The Single Dad's Second Chance (2 page)

“We have a couple paying their bill and no one waiting for their table, if you wanted to move into the dining room,” Gemma suggested.

Rachel shook her head, immediately and vehemently. “I’m good here.”

His instinctive response was the same. If they dined together in the kitchen, they could share pasta and casual conversation. But if they ate in the dining room, with soft lighting and romantic music, it would take on a whole different ambience—almost like a date.

“Looks like a pretty good setup,” he said to Rachel. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“Of course not,” she said.

The words were barely out of her mouth before a waiter was at the table, setting another place. One of the chefs immediately put a salad on the table for him.

“I almost think there’s better service here than in the dining room,” he teased Gemma.

“Now I’m thinking that I should put your pasta in a take-out container and send you home,” she countered.

He was tempted to say “please,” but given a choice between sharing a meal with the florist and eating alone, he had to go with the florist.

“The truth is,” he said instead, “the culinary genius of the chef is second only to the beauty of the restaurant’s hostess.”

Gemma laughed. “Flattery will get you anywhere you want to go in my restaurant, but now I must go back to work.”

When she’d exited the kitchen, Andrew picked up his fork and stabbed a piece of lettuce. He and Rachel ate in silence for a few minutes, and though his dinner companion said nothing, he could imagine the questions that were running through her mind.

“I’m impressed,” he said, when he’d finished his appetizer.

She sipped her wine. “By the salad?”

“By your restraint.”

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “It’s not any of my business.”

“But you’re wondering why I’m not having dinner with the woman I bought the flowers for,” he guessed.

“The thought did cross my mind.”

“The flowers were for my wife,” he told her. “But she died three years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “How long were you married?”

“Five years.”

One of the kitchen assistants cleared away their salad plates and another immediately set bowls of steaming pasta on the table. He looked from his to hers, noticed they were the same.

Rachel speared a chunk of spicy sausage with her fork, popped it into her mouth.

“What about you?” he asked. “Why are you alone tonight?”

“I’m on a dating hiatus,” she admitted.

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I made a lot of bad choices with respect to relationships, so I decided to take a break from men.”

“How long have you been on this break?” he wondered.

“Sixteen months.”

“You haven’t been on a date in more than a year?”

“No,” she admitted. “But even when I was dating, I never liked dating on Valentine’s Day.”

“Why not?”

“There’s too much pressure to make a simple date into something more on February 14, too many expectations on both parties.” She nibbled on her penne. “Did you know that ten percent of all marriage proposals take place on Valentine’s Day?”

He shook his head.

“It makes me wonder—is the popularity of proposals on that day a result of romance in the air or a consequence of the pressure to celebrate in a big way?”

“The Valentine’s Day chicken and egg,” he mused.

She nodded. “And then there are the Valentine’s Day weddings, which seem to me the lazy man’s way of ensuring he’ll remember his anniversary.”

Andrew waited a beat before he said, “Nina and I were married on Valentine’s Day.”

Chapter Two

R
achel pushed her plate aside as her cheeks filled with color. “I don’t think I can finish this with my foot in my mouth.”

Andrew smiled and nudged her plate back to her. “We were actually married the twenty-second of November.”

“Since I tend to speak without thinking, I’ll forgive you for that,” she said, picking up her fork again.

Gemma bustled into the kitchen, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks flushed with excitement. “Look at this,” she said, holding her hand out to show off the princess-cut diamond solitaire on the tip of her finger. “Isn’t it stunning?”

“It’s beautiful,” Rachel agreed. “But you’re already married.”

The hostess rolled her eyes. “It’s not for me, obviously. One of our customers is going to propose to his girlfriend, right here, tonight.

“He told me the story when he called to make the reservation. They met on a blind date in our dining room, and he said the minute he first saw her, he knew she was the one. Now, eight months later, he’s ready to ask her to share his life.”

“So why do you have the ring?” Rachel wondered.

“Oh. Right.” She turned to call out to the pastry chef. “Edouard—I need a tiramisu.” Then she continued her explanation: “That’s what she had for dessert that first night.”

“You’re not going to bury the ring in the cake, are you?” Andrew asked.

“No, I’m going to put it on top,” Gemma explained. “The dark chocolate will really make the gold shine and the diamond sparkle.”

“And the band sticky so she can’t get it off her finger if she changes her mind,” Rachel mused.

He grinned; the hostess scowled.

“You don’t appreciate romance,” she scolded Rachel.

“I do appreciate romance,” his dinner companion insisted. “I’ve even done bouquets with engagement rings tied to the ribbon. But I think that words spoken from the heart make a more memorable proposal than the staged presentation of a ring.”

“What about a ‘will you marry me?’ spelled out on the big screen at a sporting event?” Andrew asked.

Rachel opened her mouth to respond, then snapped it shut again and eyed him warily. “Is that how you proposed?”

He chuckled. “No.”

“Should we make a wager on what her response will be?” Andrew asked, as Gemma left the kitchen with the dessert.

