Chapter 4
Oh God. Oh God. Where do I begin?!
Diana stood inside the doorway of her stiflingly hot house, frozen in indecision.
Should she bring everything in from the car? Have the world’s quickest shower, so she wasn’t a horrible, sweaty mess when the incredibly kind, handsome and tall man showed up? Attempt to tidy the house? Prepare refreshments?
Ash walked calmly past her and turned on the A/C, and okay, she was glad that at least one of them was thinking rationally. The first hints of cool air began to drift out of the vents, and she sighed in relief.
“Thanks, Ash,” she said, closing her eyes under the cool gusts of air that flowed over her. “I needed that.”
The sound of approaching footsteps caught her attention, and her head whipped around.
Looking out the front window, she saw…
Calvin? Is he here already?
And yep, there he was, just starting to make his way down the steep driveway. Clearly those gorgeously defined calves weren’t just for show – he’d made record time.
She glanced around frantically, attempting to identify and eliminate anything potentially embarrassing.
Aaaaand possibly the drying rack which is currently housing all of my oldest, tattiest underwear would qualify as ‘embarrassing’.
Her stomach dropped down around her ankles in horror.
The ominous crunch of footsteps on gravel grew ever closer as Diana feverishly grabbed at the bras and panties, trying and failing to pull them off as a bra strap became hopelessly entangled with the rack.
The doorbell rang its deathly knell, and Diana froze for a moment, fistful of garments in hand, before she noticed Ash making his way to the door.
“Ash! Stall him!” she hissed. Ash stared at her for a moment, with an expression on his face that told her that if he wasn’t quite so polite a child, he’d be wondering if she was out of her mind.
And, well… he wouldn’t be wrong. Or not by much, anyway.
She was never quite sure how much he understood about adult things – on the one hand, he was a bright kid, but on the other, he could be so quiet that she often didn’t know what he thought about any given situation unless she actively asked him.
On the other other hand, she was pretty sure that he understood that nobody wanted to have their panties out on display to strangers.
She was vaguely aware of Ash cracking the door open ever so slightly to say hello to Calvin, Bella excitedly trying to shove her head through the door in order to get outside, and Diana took the opportunity to grab the entire rack, stagger across the room and down the hallway, and heave the whole thing through the bedroom doorway before slamming the door behind it, studiously ignoring the sound of the rack hitting the floor and taking her freshly laundered intimates with it.
Taking the briefest of looks in the hallway mirror and confirming that she looked like a sweaty, half-crazed mess, Diana ran her hands fruitlessly through her tangled hair, plastered a smile on her face, and returned to the front door, where Ash was still holding Calvin hostage.
“Oh, hi!” she said breezily. “Come on in.”
“Are you sure?” Calvin said uncertainly through the gap. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“Oh, no, you’re not intruding at all,” Diana said, gesturing for Ash to open the door properly. “There was just a bee inside, so I was shooing it out the back door. It’s all good now.”
Ash looked mildly shocked at this blatant violation of their shared ‘no lies’ policy, but Diana widened her eyes slightly in a way that clearly indicated We’ll talk about it later, and he wisely kept his mouth shut.
“Well, it’s important to look after pollinators,” Calvin said, and Diana swooned a little.
Gorgeous, kind, and environmentally minded? Sign me up!!
Calvin stepped through the doorway, ducking his head ever so slightly even though he had a couple of inches’ clearance, and Diana guessed that he’d learned the hard way to err on the side of caution.
She supposed that there had to be some sort of downside to being so tall and rugged and handsome.
“You can put your bag in the corner,” she said, watching the easy grace of his movements as he did so. Everything he did was smooth and effortless, like some sort of wild creature. Diana would bet that he’d never had so much as a creaky joint in his life. Lower back pain was surely unknown to him.
Fidgeting in the silence, she blurted, “Would you like to have that shower now?”
If the silence had been awkward before, it was positively horrendous now. Calvin blinked, and the deer-in-the-headlights look was surprisingly cute on him.
“Or would you like a cold drink?” she added quickly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to rush you. Please, have a seat.”
“If there’s a drink on offer, I certainly won’t say no,” Calvin said, easing himself into a chair at the dining table. The chair looked almost ridiculously small beneath his enormous frame, but luckily it seemed to be holding up.
