s Day. Either he wasn’t romantic, either, or she didn’t bring that out in men.
Probably the latter. Delicate, pretty, petite women stirred those kinds of feelings in men, not hefty Amazons.