The Touch of a Woman (14 page)

“No, I need to go home. I have my own ironing to do.” She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d made him uneasy, but there was more left to say. “Thank you for letting me talk this out with you. I know it isn’t easy for a young man to think about that part of his mom’s life, but you’re special. I needed to know how you felt. And if I decide I want to get involved with Summer, well…I may need an ally.”

His face softened and he pulled her into a hug that filled her with relief. “I’m always on your side, Mom. Just like you’re always on mine.”

“I love you.” After several quiet seconds, she wriggled away and slung her purse over her shoulder. “And please, Jeremy…don’t say anything to Jonathan or Allison for now. They won’t be able to see this the way you do. It may not come to anything and I don’t want to upset them over nothing.”

“You just wanted to upset me?” His mischievous smile let her know he was teasing.

“Only you.”

As she walked to the car, she was struck by the change in her attitude over just the last fifteen minutes. By giving voice to the question of whether she should get involved with Summer, she’d discovered the answer.

Ellis waited at the dining table for Summer to exit her bedroom in her third outfit. Slimming pants, a scoop-neck top and casual linen blazer, all in earth tones. It was arguably her best look. A look that got under her skin. If Summer’s intention was to make herself more attractive for her blind date, she was succeeding wildly.

“I guess I’ll go with this one,” she grumbled. “It’s not my favorite…I hate not having any pockets. What do you think?”

“You look great,” she confessed, albeit reluctantly. She chose one of the scarves hanging on a chair and draped it around Summer’s neck. “Perfect, in fact. Where are you going?”

“It’s called the Lemon Grass. Mostly Thai. Apparently it’s only a few blocks from where Tracie lives, so she’s going to meet me there. I said I’d take her home.”

A short date, but one that might include going inside her apartment afterward. Coffee, conversation…it might even lead to more. “Do you know much about her?”

Summer stood before the hall mirror experimenting with different scarf knots. “I didn’t talk with her long on the phone, but my friend Courtney liked her a lot. I know she works at the convention center with another one of my friends. A hotel liaison or something. And she’s from somewhere down around LA.”

“About our age?”

“Maybe a little older. Early fifties, I think.”

Ellis was still dressed from her Saturday errands in a thin cardigan over a longer shirttail with skinny jeans. Not fancy enough for a date, but she was confident she could hold her own against other women her age.

It bothered her to realize Summer was dressing, not for herself, but to impress her date. Or maybe it bothered her to know Tracie would be impressed. “You know, if you want pockets, you should wear something that has pockets. It doesn’t matter how you look if you aren’t comfortable.”

“These are okay, I guess,” she said wanly. She wrapped the scarf twice around her neck and tucked the ends into her top.

“That’s too much to have around your neck while you’re eating. It’ll drive you crazy.” She draped it again, allowing the ends to hang loose. “Forgive me for saying this, but you don’t strike me as someone who’s excited to be going on a date. Are you even sure you want to do this?”

“I didn’t at first,” she said, her reluctance obvious, “but I guess it’s time. I’ve been trying to fly under the radar ever since I split up with Rita because I didn’t want to set her off. And I wanted to be by myself for a while.”

“And now you’re ready for a new girlfriend?”

“Who knows? You can waste a lot of time and energy looking for a new relationship.” She spun away from the mirror and started pacing. “It’s like a bear claw at the bakery. You don’t go looking for one. You walk by the window and see it sitting there. And what do you do? You try to resist it. Except your mouth starts watering, and if you close your eyes, you can almost taste it. So you go back and get it.”

“A bear claw.”

“A relationship. The best ones are the ones you can’t resist, the ones you can’t stop thinking about no matter how hard you try.”

Ellis decided not to point out the obvious—that Summer had trouble in the past resisting Rita, and she hardly qualified as a good relationship. “So which one is Tracie? The one you’re looking for, or the one you happened to walk past when Courtney told you to call her?”

Summer’s face contorted in a look of confusion. “Good question. I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

Ellis was confused too, but for totally different reasons. Why was she so annoyed that Summer looked so good? Why was she watching the clock, dragging out the conversation in order to make her late? Why was she challenging the premise that Summer was dating again?

