Chapter 13
W ell, she’d done it, Delilah reflected the next morning as she made coffee and got breakfast ready for herself and the boys. She’d gone out on her first date since the divorce. She’d ripped off the Band-Aid. It had stung some, but it hadn’t killed her.
She felt like she deserved some kind of ribbon or certificate of accomplishment—something that showed she’d survived her divorce and emerged on the other side in one piece.
Delilah felt grateful that Quinn had done that for her, grateful, too, that he’d shown her she could still be attractive to a man who wasn’t Mitch.
Now, with all of that achieved and behind her, it was time to forget about frivolous things like dating and get down to fixing what was left of her life.
She put cereal, milk, and a plate of cut fruit in front of the boys at the dining room table, ate some toast, then poured herself a cup of coffee and went onto the back patio to enjoy the view while she drank it.
She’d just settled into the Adirondack chair when she heard someone calling her.
“Delilah? Yoo hoo!”
She looked up and over the waist-high fence to find Dolly walking across the street and waving at her.
“Oh. Dolly. Hi.” Delilah indicated the chair next to her. “Have a seat. You want some coffee?”
“No thank you, honey. My doctor says I have to lay off the caffeine. Blood pressure.” She let herself in through the gate and settled into the chair next to Delilah.
“Oh. Well. Thanks again for watching the boys last night,” Delilah said. “I really appreciate it.”
“Think nothing of it.” Dolly waved a hand dismissively. “Those boys of yours are dolls. Just dolls. They had a lot of fun, and I think I enjoyed it more than they did.”
“Still, it was a big favor, so thank you.”
Dolly stole a glance at Delilah out of the corner of her eye. “I heard you had a pretty nice time, yourself.”
She’d heard about Delilah’s date? How? From whom? Delilah was thrown off, and she sat up straighter in her chair and turned to gape at Dolly.
“What did you hear? How?”
“I heard that you were out with Mr. Gorgeous, that Quinn Monroe. As for how I heard it? Well, this is a small town, honey. Everybody hears everything.”
“But …”
“My friend Lola is the general manager over at Madeline’s.”
“But how does Lola even know who I am? How would she even know to tell you? I—”
“She was over at my place the other day having coffee—well, decaf for me, like I told you, my blood pressure—and you were getting Jesse and Gavin loaded into the car for some outing or another. Lola wanted to know if I had a new neighbor, so I told her about you.”
“Oh, Dolly. I don’t—”
“Now, you’d better get used to that sort of thing if you’re going to be spending time here.” Dolly let out a cackle. “Nobody means any harm in it, but we do like to mind other people’s business.”
Once Delilah got over the surprise of knowing her activities had been monitored and reported, the other part of what Dolly said hit her.
“So … you know Quinn?”
Dolly waved a hand airily. “Like I said, everyone—”
“Knows everyone,” Delilah finished for her.
“That’s right. Another friend of mine—Deb Foster—lives next door to him. I have to say, you couldn’t have done better in the looks department. That man could be a movie star or a model or something. If my Melissa wasn’t already married …”
Of course, Delilah already knew Quinn was hot. What she didn’t know was pretty much everything else.
“Quinn and I just met,” she told Dolly. “What kind of person is he?”
Dolly readjusted her butt in the chair and seemed to consider it. “Well, I don’t know him personally, I just know who he is when I see him at the Cookie Crock or out on Main Street. But Deb says he’s a nice boy.”
Well, that was something. “That’s good to know.”
“He checks on her, you know. Deb’s in her seventies, and she doesn’t walk so well anymore—her doctor says she should start using a cane, but she’s so stubborn she keeps refusing to do it—and he makes it a point to stop in and make sure she’s okay.”
Oh, God. It wasn’t bad enough that he was irresistibly gorgeous. Did he also have to be helpful to old ladies? Delilah needed reasons not to like Quinn, not additional reasons to like him.
She was in enough trouble as it was.
Except I’m not, because I’m not going to get involved with him, she reminded herself. We had a date, that’s all. And that’s all it’s ever going to be.
But that wasn’t all it was. There had also been the kiss, and Delilah suspected she’d reacted to it in a way that would embarrass her if she were viewing it as an outsider. She’d reacted as though she’d been drowning and he’d saved her.
The only one who was going to save Delilah was herself.
“You’ve gotten quiet,” Dolly observed.
