Earning Yancy (11 page)

Around noon, my phone rang and it was Charles.

“Hey.”

I smiled at the sound of his voice. “Hi.”

“Did you sleep well?” he asked.

“Yes, I did. Carolena slept in until nine! I need to find out what Tanya did so I can repeat it.”

He chuckled. “When can I see you again?”

His low, lightly accented voice felt as palpable as his fingertips on my skin. I shivered a little.

“Hmmm…how about tonight?” When he didn’t respond, I began to stammer a little. “I mean, if you don’t have plans, that is.”

“I would love to see you tonight.”

At the tone of his voice, I shivered again. As brilliant as he was at his job, he could definitely consider a position in voice-overs or radio. Or maybe 1-900 numbers. He would make millions.

“Good.”

“What time?” he asked.

“I was thinking 8:30. Carolena goes to sleep around 8:15 and you and I could watch a movie or something.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Great. Any food allergies or preferences? I think I’ll make some snacks.”

“I’m not crazy about Brussels sprouts,” he said dryly. “Don’t go to any trouble. I’ll eat before I come over.

I chuckled. “Well, my plans for the evening are shot to hell now.”

He laughed outright. “Sorry to ruin your night. I’ll see you at 8:30, okay?”

Smiling, I said good-bye and hung up. When I looked down, my daughter sat on her haunches and stared at me as though she were telling me to quit being such a dork.

I pointed a finger at her. “Don’t look at me like that. You’ll understand someday.”

She grunted and went back to playing with her toys. I shook my head. How was it my almost nineteen month old daughter made me feel silly when I doubted she understood even half of my phone conversation? It was good preparation for her teenage years.

Later that evening,
after Carolena had gone to bed, I was in my kitchen, putting together the finishing touches on a couple of snack platters. Charles insisted that he would eat dinner before he came over, but my mother would have a coronary if she ever discovered that I had a guest and didn’t offer nibbles or beverages. It just wasn’t done.

I also needed something to do with my hands. Up until last week, spending time with Charles made me nervous because he was handsome and he smelled incredibly good.

After our three dates, Charles now made me nervous for very different reasons. As I spent more time with him, I realized he was not only handsome and funny, but he was also generous with his time and love for his family. My infatuation was rapidly morphing into a deeper emotion, and it had the potential to become something special. In less than a week, he’d managed to get past my defenses.

It scared the hell out of me. It took Cooper almost a month to convince me to go out with him. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember why I resisted him. Maybe my subconscious saw through his facade. Charles, even with his rude behavior when we first met, only had to ask once. Even I had to admit how different the two of them seemed. On our first few dates, Cooper went to a lot of trouble to impress me. He opened all my doors, always paid, and never groped me. However, by the second month of dating, his old-fashioned manners disappeared and he began to get impatient with my unwillingness to let him do more than kiss me. Maybe I was old-fashioned, but I didn’t like the idea of having sex just because I was attracted to someone physically. I didn’t have to be in love with the man, but I definitely wanted to be in intense like.

Inanely, I wondered how women emerging from significantly longer marriages made their way back into the dating scene. The arc of my relationship with Cooper Stevens spanned little more than two years and I’d been dealing with the aftermath for a year now. That meant I had only been off the dating merry-go-round for three years. I couldn’t imagine how a woman who had been married for ten or fifteen years handled the transition.

I shook my head. As it was my tendency, I was obsessing. I took several deep breaths and remembered what Judith had said to me the day she found me sobbing in my office.

Focus on what you can control. Worrying about anything else is just a waste of your time. Worry and regret steal our happiness and, unlike goals and actions, they are fruitless.

Her pragmatism was tempered with compassion, which was one of the reasons I appreciated Judith so much. While she was practical, frighteningly efficient, and expected the best from her employees, she also remembered that her subordinates were people too, and thus imperfect.

The echo of her words freed me from the confines of my whirling thoughts. All I could do tonight was talk to Charles about my expectations and then listen to his thoughts.

My phone went off and I saw a text from Charles, letting me know he was here. I appreciated that he was considerate enough not to ring the doorbell since he knew Carolena was already asleep. I carried the two plates of food into the living room and set them on the coffee table before I went to the front door.

I opened the door and smiled. Charles was wearing a blue sweater that made his eyes seem even deeper and darker than usual and a pair of faded jeans that hugged his lower body lovingly. He hadn’t shaved and the shadow of hair on his jaw line and cheeks didn’t look unkempt. Instead he looked like he belonged on a yacht in a Ralph Lauren ad. I imagined him dragging that scruff all over my body and I felt the muscles of my thighs tremble. I’d never had such a visceral reaction to a man before. It was disconcerting.

“Hey,” he said, a small smile hovering on his mouth.

“Hey. Come on in.”

He came through the door and waited for me to shut it behind him before he pressed a whisper soft kiss on my lips.

“I’m glad you invited me over,” he said softly.

Between the gentle kiss that still had my lips tingling and the low, intimate tone of his voice, I didn’t understand a single word he’d said. “Huh?”

His eyes lit up as though he understood exactly what distracted me. “I said, I’m glad you invited me over.”

I felt my cheeks warm. “Oh. I, uh, I’m glad you came.” I cleared my throat. “Do you want a beer or some wine? I just opened a bottle of pinot noir.”

