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Chapter twenty two: Glass wings
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, stains the white radiance of eternity. –P.B. Shelley
Chailyn tried not to shiver as she stepped through the heavy wooden door into the elegant restaurant. She was definitely nervous to be in another small, enclosed area. Since this wasn’t likely to be the type of establishment to warm up chocolate chip muffins in the microwave, she had felt safe enough to send her acceptance to the invitation she had received this afternoon. While she had thought her father was an odd messenger, it had still been the type of thing that brought a smile to her face. Having the town’s fire chief assure her that the coffee shop fire was an oddity and that having it happen twice in one week was unlikely, she had agreed to dinner.
The maitre de met her with a smile. “Ms. Adderly, it’s a pleasure to see you this evening. If you’ll come with me.”
Something was very odd in this man’s greeting. This wasn’t an establishment she had ever been to, considering it was in a wrong part of town to be one of her normal hangouts. Just the fact that it had a maitre de who wasn’t pulling out a large plastic menu and some rolled silverware out of a slot on the wall behind him as he moved to seat her was a huge factor in why she had never been here.
Lucas smiled when he saw her walking toward him. It was the type of grin that she couldn’t help returning, even though she was nervous. “I couldn’t help but notice that we’re the only ones here tonight. I hope this doesn’t say anything about the quality of the food.”
The offended maitre de began to protest but Lucas interrupted. “Thank you, Miller, for seating Ms. Adderly. We’ll have the first course now.”
“Very good, sir,” he said through tight lips. With a bow, he walked stiffly away and Chailyn was able to look around the candlelit room. Even without nicely dressed patrons at each of the tables, there was still a romantic ambience throughout the dim room.
“I heard about what happened and didn’t figure you’d want to be around a lot of people in such a small space yet. Do you mind?” The smile never faltered as he pulled out her chair and helped her sit down.
“Did you ever get in trouble as a child?” she asked, smoothing her napkin on her lap. “You seem to have a lot of experience looking innocent.”
“I look innocent because I am.”
Chailyn felt horrid as his smile dropped away. Her dad had talked with Lucas and thought he was a pretty interesting man. It had nothing to do with his ability to play baseball and certainly wasn’t because of his sexy smile.
“Yes, you are. I, on the other hand, am stupid. Instead of giving you grief, I should be apologizing.” The edges of her napkin folded under her stressful fiddling. It would have been much easier to do this in a place she was more comfortable, but maybe that was the idea. Here, on the wrong side of town or out of the hospital, she didn’t have the upper hand. Except for the fact that he was paying the bill for this experience, neither did he.
A waiter came out with the appetizers, a small plate of braised asparagus artistically arranged on pastry shells filled with a gourmet cheese mixture. He filled their water glasses and waited for the first impression. They both nodded and smiled approvingly, neither one saying anything to break the odd silence.
The second course was cooling before she dared speak again. “So, I should apologize.”
“That is the proper step after besmirching a man’s honor.”
“Oh, good word choice, Mr. I-Play-Sports-So-Don’t-Make-Me-Think.” She couldn’t seem to find the words to say to him that would make her horrible accusation of him the other night go away. No, she didn’t just want it to go away. She wanted it to never have happened. The first honest, decent man who had ever given her the time of day and she couldn’t do the right thing by saying the words that would restore the injury she had done to his honor.
“Is the soup not to your liking?” Millar asked anxiously, hovering over the table. Chailyn noticed the wait staff peeking through the kitchen door.
“Normally, pumpkin soup is my favorite,” she offered, dabbing her lips with the linen, “but I’m so excited to try the other dishes that I’m afraid of filling up on too much too soon. Please, let the chef know how much I enjoyed it.”
He immediately bobbed, taking the dishes with him as he rushed to give the other staff the good news. It was odd to see the man almost blushing with happiness and to know that she had made it happen. When she looked at Lucas, she didn’t feel quite so satisfied. His expression was polite and distant, almost as if she was a reporter trying to get too deep into his personal life.
“Do you enjoy pumpkin soup?” she asked, at a loss for something to say between courses. With the waiters as attentive as they were, she was afraid to get too deep into the conversation before they came out so quickly with the next course. She hoped it wasn’t something raw.
He shook his head, a few of the strands falling into his eyes. “Not especially. Is that what that was? I asked for something not too high handed but I guess you get what you pay for.”
“If you’d really wanted to impress me, you could have shown me your expertise in the area of cheeseburgers. Now, that is a lost art.”
The next course was a spinach salad with strawberries and glazed walnuts. As nuts made her mouth feel fuzzy, she pushed them to the side. “Tell me about the best burger you’ve ever had. Was it somewhere exotic, like New York?”
“No, Jack’s on Sixth and Cash. You ever been there?”
