“I’m sorry, Darren. Forgive me.” I moved around him.
“Hey. Hold up.” He turned and walked toward me. “Come on. Let’s walk and talk.”
“I’d rather just spend some time by myself. I’m a bit of a hothead right now, and the last thing I want to do is lash out at someone else. Especially you, old friend.” I reached over and patted his upper back as we moved to the front doors.
“Well, your father lashed out a lot at me, but it was one of the reasons we were such good friends. When he got nutty, we’d go to his favorite bench in the park and work through the problems of the world.” He smiled over at me before pushing the door open. “Both his world and mine. Give me a half an hour with you, and if you don’t feel better, I’ll go back into the office and clean up the mess you might have left for you. Deal?”
I smiled, feeling a little better already. Darren and my father had been old fraternity brothers, both of them taking care of the other like they were blood. He was the closest thing I had to Dad since my father passed. An ache ran through my chest as I walked out into the chilly morning air. I missed my father like crazy. He’d been my rock and the one person I knew that I could lean on and he would never move.
But he had moved on, and now I was alone. Sort of.
“All right. It’s a deal.” I glanced over at him as he winked at me. “My life is in a bit of a tailspin right now, and I wish like hell my dad was here to help guide me through it.”
“Well, Alfie, he’s not, but I loved him like he was my own brother. I’ll fill his place today, and hopefully we can figure this out together.”
I nodded. He was right. He wasn’t my dad, but he was a damn close second.
Chapter Eighteen
Molly
The smell of garlic and melted butter filled the entire kitchen. I inhaled the delicious fragrance as I finished peeling the last of the shrimp in the sink. Car lights filled the kitchen briefly as Alfie parked in front of the garage. I leaned over the kitchen sink to watch him slam his car door shut, his mood obviously sour as I had felt creeping in throughout the past few days.
I glanced over at the dining room table that I had set up with a nice garden salad and garlic bread. All I had left to do now was sauté the shrimp to put over the freshly boiled pasta. Nerves raced through me when the front door opened.
It was my last night in England, and while I didn’t want to be emotional, tears still burned my eyes and blurred my vision. Even if my wedding had been called off, I still found myself enjoying the remaining weeks in Alfie’s company.
The only problem was that I couldn’t interpret his strange moods either. Neither one of us ever directly discussed what we wanted from each other. I was never the type of woman to stress labels when it came to relationships, but I had a gut feeling that Alfie’s torn demeanor had something to do with the passion building between us. He looked at me with a mixture of fervor and passion before going cool and distant.
I took a gulp of wine to ease my nerves right as Alfie walked in through the kitchen door with a curious frown. His eyes swept across the dining room table to where I stood in front of the kitchen sink with a pile of uncooked shrimp on a cutting board. A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips, but I could see something there that was too fleeting for me to interpret.
“What are you doing?” Alfie asked and breathed in deeply.
“Cooking you dinner,” I said, and reached for the bottle of wine on the counter. I waved it questioningly at him. “I thought I could return the offer since you’ve let me stay here for free. I never really made you a real meal besides getting food around Devon. You’ve had all of that before. I figured I’d make you something homemade. A proper meal, if you will.”
He smiled and walked toward me, his presence causing my heart to swell. Fuck me. I was falling in love with him.
“It smells good, and I’m starving if I’m being honest. I forgot to eat lunch today with all the drama going on at the office.” He moved up beside me and touched the small of my back as he gazed down into the pan of butter. “I never can get this dish right. I always overcook the shrimp.”
“It takes a little bit of practice, but just relax tonight. I got this.” I gave him a cheeky grin, loving how quickly his mood seemed to settle just by being home. Or maybe it was because I was there? I didn’t know, but part of me wanted to pretend it was the latter for sure.
“Sounds good to me.” He nodded and slipped out of his jacket to drape it across the back of a chair. I poured him a hefty glass of wine while I watched him loosen his tie with a weary sigh.
“Thank you,” he said, accepting the glass with a relieved smile. “I didn’t realize you liked to cook, and you must really like it. Shrimp scampi has to be one of the hardest dishes ever.”
“It is a bit tricky, but it’s one of the dishes my grandmother taught me to cook. She always told me that it was the best dating dish I could make,” I admitted with a nervous laugh.
“Dating dishes?” He took a long drink from his wine and smiled.
“Yeah. You know…if you wanted to impress someone who you were dating, you make this dish.” I shrugged and realized how badly the conversation was headed in a direction that neither of us wanted it to go. Shit. “I made it tonight because I know it well, and I thought you might like it.”
Alfie took a seat at one of the kitchen bar stools with a sigh. “I’ll hold my critiques until the end then.” He gave me a warm smile that let me know he wasn’t going to have a complaint. He was just happy to have dinner waiting on him. It would have been almost too easy to just stay in Europe and continue to play house with him.
“That might be wise, mister.” I wagged my eyebrows and turned back to the stove.
“What did you do today for your last day in London?” I could hear the weariness in his voice. Was entertaining me taking it out of him, or was it simply work related? Was he like this all of the time? Bone-tired?
“I went to town to look around,” I said. A pang of sadness went through me. “I just went around trying to remember everything.”