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Looking at him, Frankie wished she could cut part of their coffee shop conversation from the day before out of her mind—it seemed to be stuck in there like a thorn, taunting her with possibilities she had no intention of exploring.
She wasn’t going to give her heart to another man and then lose half of it to the grave. With the age difference between Mitch and her, it was a given that would happen.
“Hi, ladies,” Mitch said as he stepped into the entry, brushing snow off his shoulders. “It’s starting to come down out there.”
Stef was doing door patrol. “Give me your coat,” she commanded, and he shrugged out of his. He wore a plain blue shirt that matched his eyes. How on earth had he stayed single for the last fifteen years?
“Once burned,” he’d answered when Frankie had asked him several years ago. It must have been a bad burn.
He never elaborated. Mitch wasn’t one to talk about his past. “No point in it,” he liked to say. “You move on and make the most of now.”
Which he was doing. Everyone in town liked him, and he seemed to have a good relationship with his two sons, young men in their early thirties, both married, who checked in with him regularly from different parts of the country and came out to visit him at his lake house on their summer vacations. Frankie had met the sons, and they seemed nice. One had a boy who was the apple of Mitch’s eye and video-chatted regularly with him. As for the ex-wife...who knew where she was? Or what she was? Undeserving, if you asked Frankie.
Even though dinner was her way of apologizing, Mitch had brought wine and flowers. He joined her in the kitchen, where she had a cinnamon-scented candle burning, handing over an arrangement of red carnations and white roses in a miniature sleigh. She’d seen it in the window of Flora’s Flower Shoppe and commented on it when they were passing by one day.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said, setting it on the counter.
He shrugged. “I know. I knew you liked it.”
She smiled at him. “I do. Thanks. Does this mean I’m truly forgiven?”
He smiled back. “Depends on how good the pasties are.”
“You know they’ll be good.” She couldn’t hang wallpaper, and she couldn’t crochet like her mom or create candies that were works of art like her daughter, and she couldn’t pull words together like Stef, but she could cook. And make cocktails.
She had just made Mitch his promised sidecar and handed it to him when the doorbell rang, announcing her next guest. Again, Stef did door patrol, letting in Brock.
There stood Holiday Hunk Number Two, wearing jeans and boots and a black parka. Stef was looking up at him as if he was one giant candy cane. Yep, it could end up being a very Merry Christmas for Stef.
“Hi there,” she chirped. “I’m Stefanie Ludlow, Frankie’s sister. May I take your coat?”
“Sure, thanks,” he said with a polite smile. He looked to where Frankie stood in the kitchen with Mitch, and the smile grew wider. “Hi, Frankie!” he called, and Stef’s shoulders stiffened.
A little premonition that things weren’t going to go as planned wriggled into Frankie’s mind as Brock strode toward the kitchen, a red-and-white floral arrangement like the one Mitch had brought in his hand.
She pushed the uneasy feeling out. This dinner was going to be a success.
4
Mitch frowned at the sight of the flowers Brock had brought. Brockdidn’t notice.
Frankie did. “Great minds think alike,” she said, and set it on the counter next to Mitch’s offering. “You two are the perfect guests.”
“Never show up empty-handed, my mom always said,” Brock told her.
Stef joined them. “Your mom sounds like a smart woman,” she said.
He nodded. “She was.”
Was.One short word that said so much. “Your mom’s no longer alive?” guessed Frankie.
Brock shook his head. “She was only fifty.”
Frankie’s age. Yikes!
“Didn’t even live to see me graduate from college.”
“That’s rough,” said Frankie. “It’s hard to lose a parent.”