Because she was jealous. Summer told her she’d be first in line if she ever wanted to date a woman. Now that she’d actually considered saying yes, she didn’t want the invitation snatched away. What if Summer fell for Tracie?

“I guess I should go,” Summer said, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “Don’t want to be late.”

Fighting the temptation to prolong her leaving, she took Summer by the shoulders and eyed her up and down. “You look fantastic.”

“Thanks,” she replied, looking down with a sheepish smile. “Let’s hope Tracie likes it.”

Ellis didn’t hope that at all.

* * *

“Second thoughts” was putting it mildly. By the time she arrived at Lemon Grass, Summer was watching her phone and hoping for a text from Tracie. Food poisoning, a migraine…called in to work to deal with an emergency. Any excuse would do.

It wasn’t anything against Tracie. She’d sounded very nice on the phone, and Courtney’s recommendation carried a lot of weight.

The problem was Summer wanted to be somewhere else, with somebody else. The whole time she’d been dressing for her date, she’d imagined she was going out with Ellis. A five-star restaurant, both of them in their nicest clothes. Why hadn’t they done that before? Hell, why hadn’t they done that tonight?

Instead she was about to meet a stranger, someone her friends thought she’d like. How could she like anyone as much as she liked Ellis?

Ellis was the bear claw in the bakery case. From the very first night she’d seen her in the parking lot, Ellis was stuck in her head. If she closed her eyes—

The driver behind her honked his horn and she looked up just in time to dash through a yellow light, leaving the poor guy stuck for another cycle.

“Ellis Keene is not an option,” she muttered aloud three times. That would be her mantra.

She recognized Tracie Carlson at the bar the instant she entered the restaurant. Blond hair with darker lowlights, big brown eyes, just as Courtney had described. She might also have mentioned her dark tan, as it was unusual in December. Either she was the outdoor type, fresh from the Southern California sun, or she frequented tanning salons. Surely it wasn’t the latter, since Courtney had described her as natural.

“You have to be Summer Winslow,” she said, smiling to reveal a tiny streak of pink lipstick on a prominent front tooth that slightly overlapped the other. “Tracie Carlson.”

“Hi, thanks for meeting me.”

They followed the hostess to their table and placed their drink orders, water with lemon for Summer and another white wine to replace the one Tracie had started at the bar.

Summer entertained a brief mental image of Ellis pouring a glass of chardonnay in her kitchen. Given what she’d been through, it was a testament to her character that she didn’t drink all the time.

“I found this place right after I moved here,” Tracie said. “Everything on the menu is fabulous.”

She peeked over her menu for a closer look at Tracie, who seemed to fit Courtney’s description of laid back. Very light makeup, understated jewelry and a blue denim pantsuit with a crisp white shirt. Next to her, Summer felt somewhat overdressed.

Since she’d been the one to extend the invitation, she felt it was up to her to drive the conversation. Besides, Tracie was new in town and needed to feel welcome. “I hear you work at the convention center with Vicki.”

That was all it took to get the ball rolling. Tracie launched into a description of her career in the hospitality industry, from hotel clerk up the ladder to convention coordinator. Obviously a seasoned communicator, she had a knack for friendly conversation. Amusing anecdotes were sprinkled with just enough questions to show she wasn’t in love with the sound of her own voice.

“My favorite convention, believe it or not, was the funeral directors. Trust me, they are not the somber people they appear to be. Those guys can party with the best of them. And the vendor room! Caskets lined up with all these extravagant flower arrangements, and everybody standing around laughing and sloshing wine. It was hysterical.”

“You’ll have to tell that at the next potluck. You know about those, right?”

“Second and fourth Monday at Courtney’s. Except I don’t drive after dark.”

Alythea had experienced that problem before her cataract surgery, and it was a major inconvenience during Daylight Savings Time. “I’m sure somebody comes through this part of town on the way.”

When the waiter delivered their dinner, Tracie ordered another glass of wine.

Hmm…
Thanks to Rita, Summer was overly sensitive to other people’s drinking habits. Even when she was out with Queenie and Sam, or among her potluck friends, she couldn’t help but notice someone who had more than a couple of drinks. It annoyed her that she’d become the Alcohol Police. She barely knew Tracie…surely the woman deserved the benefit of the doubt.

