He’d called out of the blue Thursday, said he’d be in Washington over the weekend and would she be available Saturday to help him select a housewarming gift for the home Paul and Bette had just bought in suburban Chicago. With Tris and Michael still off on their honeymoon, he really could use some help shopping in D.C., he’d said. She’d said yes.
She sighed mentally. Grandma Beatrice had always said men had to be schooled in gift buying just the way they are in world history. Grady Roberts, she feared, would require remedial work.
“I don’t think so, Grady.”
A tuck appeared between his brows. Lord, even the man’s frown was more appealing than most men’s widest smiles.
“Why not?”
Despite the appeal, she moved closer so she could lower her voice out of hearing range of the supercilious clerk lurking in the vicinity.
“If your heart’s set on an antique, there are some towns a little way out we could try. They’re much more reasonable.”
His frown cleared. “The money doesn’t matter.”
She’d tried the oblique approach, now it was time for direct. “Maybe not to you, but how about to Paul and Bette? How do you think they’d feel having something sitting in their living room that cost as much as half a year’s mortgage payments?”
He looked stubborn.
“Of course, when I say sitting in their living room, that’s only a guess. Where exactly do you put a genuine Chinese gong? And what on earth would you use it for? I can’t imagine Bette calling Paul and their kids-to-be in to dinner with it.”
“Not everything has to be useful,” he argued, but the stubborn look had disappeared.
“True, but then it should be something the person getting the gift can truly love. You think Paul and Bette would love this?”
The surface didn’t ripple, but Leslie thought she saw reactions flicker across the clear blue of his eyes. Poor soul, it was a whole new concept for him. Wouldn’t do to throw someone at the remedial level right into a graduate course. Better to ease him into it.
“Why don’t we look around a little more,” she suggested smoothly. “And you can tell me more about the house Paul and Bette are buying.”
He let her ease him out of the antique store and on to other shops that shared at least one theme—outrageous prices. So, she confirmed to herself, he hadn’t really had his heart set on the gong or even an antique, because if he had she didn’t fool herself into thinking Grady would have been so easily swayed.
Why on earth had she agreed to accompany him on this shopping expedition?
Because she couldn’t resist.
Not because of his looks, though looks he certainly had— a couple inches over six foot, no extraneous inches anywhere else, blond hair, blue eyes, features both regular and manly. Women definitely looked twice.
That was not a recommendation in Leslie’s eyes, however. If anything, his handsomeness and easy charm had made her dismiss him when they met last fall.
But Tris and Michael, Paul and Bette—people Leslie liked and admired—had been friends with Grady for a long time, so surely there was something. And then she’d thought she’d caught glimpses of it herself, especially at the wedding.
Well, there you had it, as Grandma Beatrice would say. A challenge ready-made for Leslie Aurelia Craig. A lost soul— all the more lost because he didn’t know he was a lost soul— clearly in need of a little gentle guidance.
Besides, she liked Paul and Bette, and for a couple starting off in their first home to be saddled with something like that gong . . . Especially since Grady would be too near at hand for them to sell the thing at their first garage sale.
* * * *
This was not going the way Grady had planned.
They’d wandered in and out of Georgetown shops for nearly two hours. He would guide them in, hoping to get this gift bought and shipped, and she would usher them out, not satisfied with any of his proposals. Finally he talked her into a glass of wine and some fruit and cheese in the tree-shaded courtyard of a small restaurant he knew.
This was more like it, he thought as he considered Leslie. Elbows propped on the table, she rested her chin on the backs of her hands, which she’d templed over the wineglass. The position displayed the clean line of her profile beyond a sweep of brown hair glinting with red and gold.
She had beautiful hands. Long, slender fingers and a narrow palm. Soft, but not the least bit fragile. They were hands that accomplished things with a delicate touch.
He’d tell her that, but not right now. Too early. And if there was one thing Grady knew about dealing with women it was timing.
For now, he remained content to let their interaction fall into the familiar rhythm.
