“Now you’re the one being silent.”
“I need a friend too,” she said. “In the last couple of years every friend I have has married and most of them are pregnant.”
“Why aren’t you?” he asked solemnly.
She knew that if she told him the truth it would sound like self-pity and she couldn’t bear that. “Because my doctor brother refuses to tell me how a woman gets pregnant. I don’t think it’s from swallowing a watermelon seed, which is what he told me when I was nine. After he said that I refused to eat anything with big seeds in it for two years. My mother threatened to force-feed me. But then I found out that French kissing—which I thought meant kissing in France—made a person pregnant.”
Travis was smiling. “And who told you the truth?”
“I’ve held on to the French idea, since I’ve never been there and never been pregnant.”
“How about if you and I—” He cut himself off as he’d been about to suggest that they fly to Paris for a few days.
“If we what?”
“Eat our sandwiches?”
She knew that yet again he’d held back from telling her something. She handed him a sandwich and began unwrapping hers. It seemed that Travis’s idea of friendship was a lot different from hers.
Six
When Joe Layton saw Kim and the young man get out of the car, he knew two things. One, the man was related to Lucy, and two, he was in love with Kim. The first one made him frown and the second one made him smile.
Since Joe had met Lucy he’d tried to get her to tell him about her past, but she would say nothing. If he were a different kind of man he would have enjoyed her attempts to redirect his inquiries. But he didn’t like her discomfort, so he was careful not to ask.
But it was easy to see that this young man was connected to Lucy. Her son? he wondered. They had the same eyes, only his were darker. The way his hair curled around his neck was just like hers, and the way he held his hand as he closed the car door was pure Lucy.
So she had a son, he thought. The real question was, Who was the father?
As for the second observation, Joe had felt bad for Kim as all her friends got married and moved on to a different life. She and Jecca had kept in close touch over the years, and Joe had heard how, one by one, all Kim’s friends and cousins got married. Even Jecca had left. She’d gone to Edilean to visit Kim but had ended up spending all her time with Dr. Tris.
Now, it was good to see some man in love with Kim. She deserved all the best life had to offer.
Joe cleared his throat and put his shoulders back. It wouldn’t do to let his sentimentality show. He opened the front door. “You here for the job?”
“What job?” Kim asked as she kissed Joe’s cheek. She’d known him for many years, had spent several nights at his house in New Jersey. One night when she was in college he’d stayed up listening to Kim cry over what some fraternity guy had done to her.
“To help me get this place set up. I had to fire the first one I hired.”
Travis was looking hard at the man. He was short and solidly built, and he seemed to be scowling.
“This is my friend Travis”—she hesitated—“Merritt, and I was telling him about your new store. Is that big room you were going to use for Jecca still empty?”
Joe was looking at Travis. His father must be tall, he thought, as the boy was, but his resemblance to Lucy was uncanny. It was a moment before Joe realized that Travis was holding out his hand to shake. Joe took it and kept looking in the boy’s eyes. When Travis pulled his hand away, Joe felt the calluses. “You in construction?”
“No,” Travis said. “Just a misspent life.”
“He was a Hollywood stuntman,” Kim said.
“That right? What tricks can you do?”
“Get shot, mostly,” Travis said. “I’m the guy in the police uniform who gets killed by the bad guy. I’ve been killed four times in the same movie. Low budget.”
“You’d think that as pretty as you are that you’d be the star of the picture,” Joe said.
Travis laughed. “I agree. I even suggested that to a director, so he gave me a screen test. The verdict was that I have no acting talent at all.”
“Why would that stop you from being a star?” Joe asked, his face serious.