Red wine wasn’t my favorite, but, last night, I’d noticed that he seemed to prefer it.

“Wine sounds good.”

I felt my cheeks flush again, but this time with pleasure. “Great. Go ahead and make yourself comfortable in the living room and I’ll bring the wine. I put out some snacks if you’re hungry.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

I shrugged. “It’s no trouble.”

He chuckled. “You sound exactly like my mother and sister. God forbid anyone come over and there’s nothing to eat or drink. The sky will fall.”

I made a face at him. “Deal with it. Southern hospitality was drilled into the very fiber of my being by my mother.”

He tilted his head. “Yes, ma’am.”

I pointed to the living room. “Go sit or I’m going to forget about my manners and kick you out.”

I heard him laughing as he went one way and I went the other. I grabbed the open bottle of wine and a couple of glasses and headed back into the living room. I saw Charles pop a grape into his mouth.

“This is great, Yancy. Thank you.”

I poured the wine and set the bottle on the coffee table. “You’re welcome.”

Charles ate a cube of cheese and sipped the wine I handed him. We sat in silence for a few moments, drinking wine and basically staring at each other.

Feeling awkward yet again, I broke the silence first. “I, uh, wanted to talk to you about what you asked me last night. About spending more time together.”

His eyes stayed on mine, yet somehow his gaze sharpened with expectation and something else. “Okay.”

I set my glass on the coffee table and leaned against the back of the sofa, hitching my leg up so that I was mostly facing Charles. “I’m not ready for you to spend a lot of time around my daughter but I do want to see you more than once or twice a week.” I took a deep breath. “What I was thinking is that you could come over after Carolena goes to bed. Just to, um, watch TV or have a late dinner, you know, get to know each other better.”

Charles leaned toward me slightly, resting a hand on my bent knee. “I could handle that.”

“There’s another thing I’d like to discuss with you, though,” I said.

He nodded. “Shoot.”

I sucked in a deep breath. This is where I worried that he might not be so understanding. “Well, without getting into too much detail, my marriage didn’t end well and I would like to take the….” I paused because I wasn’t sure what words to use. “Physical aspect of our relationship very slowly.”

He turned, mirroring my position, so we were facing each other on the couch, both of us resting our elbows on the back of the sofa. “Can you be more specific?”

He didn’t seem annoyed or even disappointed, just curious.

“Well, uh…” I trailed off. When I couldn’t think of a delicate way to say it, I just let the words tumble from my lips. “Shit! Look, I like kissing you and holding hands and I would probably like cuddling on the couch while we watch a movie, but I’m definitely not ready to have sex with you and I don’t know when I will be.”

Charles nodded, amusement lighting his blue eyes. “That’s perfectly reasonable.”

Now that I was on a roll, I developed verbal diarrhea. “I mean, I know some women have the whole three date rule, but it’s been a long time since I’ve dated and I don’t want to create expectations or cause resentment.”

His blue eyes were serious and sincere when he squeezed my knee again. “Yancy, I want something more meaningful than a quick bang. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t interested in sex with you, but there are some things worth waiting for and I’m thinking that you’re one of them.”

I blinked at him, feeling my heart melt at his words. “Really?” My voice cracked slightly.

Something flashed across his face and I didn’t recognized it. “Yes,” he said firmly. “You let me know when you’re ready. I’ll be here.” He winked and my chest felt tight and my skin hot.

I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his for a short, almost chaste kiss. “Thank you.”

His hand cupped the nape of my neck under my hair and he pulled me in for another kiss. “There’s nothing to thank me for.” He wrapped his arm around my waist and tugged me closer.

I rested my head on his shoulder and breathed in his scent as we sat in silence. Something small shifted inside me, but somehow I knew the twinge I felt in my heart was the beginning of something much bigger. For the first time since I realized that Charles returned my interest, I wasn’t scared and plotting my escape route. Instead, I relaxed further into his embrace and enjoyed the sweetness of the moment.

A
few days
later it was Wednesday and I was on another lunch date with Charles. While he made it clear that he would be happy to go to lunch with me every day I was in the office, I wasn’t prepared to skip my lunches with my girlfriends. I looked forward to them as much as I looked forward to lunch with him.

We were enjoying the first warm day of March. Charles had ordered sandwiches for us and, to my surprise, his aunt delivered them personally with a smile and encouragement to come back to her restaurant soon. I said as much to Charles and he laughed, saying that his aunt liked me more than she liked him, so she made an exception to her no delivery rule. He suggested we go to the open area between our building and the next and eat while sitting on a bench in the sunshine. I immediately agreed.

The weather was lovely and in the mid-sixties, with only a light, intermittent breeze. It was a perfect early spring day. As we sat on our bench, devouring our sandwiches, I memorized the way the sun gleamed on the golden streaks in his hair and the way his eyes seemed more green in the sunlight. Something about the early afternoon sun seemed to sparkle and, for some reason, I wanted to remember this day with as much detail as possible.

I took another bite of my superb BLT. “Your aunt is a culinary genius with sandwiches. This is the best BLT I’ve ever had.”

Charles grinned. “She is that.” His eyes lingered on my mouth. “You have just a little…”