But he’d barely settled back in his chair before she started plying him with questions about the house Paul and Bette had just bought.
“I don’t know. It’s just a house. It’s in Evanston, just north of the city. It’s two stories, kind of big. Not too far from Lake Michigan.”
“I don’t know,” he repeated to inquiries on neighborhood character, construction date and architectural style.
“What’s the outside look like?”
“I told you, two stories.”
She shot him a look that might have been disgust.
“How about the yard?”
“It has big trees.” That was fairly safe. A lot of Evanston had big trees, especially that area. And then he remembered another tidbit. “Paul said something about the previous owner being elderly and very frail, so not much got done to the outside. He said he wouldn’t have to worry about getting a lawn mower because there’s no grass to mow—just dirt.”
But that didn’t satisfy her, either.
“Are they planning on renovating? Redecorating?”
“I don’t know.”
“They must be doing something. At least a room they’re going to make into a nursery for the baby.”
“I don’t know.” What was the hurry? The baby wasn’t due until August.
“But they must have talked about it. People getting a new house can’t help but talk about it.”
“Yeah, I guess they did. I just didn’t pay much attention.”
She took her elbows off the table and sat back, openly studying him. This was not part of the familiar rhythm.
“Well then, how did you expect to buy them a gift?”
What, was she crazy? “I expected to walk into a store, find something and pay for it.”
“But how could you know if that something was right or not?”
“Right?”
“Appropriate for them. Something Paul and Bette could love. Something that would make them remember you every time they looked at it, and it would make them feel good.”
He smiled at her. “Isn’t that an awful lot of burden to put on a present?”
She didn’t smile back. “Not if the present buyer’s truly willing to give.”
The trouble with hazel eyes was that they sort of snuck up on you. They seemed just like ordinary eyes one second and then the next they were boring right into you.
He shifted in his chair and slanted his grin. “Hey, you’re the one who said that antique gong was too expensive. I was willing to give.”
She flipped one hand dismissively. “Money. That’s not what I’m talking about.”
What was she talking about? What was she doing?
She removed her red knit jacket from the chair back and slid her purse strap over her shoulder. “Thank you for the wine, Grady. It’s nice seeing you. Hope your business goes well Monday, and have a good trip back to Chicago.”
“But—but I don’t have a present yet.”
“You’re not ready yet. You’ve got more thinking to do before you’ll know what to get them. And it wouldn’t hurt if you paid more attention to what they tell you about the house. Give them my best when you see them.”
She stood.
“Wait a minute. Please sit down.” She looked at him with polite inquiry, but did sit. This was definitely not going the way he’d planned. “I thought we’d go to dinner.”
“Why?”
He’d never been asked that before. Not in the more than half of his life he’d been dating. He’d had women say no before—a few—but he’d never had one ask “why.”
Mildly annoyed, he said the first thing that came to mind. “To get something to eat.”
“It’s only three-thirty in the afternoon and we just had something to eat.”
“Well, we wouldn’t go now,” he said in exasperation, and for some reason that brought the spark of amusement back into her eyes. “I thought we’d go later, take the opportunity to get to know each other.
“After all,” he went on quickly in case she had another “why” ready, “we’ll run into each other more when I’m in D.C., through Tris and Michael, and I know you’ve gotten to know Paul from his trips for the Smithsonian, and Bette when she comes along. But we don’t know each other very well. I’d like to get to know you better.”
That was true, he realized with a bit of surprise.
He reached across the glass tabletop and took Leslie’s hand in both of his. “I think you’re a very interesting woman, Leslie. And very lovely.”
She detached her hand.
“Thank you. And I’m sure we will get to know each other over time since, as you’ve said, we have so many friends in common. But for now . . .”
She stood again. This time he stood, too.
“But the gift— You said you’d help.”
He started to cover the odd note in his voice with more talk, but stopped when he caught her expression. Something Tris had said about her friend’s propensity for mothering people shot to the surface of his memory.
The one thing Leslie can’t resist is someone she thinks is a lost chick.