She sat back in her chair. What a small world. She and Lucas both had separate lives that were rapidly crashing together. “Yeah. That’s only a couple of blocks from my house, between there and the bookshop I like to go to. The owner likes Maxie and she feeds her biscuits while I shop.”
“Smith Hammer?” he asked.
Her eyes were wide. Not many people know about Smith, Hammer and Atkinson, Book Sellers. She had only discovered it by mistake when she decided to go on her yearly search for a new dry cleaner. There was no large sign outside the bookshop, only a tiny handmade sheet that explained the times the shop was open or what kind of payment was accepted.
“That’s my favorite store on that block, although, if you go three blocks to the east-“
“Don’t tell me. Dill’s?”
He bundled up his napkin and threw it at her, hitting her in the forehead as planned. “The candle shop? Not likely. I was thinking about Fillmore Gifts. They make a special fudge there that my mom adores.”
It felt comfortable, suddenly, talking about this with him. If there was one thing she knew, it was the layout of her city. Even though it was his city, too, it was a large place that she had never thought she would share with someone like Lucas Devlin. His place was the baseball stadium and the surrounding area. It made sense for him to know that place. The fact that he knew her area of town in addition gave her a smaller sense of community. Knowing this man was turning into knowing someone who could be a neighbor. Too bad she didn’t need a cup of sugar right now.
“I’ve never been to Fillmore Gifts. If I need anything like that, I come home and go by the drug store here. Have you been there? It’s pretty interesting. They don’t make fudge so your mom won’t be as impressed. I do get my facial cleanser there. I have to special order it anywhere else but they always stock it. That makes me pretty impressed with the store.”
“The only place I’ve been in this town besides the hospital, the animal shelter and the hotel has been the radio station.”
She was more than interested to know why he had been to the radio station but wasn’t sure how to ask what he had been doing. Talking about Stetson Hills wasn’t yet on the list of things she was comfortable talking about around him.
When she didn’t say anything, he concentrated on moving the untouched spinach around on his plate. He had eaten all the interesting stuff, she noticed, just not the leafy vegetable.
“Eat at least some of the spinach. If you don’t, they might accuse us of not liking this course either.” Sure enough, the heads were all sneaking a peek around the doorway when she looked up. With a slight wave, she succeeded in scaring them back into the other room.
“Don’t like spinach. Why aren’t you eating your nuts? Those are the best part.”
“They make my mouth fuzzy. It’s a strange allergy that doesn’t hurt me; it just makes it uncomfortable to eat certain things. I also have trouble with bananas.” She scrunched up her nose and concentrated on pushing her own spinach around. When his fork snuck onto her plate to capture a nut, she was too stunned to do anything but stare it into his mouth.
“You can’t eat it and we shouldn’t let it go to waste.”
“No. We shouldn’t.” She reached over with her fork and gathered a forkful of salad. “Guess I’ll help you out, as well.”
Once again, the waiter ruined the perfectly nice mood with his question. They assured him, once more, that everything tasted fine and waiting in an uncomfortable silence while the next course was brought out.
“Please tell me we’re done soon,” she whispered as the waiter left them to go in search of the diet cola that Chailyn requested. He had looked down his nose just a tad, giving her the feeling that they weren’t all that accustomed to serving soft drinks. They had both declined the wine and the required glasses had been sadly removed immediately.
“I think there’s just dessert after this. I should have specified how many courses. That’s something I’ll think of next time.” His eyes were crinkly with silent laughter. When they looked like that, she was able to see the intense color that rimmed his pupils.
“Next time?”
He inclined his head, color suffusing his cheeks. “Sure. I’m hoping that you’ll take me out for your favorite cheeseburger next time.”
The maitre de started to walk out of the kitchen and Chailyn stopped him where he was by putting up her hand. “Stop right there, Millar. We think the food is great. We’re starting to get a little irritated with you, though. We’d like some horrible service. Think you can do that?”
“You sure you don’t hang out in places like this?”
She nabbed some of the salmon off his plate, chewing thoughtfully as she thought about where’d she like to take him. “I could get used to it because this food really is awesome, but I’d rather eat in a place where a diet Coke is normal. I’m a diet Coke sort of girl.”
“Even with a hot dog?” he asked, twirling some pasta around on his fork absently. “Those are better with regular soda.”
Sipping the watered down cola, Chailyn grimaced. “Have you ever tried one with diet? It’s not so bad.”
“That’ll be one of the next things we try. How about that?”
“Only if I get a bag of peanuts, too. It’s just not the same without peanuts.”
A waiter came to fill the water glasses and both Lucas and Chailyn blinked at each other. Yet another moment interrupted. If we were at the ballpark, we’d be left alone, she thought as she tried not to show her disappointment. But that wasn’t right. At the ballpark, he’d be down on the field and why wasn’t he there now?