Rachel shook her head. “I might not be a fan of public proposals, but I hope she accepts. He obviously put a lot of thought into his plans tonight, bringing her back to the restaurant where they first met, remembering the dessert she had on that first date.

“And I don’t think he’d pop the question in this kind of venue if he wasn’t sure of the answer,” she noted, before asking him, “How did you propose?”

“Oh.” He pushed his now-empty bowl aside. “It wasn’t very well planned out at all.”

Her lips curved, making him suspect that the tips of his ears had gone red as they sometimes did when he was embarrassed.

“Impulsive...and in bed,” she guessed.

Since he couldn’t deny it, he only said, “She said yes.”

Her smile widened, and he couldn’t help noticing the way it lit up her whole face. She was an attractive woman—he could acknowledge that fact without being attracted to her. But looking at her now, he felt the stirring of something low in his belly that he suspected might be attraction.

“Did you at least have a ring?” Rachel asked, as she dipped her fork into the slice of chocolate-raspberry cake that had been set in front of her.

“No. We went to get one the next day.” He realized, as he shared the details with Rachel, that it no longer hurt so much to remember the special moments he and Nina had spent together. He’d grieved for his wife for a long time after her quick and unexpected death, but he’d finally accepted that she was gone—that it was time to move on with his life without her.

“I hate being alone on Valentine’s Day,” Rachel admitted. “But it must be even harder for you—to have found the one person you expected to share your life with, and then lose her.”

He shrugged. “Being alone on Valentine’s Day isn’t really any different from the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year.”

She considered this as she took another sip of her wine, then shook her head. “Logically, I know that’s true. And I’m generally satisfied with my own company. But somehow, on February 14, being single is suddenly spelled A-L-O-N-E, all in capital letters.

“I blame the greeting card companies,” she continued. “And the jewelers and chocolate shops—”

“And the florists,” he interjected dryly.

She smiled again. “I’m well aware of the hypocrisy. I’m also grateful that the shop keeps me busy so I don’t have a lot of time to think about it. But when I lock the door behind the last customer, there’s a strange sense of emptiness.” She shook her head, as if to shake off the negative thought. “And I just filled that emptiness with too much pasta and bread.”

“So let’s do something,” Andrew suggested impulsively.

She blinked. “What?”

“That was the advice my mother always gave me,” he told her. “Don’t stew, do.”

“Sounds like good advice.”

“Are you up for it?” he challenged.

She eyed him with a combination of curiosity and wariness. “I guess that depends on what ‘it’ is.”

He just smiled and called for the check.

* * *

Rachel wasn’t in the habit of getting into a car with a man she barely knew, especially not heading off to a destination unknown. But Andrew insisted that he wanted to surprise her, and she figured she was safe with him because Gemma and Tony knew him and they knew she was leaving the restaurant with him.

A development that had Gemma’s brows rising in silent question when she told her of the plan. Rachel had answered with a shake of her head, warning her friend not to make a big deal out of something that wasn’t. She only hoped that she could follow the same advice.

But as he drove toward Ridgemount, she couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that Andrew Garrett—aka Sexy White Roses Guy—was no longer married. And while she understood that his legal status had changed, the fact that he continued to wear his wedding band on his finger confirmed he was still emotionally unavailable.

And that was okay, because she wasn’t looking for a relationship. She had no intention of ending her sixteen-month dating hiatus simply because she was in the company of a really hot guy who made her heart pound and her blood hum.

Because somewhere along the line—no doubt when her heart was still bruised over her breakup with Eric—she’d developed a bit of a crush on Andrew Garrett. Her feelings had been fueled, at least in part, by his obvious love for and commitment to his wife. Every time he’d come into the shop, she’d looked at him as proof that there really were good guys in the world. And because she’d believed he was married, she’d been confident that the attraction she felt would never be anything more than an innocent infatuation.

Now that she knew he was widowed, she was afraid that crush might develop into something more. She wasn’t looking for anything more, and yet she’d accepted his cryptic challenge. After a brief tussle over the bill—which Gemma settled by refusing to take money from either one of them—she’d chosen to spend time with him rather than go home alone. And after a ten-hour day that left her mentally and physically exhausted, she was a little worried about what that meant.

“Here we are,” he said.

Rachel stared at the blinking neon that spelled out Ridgemount Lanes with two crossed pins and a ball between the words.

Apparently “it” was bowling.

He pulled into a parking space and unfastened his seat belt. She didn’t move.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” she told him.

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t remember the last time I was bowling.” She considered for a minute, her brow furrowed. “Actually, I think it might have been way back in high school.”

“How far back is ‘way back’?”

“I graduated ten years ago.”

“Which means that you’re about...twenty-eight?”

Her gaze narrowed. “And you’re sneaky.”

“Am I right?”

“I’ll be twenty-eight at the end of July,” she admitted. “How long ago did you graduate high school?”

His smile was wry. “Before you started.”