It wasn’t a role he felt any affinity for, but any port in a storm . . .
“I really could use your help, Leslie.”
“But we don’t seem to be getting anywhere, Grady, so—”
“But we will. Give it more time.” That’s what he needed, more time.
“—there’s no sense—.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. I have an idea.”
“An idea?”
A stroke of genius, and one bound to keep them together for at least a couple more hours. And that would make it late enough that going on to dinner should be no problem. Then . . . who knows?
“You said I need to think about Paul and Bette, and what they love. I know where to do that—the Smithsonian.”
“The Smithsonian? Oh . . . you mean . . .”
“Right, the exhibit Paul’s been working on isn’t ready yet, but he’d consulted for them even before he started this regular position last year, so there’ve got to be other displays with artifacts like the antique toys Paul appraises. Americana, that sort of thing.”
“National Museum of American History,” she murmured. She was weakening.
“Right, we’ll go there.” He tossed money on the table for their bill plus a generous tip, and took her arm. “That should give me lots of ideas. You can’t say no to that.”
She couldn’t.
* * * *
They saw the Star-Spangled Banner that Francis Scott Key wrote a country’s anthem about. They watched the pendulum that swayed with the earth’s rotation knock off a few more increments of time. They studied Dorothy’s ruby slipper from
The Wizard of Oz
, Al Jolson’s sheet music, Mister Rogers’s sweater, Edith’s and Archie’s chairs from
All in the Family
and Fred Astaire’s top hat.
She discovered his love of old movies.
He found out that her grandmother had taught her to play the piano and had a saying for every occasion.
They spent a very agreeable two hours. And when they walked out into the setting May sun and headed across the grassy Mall to where Grady had parked his rental car, he felt they had, in fact, gotten to know each other better.
What he hadn’t done was come up with an idea for a present for Paul and Bette.
“I guess you’re right,” he told her. “I am hopeless when it comes to buying gifts. My personal assistant does a lot of that for me, and the rest of it I usually get the first thing that hits my eye.”
“I never said you were hopeless. You’ve just never been taught.”
Maybe he’d always assumed that if it cost enough no one would notice the lack of thought. Discomfort at that notion was quickly edged away by the pleasure of the moment. To his left the Capitol dome rose, bathed in sunlight. To his right the stark Washington Monument was etched against the blue sky and beyond it the solid serenity of the Lincoln Monument. And by his side walked a woman, a very nice woman.
How often had he stopped to consider the “niceness” of the women he’d spent time with?
“So today was first grade in the Leslie Craig School of Gift Giving?”
She responded to his teasing straight-faced, but with her eyes giving her away. “Make that preschool, Grady.”
He laughed and took her hand as they jogged across Jefferson Street ahead of a slow-moving car.
“Oh, look, the roses are blooming.”
Leslie started to move away, but he didn’t loosen his grip on her hand; instead he followed along where she led.
Most of his experience with roses came in ordering them by the dozen from florists. But here, several beds entirely filled with rosebushes occupied a triangle of space between the original Smithsonian building—”Dubbed ‘the Castle,”’ Leslie said—and a building with Centennial 1876 Exhibition above double front doors. Colors tumbled over one another. Buds still encased in green nestled next to flowers opened so wide that gravity had drawn some petals to the dark earth below. And perfect blossoms regally posed for their moment of glory against velvet green leaves.
“Aren’t they wonderful? Look at that one—Peace. That color . . .”
Leslie moved from plant to plant. She slipped her hand out of his, but he went with her, observing her reaction more than the flowers. She breathed the scented air in deeply and let it out. Abruptly he remembered what it felt like to hold her while they danced, the feel of her back under his hand, the brush of her arm against his, the soft presence of her hand on his shoulder.
“The first time Grandma Beatrice came to visit me in Washington, we came here and sat on these benches one whole afternoon, watching the people and feeding the squirrels. We come every year when she visits me.”
Such a simple thing—some dirt, plants, a few flowers— and she got such pleasure out of it. Year after year, from what she said.