Leaving Normal (14 page)

"A fight about what?"

"She wouldn't tell me, but I have the worst feeling it has to do with sex and, if it does, a part of me doesn't want to know."

"It's the nature of men. They all want sex. I remember I had this blind date once. I made arrangements in advance with the bartender so that if things weren't going the way I wanted, he would call me a cab." Sarah smiled in remembrance. "I had a code for 'help.'"

"A code?"

"Yes. If I suddenly ordered a screwdriver, that meant I needed a cab sent around to the back of the bar so I could be picked up. I barely lasted fifteen minutes before I was ordering that drink. The man was vulgar."

"I would have never thought to do that."

"Because you were married younger than I was. I was a seasoned dater before I met Steve."

"I wish I could find someone without all the dating. You know, like maybe meeting my best friend."

"The fireman is already your neighbor, and neighborly friendship is a very good place to start." Before Natalie could deny that probability, Sarah asked, "Where are you and Jonathon going?"

"We're meeting at the Stonehouse. It's walking distance from Hat and Garden and, since I sometimes run-late closing, I didn't want him to be inconvenienced and have to pick me up."

"Men need to be inconvenienced, Natalie. It makes them appreciate us more. Take my word on this one. Promise me."

Natalie put her hand on her heart, and said in fun, "Of course. Yes. You are the expert."

Sarah laughed, then raised her eyebrows as if she'd just remembered something important. "Your hand over your boob reminds me—I made our mammogram appointments for the first week in March."

"Let me know the exact day and I'll mark it on my calendar."

Ever since they'd lost their mother to breast cancer, the sisters religiously went for their yearly mammograms together.

"I will. I think it was the seventh."

Their food arrived and they ate while continuing to discuss family matters, then returned to the flower shop to discover the plumber had to be called once more to take another look at the leaky pipe in the restroom. This was the third time he'd come out to work on the pipes.

And Jonathon had rescheduled three times.

For some reason, Natalie felt as if it was a bad omen.

Later that night, after closing Hat and Garden, Natalie walked to the Stonehouse to meet Jonathon. She wore boots and, by the end of the sixth block, she wished she'd driven over. But the winter sunset was pretty and the outside temperature hadn't felt that cold when she'd started out. Now her cheeks were numb.

So much for her worries about keeping Jonathon waiting—he'd called to say he was running late. His eldest son had to be fitted with a new mouth guard and there was a holdup at the dentist's office.

Jonathon had two sons—a sixteen-year-old who attended Centennial High and a fourteen-year-old who went to Lowell Scott Middle School. The two boys played any game imaginable depending on the season.

They'd been on the football team, the soccer team, baseball and hockey. Right now they were thick into basketball and wrestling. Jonathon's schedule revolved around his sons' games.

Natalie had never been really big into sports, perhaps going to a Boise State football game or two in the fall to get into the college-town spirit. Aside from that, she bypassed ESPN.

She questioned whether or not she and Jonathon had some common ground, then quickly discounted that thought. She was here just to have fun, to enjoy a man's company, to not put undue pressure on herself to make anything more out of it.

Natalie had freshened her makeup at the flower shop before leaving and now wondered if she should have changed into something less businesslike for an evening date.

Date.

The word had become almost foreign to her. It had been months and months since she'd been out. After those last few encounters, and doing the speed-dating session, she'd sworn off of dating.

What in the world was she doing here now? She'd barely talked to Jonathon on the telephone for more than five minutes at a time; she didn't know him. So she'd done the floral arrangements for his wife's funeral; that was years ago. He could have hang-ups, but she had no way of knowing about them until it was too late.

The back of her throat tightened, her palms grew damp.

This is insane.

She proceeded to the bar, trying to keep a modicum of composure. Glancing at the time on her watch, she took a seat at the end of the bar, hating every second of sitting alone, looking as if she were trying to be picked up.

"What can I get you?" the twentysomething bartender asked her.

"I'm waiting for someone. I'll order when he gets here."

He moved down to the end of the bar, took another order, then came back by her to fill a glass with beer on tap.

Licking her lips, Natalie contemplated asking him something. Then she just went ahead. "Have you ever been asked to order a cab for a woman if she needed one?"

"Sure."

"How do you know she needs one?"

"She just tells me," he replied, shrugging.

"But what if she couldn't tell you—what if the guy she didn't want to be spending the evening with was right next to her?"

"Never happened before."

Making a quick decision in what was perhaps a moment of lunacy, she replied, "If I ask you to make me a screwdriver, that means call me a cab."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm meeting a man and I didn't drive over here and I'm thinking I might need a backup plan." Although why she might need such a plan, she had no clue. But Sarah had put the germ of the idea in her head. "Where is your ladies' room?"

"In the back."

"Is there a back door?"

"Yes." His blond hair, shaved in a precise crewcut, picked up the backlights from the mirrored bar.

"Good. So if I ask you to make me a screwdriver, call me a cab and have the driver pick me up in back."

"Uh, okay."

She reached into her purse, collected a bill and slid it toward him.

He raised his hands. "That's okay. I've done worse for nothing."