“Lucas? Why are you here in Stetson Hills instead of doing your job? Aren’t there games this week? Wasn’t there a game tonight?”
“I did an interview with one of my old college buddies. Forrest talked me into coming to do him a favor while I was recovering. It felt stupid to be waiting on the bench while I knew I couldn’t do anything. Do you follow the team close enough that you know our schedule?” He leaned forward, pushing his plate impatiently toward the waiter hovering nearby.
Chailyn nodded, snagging the last piece of Chicken Marsala off her plate before it could be taken away. “You talked to my father. Didn’t you pick up on his utter devotion to the game? I’ve been to more games than I can remember. Now that I live closer, I think I’ve been to less, though. Dad hasn’t been able to get away as often after he made Fire Chief and it’s not the same when I’m there with people who don’t care as much.”
The plates of dessert were sat in front of them, and they each looked up with almost identical smirks. “You want to get out of here and find something that’ll take more than one bite to finish off?” Lucas asked, already scooting his chair out in anticipation of her answer.
“Deal. Let me pick the location.”
When he touched her shoulder, she made a concerted effort not to rub her cheek along his fingers. “I owe you something before we leave,” she said, looking up at him.
He shook his head. “I’m not letting you pay for dinner.”
“No.” She found that she needed to touch him to remind herself why exactly she was doing this. “I’m sorry. I’m not normally so stupid. I respect you as a man and I’m sorry for thinking poorly of you.”
He laced his fingers with hers and drew her out of her seat to stand next to him. “Thank you.”
“Now that we have that out of the way, let’s go get the best ice cream sundae you’ve ever had. Besides, Maxie told me she wants to say hello. She’s missed you.”
“Is she fond of ice cream?”
“No, but it’s right by my parent’s house so I figured we could park there and walk over.” He stopped outside the door, staring at her with a look of surprise on his face. “What?”
She noticed there was also a ring of color on the outside of his iris that complimented the darker area near the pupil. Every time she looked at him, she found something new and interesting that fascinated her.
“Have I told you yet how much I’m enjoying getting to know you? You continually surprise me. That doesn’t happen much.”
“I do what I can.” She hadn’t meant to giggle but he didn’t seem to mind. If his smile was any indication, she could have giggled a couple more times. Maybe, by the end of the night, she’d have another chance.
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, stains the white radiance of eternity. –P.B. Shelley
Chailyn tried not to shiver as she stepped through the heavy wooden door into the elegant restaurant. She was definitely nervous to be in another small, enclosed area. Since this wasn’t likely to be the type of establishment to warm up chocolate chip muffins in the microwave, she had felt safe enough to send her acceptance to the invitation she had received this afternoon. While she had thought her father was an odd messenger, it had still been the type of thing that brought a smile to her face. Having the town’s fire chief assure her that the coffee shop fire was an oddity and that having it happen twice in one week was unlikely, she had agreed to dinner.
The maitre de met her with a smile. “Ms. Adderly, it’s a pleasure to see you this evening. If you’ll come with me.”
Something was very odd in this man’s greeting. This wasn’t an establishment she had ever been to, considering it was in a wrong part of town to be one of her normal hangouts. Just the fact that it had a maitre de who wasn’t pulling out a large plastic menu and some rolled silverware out of a slot on the wall behind him as he moved to seat her was a huge factor in why she had never been here.
Lucas smiled when he saw her walking toward him. It was the type of grin that she couldn’t help returning, even though she was nervous. “I couldn’t help but notice that we’re the only ones here tonight. I hope this doesn’t say anything about the quality of the food.”
The offended maitre de began to protest but Lucas interrupted. “Thank you, Miller, for seating Ms. Adderly. We’ll have the first course now.”
“Very good, sir,” he said through tight lips. With a bow, he walked stiffly away and Chailyn was able to look around the candlelit room. Even without nicely dressed patrons at each of the tables, there was still a romantic ambience throughout the dim room.
“I heard about what happened and didn’t figure you’d want to be around a lot of people in such a small space yet. Do you mind?” The smile never faltered as he pulled out her chair and helped her sit down.
“Did you ever get in trouble as a child?” she asked, smoothing her napkin on her lap. “You seem to have a lot of experience looking innocent.”
“I look innocent because I am.”
Chailyn felt horrid as his smile dropped away. Her dad had talked with Lucas and thought he was a pretty interesting man. It had nothing to do with his ability to play baseball and certainly wasn’t because of his sexy smile.
“Yes, you are. I, on the other hand, am stupid. Instead of giving you grief, I should be apologizing.” The edges of her napkin folded under her stressful fiddling. It would have been much easier to do this in a place she was more comfortable, but maybe that was the idea. Here, on the wrong side of town or out of the hospital, she didn’t have the upper hand. Except for the fact that he was paying the bill for this experience, neither did he.
