This Matter Of Marriage. Debbie MacomberЧитать онлайн книгу.
Hallie was determined to pay off her credit cards, not add another two thousand dollars to the balance. “Besides, I have another date.”
“Who?” Donnalee—predictably—sounded skeptical.
“Bonnie’s uncle Chad.” Bonnie had mentioned him early in January, but Hallie had wanted to be at her best before agreeing to a date with him. “You know that old saying about getting back on the horse after you fall off? Well, I accepted a dinner invitation this very morning.”
“When are you seeing him?”
Hallie didn’t know what to make of Donnalee’s tone. It was a mixture of wonder and patent disapproval. “Soon,” Hallie said. “Monday night.” Actually she wondered how smart this was herself. Monday was only three days away.
Chad Ellis had sounded nice enough over the phone, and Bonnie had said he was her favorite uncle. Someone related to a member of her trusted staff seemed a safe bet—especially after the disastrous Marv.
“Did you go out with Sanford last night?” The change of subject was deliberate.
“Yes—and it was wonderful. He’s a dream come true,” Donnalee said with the same wistful note she used whenever his name was introduced into the conversation.
“Have you talked to him today?” Hallie didn’t know why she insisted on torturing herself.
“He sent me a dozen red roses this morning.”
“Roses?” Hallie was almost swooning with envy. While Donnalee was being courted and pampered, she’d been grilled for hours and then abandoned on the freeway.
“I’m falling in love with this guy,” Donnalee confessed. “Head over heels.”
“So am I, and I haven’t even met him.”
Her friend chuckled. “I wish you’d reconsider Dateline. Chad might be Bonnie’s uncle, but how much do you really know about him?”
“Just what Bonnie told me. He’s divorced, has been for five years. He sells medical equipment and is on the road quite a bit, but he’ll be back in town after the weekend. For a while, anyway.” She wasn’t sure if that was luck or fate. Their one all-too-brief conversation had taken place that morning. He sounded…interesting. Which, come to think of it, was the same word she’d used following her telephone chat with Marv.
“If you don’t call me Tuesday morning, I’ll track you down and torture the information out of you,” Donnalee warned.
“I’ll phone,” Hallie promised. No date could possibly be as awful as the one with Marv. Sheer chance assured Hallie that the odds of Chad’s being a decent date were good.
At this point she wasn’t even looking for Mr. Right. Mr. Almost Right would satisfy her nicely. If she’d learned anything from the experience with Marv—and she had —it was that she needed to lower her expectations. No Mr. Knight-In-Shining-Armor was going to gallop up to her front door. On her way home that evening, Hallie stopped off at the bank for cash. Her ATM card remained in her bottom dresser drawer, along with her credit cards—safe from temptation.
Wanting to put the task of repaying her neighbor behind her, Hallie headed directly for his condo after she parked her car. His lights were on and she assumed he was home, but it was Meagan who answered the door. “Hi, Hallie!”
“Hi, Meagan. Is your dad there?”
“Yeah. He’s in the shower. You can wait, can’t you?”
“I don’t actually need to talk to him.” She pulled the twenty-dollar bill out of her purse. “Would you give this to him?”
“Sure.”
“Give me what?” Steve strolled barefoot into the hallway, wearing jeans and an unbuttoned plaid shirt. A damp towel was draped around his neck, and his dark hair glistened with water. “Oh, hi, Hallie.”
“Hi.” She smiled weakly, embarrassed about their last meeting.
“Hey, Dad,” Kenny shouted, leaping off the sofa. “Hallie brought you twenty bucks. Let’s go out for pizza, okay?”
“Uh…” Steve hesitated.
Meagan’s eyes were as bright as her brother’s. “Can Hallie come, too?”
“I…can’t. Really.” Hallie looked over her shoulder at her empty condo, tempted to suggest she had places to go, people to meet. It would have been a lie. “I just wanted to repay the loan and thank you for coming to my rescue. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t answered the door.” Well, she would have managed—she would’ve retrieved her bank card from the bottom drawer and…But Steve had saved her time and spared her inconvenience. She’d been in no shape to go driving around with a seriously annoyed cabbie, looking for a bank machine.
“Can we go out for pizza, Dad?” Kenny asked again, his hands folded in prayerlike fashion. “Please, please, please?”
“I don’t see why not,” Steve relented, grinning. He turned to Hallie. “You’re welcome to come along. Actually, I wish you would. The kids will desert me for the video games the minute we arrive and I’ll be stuck sitting there with no one to talk to.”
She wavered. Even if she didn’t have any plans, she didn’t want to intrude.
“Please come!” Meagan urged.
“Sure,” Hallie said before she could change her mind. Although it wasn’t the thought of her empty condo or equally empty refrigerator that persuaded her. It wasn’t even Meagan’s invitation. It was the pizza. Pizza, loaded down with cheese, spicy sausage and olives. After nearly two months of exercise, after week upon week of eating lettuce and vegetables, skinless chicken and Dover sole, she deserved pizza. She’d walk an extra mile on her treadmill, but heaven help her, she wanted that pizza.
“I’m glad you decided to come,” Meagan told her when they arrived at the local pizza parlor, a five-minute drive away. To Hallie’s relief, Steve had taken his car—not his truck, which he’d left at work.
The place was filled with Friday-night family business, the noise roughly equal to that of a rock concert. While Steve stood in line at the counter to order their dinner, Hallie steered the kids toward one of the few empty tables.
Steve returned five minutes later with two soft drinks, a couple of beers and a pile of quarters. Kenny’s eyes lit up like the video games he loved and he reached forward to grab the coins. “Twelve quarters each,” Steve said, gazing sternly at his offspring. “And they have to last you all night. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Got it?”
“Got it.”
The quarters disappeared along with Meagan and Kenny.
Steve sat down across the picnic-style table from Hallie. She spread one of the red-checkered napkins on her lap, aware that it was taking her an inordinately long time to do so.
“It was kind of you to invite me,” she finally said, slightly uneasy at being left alone with Steve. To her surprise she found herself revising her earlier estimation of him. He was really quite good-looking. Funny she hadn’t realized that earlier. The fact that he’d been willing to help her out only added to the attraction.
“Hey, I appreciate the company. Mary Lynn and I used to bring the kids here once a month. Meagan and Kenny would like to come more often, but I feel stupid sitting by myself.”
“What about trying your hand at the videos?”
“Are you kidding? It’s an invasion of territory. None of the kids want me there. The one time I tried it I was banished and sentenced to sit out here with the rest of the parents.”
Hallie smiled. She’d half expected him to ask her more about her awful date and was grateful he didn’t.
They each talked about their jobs, which