“I’m just tired, that’s all.”
Dolly glanced at her with a mischievous grin. “You’re tired after a date with a handsome man? Well, honey, good for you. Whatever happened last night to tire you out, I hope it was worth it.”
Delilah felt herself blush, but she didn’t correct Dolly. All that had happened was a kiss—that was true. But she’d wanted it to be so much more.
Dolly’s smirk was at least somewhat justified.
To Quinn’s mind, the fact of the kiss, and the chemistry behind it, meant he and Delilah were going to see each other again.
Why wouldn’t they? The kiss held so much promise. You kissed somebody as a test of whether you’d be good together physically, and they’d passed the test with spectacular success.
He still held firm on his idea that he was never going to get seriously involved with a single mother. But that was the beauty of the situation. She was only in town until the first of the year. The thing had a built-in expiration date. So, there could be no misunderstandings, no unrealistic expectations. They could have fun until January first and then part on happy terms.
It was perfect.
That was why he found it so puzzling when she ghosted him.
He texted her the afternoon after their date and got no reply. He waited a while, then called her. The call went straight to voice mail, so he left a message. He waited for her to call him back or text him, but again … nothing.
Really?
Surely there had to be something wrong with her phone or some crisis she was dealing with. She couldn’t just be ignoring him.
His conviction on this issue came from years of experience with women. He was the ghoster, not the ghosted. To have it go the other way was just … surprising.
He told himself to forget about it as he went about his day. He finished the salmon article and submitted it to his editor at the fishing magazine. The furniture website was mostly complete, with just some fine-tuning left to do, so he sent an e-mail to the client with a link to what he’d done so far so he could get approval to finish up.
He played his music loud, because Mrs. Foster was out at her book club meeting. Aerosmith this time.
Should he go over to Delilah’s place? Make some excuse, show up on some pretense, like bringing something for Gavin and Jesse?
That would be both pathetic and transparent, and you know it.
So he didn’t do that. He just worked and tried to get lost in the music, and when that didn’t get his mind off things, he took a walk.
Women. There was absolutely no making sense of them.
It was foolish to even try.
When Delilah got Quinn’s text that afternoon, she was at the Cookie Crock, pushing a cart down the cereal aisle with Jesse and Gavin beside her. She looked at her phone, saw that the message was from him, and felt a jolt of what could only be described as pure electricity.
She stared at the screen, unsure what to do.
“Mom! Can we get this?” Jesse held up a box of sugary cereal, something with a cartoon character on the front.
“Honey, no. It’s nothing but sugar.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I want it,” Gavin added.
She shoved the phone into her pocket and negotiated a cereal purchase until they’d found something kid-friendly that also resembled actual food. The boys weren’t entirely happy, but they weren’t complaining too loudly, either. To Delilah, that represented a win.
They proceeded down the aisle toward the granola bars, and Delilah took her phone out and looked at the message again.
I had a good time. When can we do it again?
He wasn’t talking about the date itself—she was sure of it. He was talking about one specific part of it: the kiss.
Part of her really wanted to do it again—and soon—but another, wiser part of her knew that would be foolish.
She couldn’t have flings with hot men who just wanted to toy with her. She was too mature for that. She had too many responsibilities.
“Mommy?” Gavin held up a box of granola bars in question.
“Okay, honey.” She gave her consent, and Gavin put the box into the basket.
“Why are you on your phone?” Jesse demanded. “You always say it’s not polite for people to be on their phone while they’re supposed to be doing something else. You say that. And you’re just on your phone when we’re supposed to be buying groceries.” His face held the indignation of the righteous.
Delilah let out a sigh. “Okay. You’re right. I’ll put it away.” She slid the phone back into her pocket, but that didn’t mean she’d stopped thinking about the text.
When can we do it again?
The problem was, if they did it again, she wouldn’t want to stop at a kiss. She wouldn’t want to stop at having sex—even great sex. She’d want to bury herself in him and forget everything in her life that was worrying her, everything that was weighing on her.
And she simply couldn’t afford to do that.
The adult thing would be to tell him so, in clear, unambiguous terms. But he was so persuasive, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to resist him.
Instead, she didn’t respond, and she didn’t respond later, at Otter Bluff, when he called and left a voice mail.
I’m being smart, she told herself. I’m doing what’s necessary.
What was necessary really sucked sometimes.