“Another reason we should reconsider this,” Rachel told him. “The physical activity might be too strenuous for a man of such advanced age.”

“I can handle it if you can,” he assured her.

She unfastened her belt.

Before she could reach for the handle of her door, he was there, opening it for her. She followed him through sliding glass panels that parted automatically in response to their approach and was immediately assaulted by unfamiliar noises and scents. The
thunk
of heavy balls dropping onto wood; the crash of pins knocking against each other and toppling over, punctuated by an occasional
whoop
or muttered curse; the smell of lemon polish and French fry grease with a hint of stale sweat.

There were thirty-two lanes, and Rachel was surprised to note that almost half of them were occupied. There were several teams in coordinated shirts that identified them as part of a league, a few groups of teens and several older couples. But the bigger surprise was the discovery of Valentine’s decorations hanging from the ceiling: cutouts of cupids’ silhouettes and foil hearts, and bouquets of helium-filled heart-shaped balloons at every scoring console.

“So much for forgetting it’s February 14,” Rachel noted, as she followed Andrew to the counter.

His only response was to ask, “Shoe size?”

“Eight.”

The man behind the counter—whose name tag identified him as Grover—had three days’ growth of beard, red-rimmed eyes and wore a T-shirt that barely stretched to cover his protruding belly with the inscription: Real Bowlers Play With Their Own Balls. The image effectively killed any romantic ambience and made Rachel feel a lot better about this outing.

“Welcome to Ridgemount Lanes,” he said, his voice showcasing slightly more enthusiasm than his tired expression.

“We’re going to need a men’s twelve, a women’s eight and a lane.”

“Number Six is available,” Grover said. “And just like the Stay Inn, we rent by the hour so you can play as much as you want.” He relayed this information with a lewd smile and an exaggerated wink.

Andrew looked at his watch. “There’s still two-and-a-half hours of Valentine’s Day left,” he told Rachel. “Do you want to do two hours?”

She had no idea how much bowling it would take to fill two hours, but since it wouldn’t be much of a hardship to spend the time in his company, she said, “Sounds good.”

Grover plunked two pairs of shoes down on the counter then punched some buttons on the cash register.

Rachel looked at the battered shoes that were half red and half blue with threadbare black laces, her expression of such horror, Andrew couldn’t help but laugh. She picked them up gingerly and held them at arm’s length.

She slipped her feet out of the low-heeled boots she was wearing and eased them into the rented footwear. She wiggled her toes then fastened the laces. He programmed their names into the computer, while she took a few steps, testing the shoes.

“Ugly but surprisingly comfortable,” she decided.

“You’re up first,” he told her.

“Why?”

“Because my father taught me that ladies go first.”

“But I don’t know what I’m doing,” she reminded him.

“Take a few practice throws.”

She surveyed the selection of balls in the return, finally choosing a pink one. She studied the holes for a minute before sliding her fingers and thumb inside. She took her position on the approach and glanced toward lane ten, where a sixty-something woman strode toward the lane and let her ball fly. It
thunked
on the wood, dangerously close to the gutter, then hooked back toward the middle and crashed into the pins, taking seven of them down.

Andrew watched Rachel square her shoulders, no doubt confident that if the blue-haired lady could do this, she could, too. She took a few tentative steps toward the foul line then bent to release the ball. As she did so, he couldn’t help noticing what a nicely shaped derriere she had.

His eyes skimmed downward, appreciating the long, sexy legs encased in snug denim. His gaze moved up again, admiring her distinctly feminine curves, and he felt that stir of something low in his belly again.

When she turned back, her brow was furrowed. She picked up another ball—a blue one this time—and flung it toward the pins. He forced himself to watch the ball rather than her back end and noticed that the blue orb made it about halfway toward the pins before it veered off and into the gutter.

“What am I doing wrong?” she demanded.

“You’re turning your wrist.”

“No, I’m not.”

He shrugged. “Okay, try another one.”

She picked up the pink ball again, watched it roll into the gutter, and sighed. “Okay, maybe I am.”

“Maybe?”

“But I’m not doing it on purpose.”

He stood behind her and wrapped his fingers around her wrist to immobilize it. He felt her pulse racing beneath his fingers and realized that his own heart was beating a little bit faster than usual, too. And when she moved to release the ball, the sweet curve of her bottom brushed against his groin, causing a jolt of lust to spear low in his belly and spread through his veins.

Three pins fell down. She turned around, and the smile that curved her lips illuminated her whole face. “I did it.”

“Now do it again.”

She picked up the ball with more enthusiasm this time.

“Concentrate on keeping your wrist straight,” he told her.

She did so, and knocked down two more pins.

“I think I like this game now,” she said, and made him chuckle.

“Ready to get started?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” she agreed.

Her enthusiasm waned quickly as she watched Andrew knock down pins with seemingly little effort. But she got a little bit better as the game progressed, although she continued to throw occasional gutter balls. It was near the end of the second game, right after he’d thrown back-to-back strikes, that she eyed him suspiciously.