“Great. Fantastic,” Diana said, forcing a smile. “Do you like ginger beer?”
“We finished that last night,” Ash piped up.
Crap. We did, too.
“That’s okay,” Diana said, keeping the smile firmly affixed to her face, even as internally she was screaming a little. “I’ll find something. Ash, do you want to chat with Calvin, or would you like to come into the kitchen and help me look?”
She was giving him an out – Ash could be painfully shy, and while she always made sure that he at least said hello to visitors, she would often let him go to his room after a while if it was clear that he was feeling overwhelmed.
And he probably didn’t want to hang around with a stranger while his mom made painful attempts at flirting.
But, to her surprise, Ash simply said, “Can I talk to Calvin?”
Taken aback, Diana blinked, before smiling. “Of course. You two chat, and I’ll see what I can rustle up.”
Calvin, to his credit, looked perfectly content with being put in the situation of having to talk to her introverted kid, and Diana smiled as she left the room.
He really is the perfect guy. Almost too perfect. There has to be something wrong with him.
What it could possibly be, though, she had no idea.
Rummaging through the fridge with ever-increasing frustration, Diana quickly came to the conclusion that they had nothing to drink but water and milk.
Is the best thing I have to offer really ice water? she thought with a sigh. It would have to do, though.
She opened the freezer to get the ice – before noticing the peach and yogurt popsicles that she and Ash had made the other day.
Oh! Perfect.
She carefully warmed the tray a little and slid out three of the popsicles, holding the first one between her teeth while she extracted the other two, and then hurried back into the dining room.
She felt a giddy little jolt of joy as she saw Ash and Calvin sitting next to each other at the table, pencils in hand, hunched over Ash’s puzzle book.
Calvin was staring at the book, his forehead creasing cutely in bewilderment. “What do you mean, ‘bananas’ is an anagram indicator?”
Diana couldn’t help but smile – or as much as she could with the popsicle in her mouth, anyway. Clearly poor Calvin had been roped into Ash’s current hobby of cryptic crosswords.
“It means the word is going crazy – you know, like, bananas,” Ash informed him. “The letters are moving around all over the place, so it could be an anagram of some other word.”
“Oh – makes sense to me, I guess,” Calvin replied, nodding, though the expression on his face suggested it made anything but sense. “So… uh….”
“‘Analyze dusty bananas,’” Ash read from the list of clues. He looked up expectantly. “Do you get it now?”
“Uh…” Calvin began – and Diana decided he was probably in need of rescue.
“Hweeur yuu guh!” she managed to get out around the popsicle in her mouth, while she held the other two out to Ash and Calvin.
They looked up – and Diana couldn’t help but notice Calvin looked distinctly relieved beneath his bemusement.
Handing over the other two popsicles, Diana removed the popsicle from her mouth so she could try again.
“Here you go!” A sudden thought struck her.
“Oh God, I forgot to ask. Do you like peaches?”
Or maybe he’s lactose intolerant, she thought in mild despair. I knew he had to have a flaw. Is that a flaw that I can live with?
It would be a close-run thing, given that dairy was possibly the third most important thing in her life after Ash and Bella… but she thought that maybe she could deal with it. If she absolutely had to.
To her relief, Calvin laughed. “Peaches are my favorite. And these look amazing.”
Relaxing, Diana laughed as well. They did look amazing, with their enticing golden swirls of peach nestled amongst the creamy frozen yoghurt.
It was a recipe from Sylvie’s new cookbook – she’d written it during the last month of her pregnancy when she’d been forced to take it easy and wasn’t able to be on her feet from dawn ’til dusk in the bakery.
But – Sylvie being Sylvie – she’d still needed something to do, so writing out her vast store of recipes it had been.
The book was being published in a couple of months, but Diana and the rest of Sylvie’s friends had been given advance copies.
“This is a new recipe that Ash and I were trying out, so I can’t say I know exactly what they’ll taste like. But hopefully they’re good!”
Diana understood the risk she was taking, shoving something she’d never made before at Calvin. She wanted to impress him – or at least, not actively disgust him – and she wouldn’t exactly have called herself a talented chef. But with Sylvie’s recipes, how much could go wrong?
She took a careful nibble, and…
“Mmm.”