One foot out of the room, he looked back at her. “Three weeks ago, you invited me over for a swim, even though I’d been kind of a jerk to you. My first thought was to say no, because I had convinced myself it wouldn’t work without even giving us a chance. But you looked me in the eye, and you told me that if I changed my mind, the invitation stood.”
He could still picture her standing there on his walkway, her expression warm and unguarded as she had risked yet another rejection. “Well, I changed my mind. And I’m damned glad I did.”
She didn’t speak, merely looked at him, hands still locked, as was her expression.
Feeling like a proper idiot now, he shrugged. “All I’m saying is—if you change your mind, the invitation stands. To give it a try, I mean. Good night, Meagan.”
He thought he should leave before he made an even bigger fool of himself.
Meagan didn’t try to stop him.
Chapter Eleven
Twenty-four hours after Alice’s return from Europe, she was still full of stories to share with Seth. She babbled almost endlessly, showed him what seemed like a million snapshots and souvenirs, demonstrated some of the foreign phrases and customs she had learned on her trip. She’d had a wonderful time, but she said she was very glad to be home.
“Waldo’s grown like a foot!” she marveled, her arms wrapped tightly around the wiggling dog’s neck Sunday afternoon. She’d beelined straight to the dog the moment she’d walked into the house yesterday, and had hardly left him since. Seth had begun to wonder only half-humorously if she’d missed Waldo as much as she had missed him. She had been playing with the dog again for the past hour, and Seth had just come out to join them. “Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking care of him for me, Dad.”
Standing on the patio near the door, he smiled. “You’re welcome. You’ll have to thank Jacqui tomorrow, too. She’s had to take care of him during the days. She’s worked with him quite a bit, too. Walked him on the leash to keep him in training. Kept him entertained during the daytimes so he wouldn’t get too lonely for you.”
“I will thank her.” Taking the dog’s grinning face between her hands, Alice dropped a kiss on top of his head. “I’ve got five whole weeks before school starts again, Waldo. We’ll spend every day together now, I promise.”
Waldo wagged his tail as if he understood and approved every word.
Straightening, she lifted her hair off her neck, her skin glistening with a sheen of perspiration after her strenuous play with her dog. “Wow. It’s hot.”
“Still in the nineties,” he agreed, feeling the stifling, humid air pressing through his T-shirt and cargo shorts. “You’ve gotten used to that milder, European summer. Forgot what July can feel like in Arkansas. You’ve got two weeks to get used to it again before we get into the August inferno.”
“That’s what pools are for,” she said, waving a hand expressively at their sizeable backyard.
He chuckled, amused by her persistence. “Next year.”
Though they couldn’t see it from the back yard, she glanced in the general direction of Meagan’s house and he had little trouble following her line of thought. She’d asked about Meagan several times already since he’d met her at the airport the day before. He’d told her only that yes, he had seen Meagan a few times during the month Alice was gone, and that she was fine.
“I want to take Meagan the scarf I brought her from France. Is it okay if I call her now to see if she’s home?”
“She said you’re welcome to call any time. If she’s busy, she’ll let the call go to voice mail and you can leave her a message asking when would be a good time.”
“She’s probably not working on a Sunday afternoon.”
“She could be,” he said with a shrug. “Trust me, Alice, she works a lot. When she’s on call, she has to be prepared to rush to the hospital at any moment to do surgeries. When she’s not at the hospital, she’s often in meetings with her partners or professional organizations or spending time with her mother who is taking care of Meagan’s very ill grandmother.”
Yet with all those responsibilities, she had made time to be with him during the past month, he thought somberly. Which only showed that they could have worked things out, schedule-wise, had their relationship progressed the way he had begun to hope it would.
“Dad.” Alice tucked a curl behind her ear, and not for the first time he thought that Waldo wasn’t the only one who’d matured during the past month.
He’d noticed subtle changes in his little girl since she’d returned from her European adventures. He couldn’t put a finger on what those changes were, exactly, but she seemed a little more self-possessed, a little less childish. She’d cut her hair again while she was gone, and he was still getting used to seeing her without her cute little round glasses. Her mother had bought her practically an entirely new wardrobe of age-appropriate but more fashionable clothes, but there was more to the transformation than outward appearance. Perhaps it was just a new confidence born out of traveling so far from home by herself.
“Dad,” she repeated, snapping him out of his wistful musings.
“Sorry. What?”
“Did you and Meagan go out while I was gone? You know, on dates?”
He hesitated a moment before answering lightly, “We had dinner together a few times when neither of us had other plans. I think she was trying to keep me from being too lonely for you.”
“You like her, don’t you?”
“Of course I like her. She’s a very nice person.”