“Thanks, Mom.” He knew it, of course, but hearing it eased the pain of loss. A little, at least.
“So.” Ezzie stood up and started toward a stack of boxes. “What can I help with?”
“Ah, nothing, actually.” Roman leaned forward and set the humidor carefully on the desk.
“No? What is all this?” She pried open one of the boxes and pulled out a file. “Oh. Incident reports. How...”
“Boring, I know. But I need to sort through them.”
“Why? What are you looking for?” When Roman didn’t respond, she looked up from shuffling a bunch of papers. “Roman?”
“The purchase information for the house across the way.” Roman figured it couldn’t hurt to tell someone, and his mother would be leaving soon, so... “Frankie’s dad had plans for it, and I’m trying to find out what they were.”
Ezzie sighed, pressed a hand to her heart. “You are such a good boy. What a wonderful thing to do for Frankie. I knew you liked her.” Now she wagged a finger at him in that way she had. “I knew it!”
“It’s hard not to like Frankie.” It was difficult not to love her. And he should know. He’d been trying.
“That’s what she said about you. I told her that when she drove me to the hotel. I said, my son likes you. She likes you, too, in case you were wondering.”
“Mother, stop.” What he wouldn’t give for a transportation device so he could zap her back to Boston.
“Stop what?”
“Stop playing matchmaker and thinking what you’re thinking. Frankie and I are just friends.” Not that he was happy about that. He should have been. Her declaration that nothing could happen between them because he wasn’t staying in Butterfly Harbor had come as a shock and a big dose of reality.
Frankie breaking away from him should have been a relief. Instead, he began to miss her the second she’d walked out the door.
Wasn’t that just perfect?
“No man looks at a woman the way you look at Frankie and thinks about friendship,” his mother said. “Well, not only about friendship.”
“When’s your flight home again?”
“January second. I’m here for the holidays.” Ezzie beamed at him even though she knew very well that wasn’t the answer he wanted. “I thought maybe I could start looking for a house for you, seeing as you aren’t exactly mobile right now.”
“I don’t want my mother picking out my house.” It was bad enough when he was a kid and she’d picked out his clothes. He’d been so popular in plaid and argyle. “I don’t know how long I’m staying.”
“I could just get some ideas, you know, neighborhoods, styles. I’ll start a list. This is the last box, Jasper.”
Jasper returned and Roman pointed to the box on the desk.
“I thought I’d bake some cookies,” Ezzie announced when Jasper left again. “I feel like baking.”
“Mother...” Roman began again, then trailed off. He glanced up at her, eyebrow arched in hope. “White chocolate macadamia?”
“To start,” Ezzie promised, then sighed. “Roman. You taking this job here, it’s a sign. Like I told you from the start. I’m so glad you accepted.”
“Me, too.” Except he wasn’t. Not today. Today he was thinking he might have been better off never having met Frankie Bettencourt.
“All right. That’s enough moping.” Ezzie closed the door. She sat on the edge of his desk and crossed her arms, much in the way she used to when she’d caught him toilet papering the neighbor’s house on Halloween. “What’s going on with you and Frankie?”
“Nothing.”
“Because...?”
Was there any point of evading her questions? “Because she knows I’m not staying in Butterfly Harbor. And she’s right. Getting involved is impractical.”
“Love is always impractical.”
“Love?” Roman scrubbed his hands down his face. How had they jumped from nothing to love? “Mom, come on!”
“It’s there. I can see it. Just the barely burning embers. A mother knows.”
“Even if that were true, which I’m not saying it is.” The very idea of discussing his love life with his mother made him want to sink through the floor. “I told you, I’m not staying.”
“You can’t change your mind?”
He dropped his hands. “It’s not that simple.” Changing his mind would be changing his dreams, and breaking the promise he’d made to his father to grab hold of all of them. “And even if it was, things here are getting complicated.”