Almost twenty minutes later when Jonathon hadn't shown up, Natalie's nerves were stretched taut. Her bad feeling returned tenfold and she was borderline calling for a cab herself and going home.

But then a tall man approached the bar.

Jonathon.

Although looking stressed and tired, he was very handsome. He had on a dress shirt, suit coat and slacks.

"So sorry I'm late," he apologized. His eyes appeared as kind as she'd remembered. He didn't look awful, didn't come across as self-absorbed or as if he had planned on letting her wait so long.

"My days are crazy." He laughed, a show of white teeth beneath his mustache. "Sometimes I wonder if I can keep this up."

His cell phone rang and he cut himself short, glancing at the caller ID. "Excuse me. It's my son's coach." He answered the phone, and the earlier optimism Natalie had felt just faded.

She waited, gazing pointedly at the bartender and smiling, trying not to convey the tangle of indecision flitting through her. She thought about the mound of laundry she'd yet to complete, and the data she could be inputting into Quicken tonight for Hat and Garden's books.

It was a sad commentary that she considered such mundane events more important than a drink and dinner with a nice-looking man.

Jonathon disconnected the call. "Sorry. My boy's been benched for the last several games because he has a hairline fracture on his big toe. I told the coach he's not shooting a ball with his damn toe but with his arms and hands. He's in great shape and I think he should be used in the game. He is one of the best players they've got." He stopped himself. "Anyway, let's not talk about basketball."

She hadn't been.

They sat at the bar together, settled in while drinking glasses of wine, and Natalie forced herself to relax. They talked about the basics, how long he'd been married, how he was coping with being a single parent and she having an empty nest.

They talked about his job and—actually, mostly about his life and job and how stressful it was. He didn't ask her too much about herself or her work and, call it instinct, she got a weird feeling about him at this point. Natalie didn't offer any answers to questions that weren't asked.

They conversed long enough to drink two glasses of merlot before it was close to their dinner-reservation time.

She set her glass on the cocktail napkin, wondering why this man was on a date when, in such a short amount of time, he'd made it evident he was only interested in hearing himself talk.

She tried to attribute it to nerves—he did confess he was still rusty in the dating department.

But as she was making excuses for him, his question broke through her musings. "So what do women your age do?"

"About what?"

"Sex. A lot of the ladies I've met who are your age— they don't have much of a sex drive left, or so they tell me when I ask them. I'm forty-six and I wake up every morning with an erection—and it takes care of itself. If you get my meaning. I don't even have to touch it."

Natalie sat there, stunned. Was this the same man who'd come into Hat and Garden, smiled softly at her, and almost shyly asked her out on a date?

Knocked out of her stupor, she blinked back the disillusionment that swept through her. So much for getting back into dating. If this man was a sampling of her options, she'd rather go it alone.

"Bartender, I'd like to order a screwdriver." Then to Jonathon, "Excuse me, I need to visit the ladies' room."

The bathrooms were in the back, so was the door. She opted to wait inside rather than stand in the cold back alley.

For a moment, she thought about going back there and telling him to his face that he'd been out of line. Then she opted out of confronting him. Then again, he knew where she worked.

Feeling the pulse of a headache building, Natalie wondered what in the world she was going to do if he called her again. Her disappearing act should have been signal enough that she was not interested.
_v

She leaned her butt against the restroom sink and folded her arms with a shake of her head. She was holed up in a toilet, walking distance from her car, but not wanting to brave the frigid February air, much less the dark streets alone, with Mr. Take Care of Itself perhaps following her.

Long ago, she might have put up with the man just for the sake of finishing a date that she knew would be a first and last. But no more.

Natalie Goodwin had turned into a dating renegade.

Pulling into her garage not forty minutes later, Natalie got out of her car and went down the driveway to collect the mail out of her mailbox.

She was glad to be home, relieved to have made an escape from the date from hell. Shock still encompassed her, reeling her senses. How could he have said such a thing to her?

As Natalie returned up the walkway, she paused. A splash of color out of place on the front porch caught her attention.

She slowed. Rather than retracing her steps and going into the garage, she went to the porch.

Flowers.

There was a bouquet of flowers on her porch. And not just any bouquet—but the very one she'd made for Tony Cruz.

A moment's panic flashed through her. As she thought of all the reasons he might have returned them—dissatisfaction, change of heart…whatever the case, none prepared her to kneel down and see her name written on the card.

She opened it.

Natalie. These are for you. Thanks for being there when I needed a friend. Tony

She swept her hand over the petals. They were cool, not cold. They hadn't been sitting here very long.

Straightening, she felt her heartbeat skip.

Unbidden, she glanced across the street to his house, only to find it dark. Was he home? Asleep? Or watching to see if she came home and got the flowers?

She caught herself pressing the card to her lips, thinking this was an infinitely better end to her evening—above and beyond anything she could have imagined from the way it had begun.

Knowing that Tony Cruz thought of her as a friend was almost too much for her to grasp. The man could have any woman he looked at, and yet, he'd gone out of his way to show her his appreciation.

Why this pleased her immeasurably was something she hesitated to grasp for fear she wouldn't be willing to accept the answer.

But the thought came to her just the same…

He might want to be more than friends.