“Courtney and Norma said I should ask you about your family,” Tracie said.

“Everyone likes hearing about my childhood. You’d think I was raised by wolves.” As they ate, she shared the story of growing up in a hippie family, including what she remembered of the commune. “I was only six when we left, but one thing I’ll never forget was how cold it was when we took a bath in the Albion River. Still makes me shiver just to think about it.”

“That is so cool—no pun intended. I know some people who claim to have been hippies, but none of them ever lived in a commune.”

“Yeah, and everybody claims they were at Woodstock too. I actually was.”

Tracie also had led an interesting life, which included a trans-Pacific voyage by sailboat with her father and brothers. Her tan, she explained, was left over from a trip down to Cabo just before she left LA.

“So you’ve only been here, what? Three weeks?”

“Two and a half. But I already know I’m going to like it. I was lucky to meet Vicki right off the bat. Because then I met Courtney…and then I met you.”

Summer managed a brief smile as she grappled with a hint of alarm. Had something clicked already for Tracie? Because it definitely hadn’t clicked yet for her. Granted, the evening was going better than expected, but she didn’t feel even a flicker of attraction.

“Sorry if that came off as too much too soon. I’ve been in customer relations long enough to recognize panic when I see it.” Tracie had finished most of her dinner. She pushed her plate away and leaned back to nurse her wine.

“Sorry, I…” Summer couldn’t even finish the thought, let alone the sentence.

“No need to apologize. I have a bad habit of saying whatever’s on my mind, especially after four or five glasses of wine.”

Four or five? The first ones must have been at home, or in the bar as she waited. Indeed, her face and neck were flushed. Summer had seen that on Rita all too many times when she’d tried to pretend she’d had only one.

The moment the waiter cleared their dishes, Tracie leaned brazenly across the table, dangling her wine glass in a pose she undoubtedly thought was sexy. “Now that it’s out there, I might as well own up to it. I hope I didn’t scare you off. I was thinking it’d be nice to do this again…maybe at my place. I make a pretty mean veal scallopini, if I must say so myself.”

Summer withdrew in time to avoid the scent of alcohol on her breath. It was stunning how quickly their date had gone south once the effects of Tracie’s wine kicked in. An otherwise friendly, interesting, attractive woman reduced to an all-too-familiar caricature.

“Tracie…look, I have to be honest with you.”

“You should always be honest.” She slumped against the back of her chair, clearly bracing for bad news.

“My last relationship didn’t end so well. We were together for a long time, and I’m not sure I’m ready to jump back into anything right now.”

Tracie nodded pensively, and she squinted with apparent skepticism. “I can understand that…but you asked me out to dinner. I must have said something that made you change your mind.”

Damn
. She was perceptive for someone who’d had so many drinks. “The thing is, Rita and I had problems because…because she drank a lot. I’m not saying I think that’s the case with you. So you like wine with dinner. Nothing wrong with that. It’s my issue, not yours.”

“I see.” Her tone was more defensive than understanding.

“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind that my friends drink and have a good time. It’s fine, really.” That wasn’t totally true, but it was a necessary fib to get through this conversation. “The thing is, I don’t think I can handle it in someone I’m dating.”

“So.” Tracie pushed aside the glass, which had only a couple of sips left. “If I want to date you, I’m not allowed to drink.”

A glass of wine would have been fine. The problem with Tracie was that she’d drunk four or five on their first date—and wasn’t yet under the table. Someone whose body and brain tolerated that much was a habitual drinker.

“Who wants to live under somebody else’s rules, huh?” Summer tacked on a weak laugh to lighten the mood, though it wasn’t funny at all to remember how she’d gone through Rita’s drawers and closet, and smelled her breath every time she came home. “The thing is though, I know myself. If we dated, I’d be nagging you all the time. Trust me, I’ve been through this before. You’d hate me within a month.”

The waiter interrupted yet again, this time for their dessert order. They passed and he left the check, but his amiable chatter broke their tension long enough for Summer to plot her next move.