Too Good to Be True(46)
“Ooh,” Natalie sighed, her face morphing into something like adoration. “Oh, Grace, I’m so sorry he can’t come, but God, he sounds so wonderful!”
“He is,” I said. “He really is.”
After dinner, Natalie walked me to my spot in the parking garage. “Well, I’m so sorry I couldn’t meet Wyatt,” she said. “But it was great to have you here.” Her voice echoed in the vast cement chamber.
“Thanks,” I said, unlocking the car. I put the Tupperware containing Julian’s generous slab of tart on the backseat and turned back to my sister. “So things are really serious with you and Andrew?”
She hesitated. “Yes. I hope that’s okay with you.”
“Well, I didn’t want you to have a fling, Nat,” I replied a bit sharply. “I mean, that would’ve hurt, you know? I just …I’m glad. This is good.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I am.”
She smiled, that serene, blissful smile of hers. “Thanks. You know, I have to thank Wyatt when I do finally meet him. To tell you the truth, I think I would’ve broken up with Andrew if you hadn’t been seeing someone. It just felt too wrong, you know?”
“Mmm,” I said. “Well. I…I should go. Bye, Nattie. Thanks for a lovely dinner.”
Rain came down in sheets as I drove home, my little car’s wipers valiantly battling for visibility. It was a vicious night, colder than normal, windy and wild, much like the night my tire blew out. The night I first met Wyatt Dunn. I snorted at the thought.
I imagined, for one deeply satisfying second, that I’d kept my mouth shut in the bathroom at Kitty’s wedding. That I’d let the guilt work its magic and admitted, yes, it was wrong, a woman shouldn’t date a man who was once promised to her sister. Andrew would have been out of my life forever, and I wouldn’t have to see his eyes light on Natalie’s face with that expression of gratitude and wonder—an expression I can tell you quite honestly I never saw before. No, when Andrew had looked at me, there was affection, humor, respect and comfort. All good things, but no kablammy. I had loved him. He hadn’t loved me back the same way.
Despite Margaret’s sleeping presence in the guest room when I came home, and though Angus did his best to tell me that I was the most wonderful creature on God’s green earth, the house felt empty. If only I did have that nice doctor boyfriend to call. If only he was on his way home to me now. I’d hand him a glass of wine and rub his shoulders, and he’d smile up gratefully. Maybe we’d cuddle on the couch there, then head up to bed. Angus wouldn’t so much as nip Wyatt Dunn, because Angus, in this fantasy anyway, was an excellent judge of character and just adored Wyatt.
I brushed my teeth and washed my face and grimaced over my hair, then found myself wondering if the attic needed, well, a little visit. Yes. Sure it did. It was quite wet out, after all, though the hard rain had stopped around Hartford and it was just kind of foggy and damp now. Surely Callahan O’ Shea wouldn’t be out on his roof. This was simple homeownership…perhaps a window was open up there. It might rain again later. You never knew.
Callahan O’ Shea was out there. Good for you, Cal, I thought. Not the type to let a little New England weather stop him from doing his thing.
He must’ve missed the outdoors in prison. Granted, he’d been in a Club Fed, apparently, but when I pictured him, he was in an orange jumpsuit or black-and-white stripes, in a cell with bars and a metal cot. (There just weren’t enough movies featuring Club Feds, and so the one in my imagination was identical to the prison in The Shawshank Redemption.) For one second, I imagined what it would be like to be down there with Callahan O’ Shea, his arm around me, my head on his shoulder, and the image was so powerful that I could feel the thud of his heartbeat under my hand, his fingers playing in my hair. Occasionally, one of us would murmur something to the other, but mostly, we’d just be still.
“Don’t waste your time,” I whispered sagely to myself. “Even without the prison record, he’s not your type.”
Besides, my irritating little voice told me, he doesn’t even like you. Add to that the roiling discomfort I felt around the large, muscular man next door…no. I wanted comfort, security, stability. Not bristling tension and sex appeal.
No matter how good it looked from here.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“GRACE?”
Angus growled fiercely then bounded off to attack a moth. I looked up from the pansies I was potting on the back patio. It was Sunday morning, and Callahan O’ Shea was back, standing in the kitchen at the sliding glass door.
He’d gotten right to work this morning; Margaret was off for a run (she ran marathons, so there was no telling when she’d be back) so apparently Cal had no reason to hang around and flirt.
“I need to move the bookcase in front of the window. Do you want to move your little…things?”
“Sure,” I said, getting up and brushing off my hands.
My “things” were mostly DVDs and collectibles. Wordlessly, I placed the items on the couch…a tobacco tin from the 1880s, a tiny cannon, a porcelain figure of Scarlett O’ Hara in her green velvet curtain dress and a framed Confederate dollar.
“I guess you like the Civil War,” he commented as he glanced at the movie cases. Glory, Cold Mountain, The Red Badge of Courage, Shenandoah, North and South, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Gods and Generals, Gettysburg, and the Ken Burns documentary, special edition DVD, a Christmas gift from Natalie.