A waiter came out with the appetizers, a small plate of braised asparagus artistically arranged on pastry shells filled with a gourmet cheese mixture. He filled their water glasses and waited for the first impression. They both nodded and smiled approvingly, neither one saying anything to break the odd silence.
The second course was cooling before she dared speak again. “So, I should apologize.”
“That is the proper step after besmirching a man’s honor.”
“Oh, good word choice, Mr. I-Play-Sports-So-Don’t-Make-Me-Think.” She couldn’t seem to find the words to say to him that would make her horrible accusation of him the other night go away. No, she didn’t just want it to go away. She wanted it to never have happened. The first honest, decent man who had ever given her the time of day and she couldn’t do the right thing by saying the words that would restore the injury she had done to his honor.
“Is the soup not to your liking?” Millar asked anxiously, hovering over the table. Chailyn noticed the wait staff peeking through the kitchen door.
“Normally, pumpkin soup is my favorite,” she offered, dabbing her lips with the linen, “but I’m so excited to try the other dishes that I’m afraid of filling up on too much too soon. Please, let the chef know how much I enjoyed it.”
He immediately bobbed, taking the dishes with him as he rushed to give the other staff the good news. It was odd to see the man almost blushing with happiness and to know that she had made it happen. When she looked at Lucas, she didn’t feel quite so satisfied. His expression was polite and distant, almost as if she was a reporter trying to get too deep into his personal life.
“Do you enjoy pumpkin soup?” she asked, at a loss for something to say between courses. With the waiters as attentive as they were, she was afraid to get too deep into the conversation before they came out so quickly with the next course. She hoped it wasn’t something raw.
He shook his head, a few of the strands falling into his eyes. “Not especially. Is that what that was? I asked for something not too high handed but I guess you get what you pay for.”
“If you’d really wanted to impress me, you could have shown me your expertise in the area of cheeseburgers. Now, that is a lost art.”
The next course was a spinach salad with strawberries and glazed walnuts. As nuts made her mouth feel fuzzy, she pushed them to the side. “Tell me about the best burger you’ve ever had. Was it somewhere exotic, like New York?”
“No, Jack’s on Sixth and Cash. You ever been there?”
She sat back in her chair. What a small world. She and Lucas both had separate lives that were rapidly crashing together. “Yeah. That’s only a couple of blocks from my house, between there and the bookshop I like to go to. The owner likes Maxie and she feeds her biscuits while I shop.”
“Smith Hammer?” he asked.
Her eyes were wide. Not many people know about Smith, Hammer and Atkinson, Book Sellers. She had only discovered it by mistake when she decided to go on her yearly search for a new dry cleaner. There was no large sign outside the bookshop, only a tiny handmade sheet that explained the times the shop was open or what kind of payment was accepted.
“That’s my favorite store on that block, although, if you go three blocks to the east-“
“Don’t tell me. Dill’s?”
He bundled up his napkin and threw it at her, hitting her in the forehead as planned. “The candle shop? Not likely. I was thinking about Fillmore Gifts. They make a special fudge there that my mom adores.”
It felt comfortable, suddenly, talking about this with him. If there was one thing she knew, it was the layout of her city. Even though it was his city, too, it was a large place that she had never thought she would share with someone like Lucas Devlin. His place was the baseball stadium and the surrounding area. It made sense for him to know that place. The fact that he knew her area of town in addition gave her a smaller sense of community. Knowing this man was turning into knowing someone who could be a neighbor. Too bad she didn’t need a cup of sugar right now.
“I’ve never been to Fillmore Gifts. If I need anything like that, I come home and go by the drug store here. Have you been there? It’s pretty interesting. They don’t make fudge so your mom won’t be as impressed. I do get my facial cleanser there. I have to special order it anywhere else but they always stock it. That makes me pretty impressed with the store.”
“The only place I’ve been in this town besides the hospital, the animal shelter and the hotel has been the radio station.”
She was more than interested to know why he had been to the radio station but wasn’t sure how to ask what he had been doing. Talking about Stetson Hills wasn’t yet on the list of things she was comfortable talking about around him.
When she didn’t say anything, he concentrated on moving the untouched spinach around on his plate. He had eaten all the interesting stuff, she noticed, just not the leafy vegetable.
“Eat at least some of the spinach. If you don’t, they might accuse us of not liking this course either.” Sure enough, the heads were all sneaking a peek around the doorway when she looked up. With a slight wave, she succeeded in scaring them back into the other room.
“Don’t like spinach. Why aren’t you eating your nuts? Those are the best part.”
“They make my mouth fuzzy. It’s a strange allergy that doesn’t hurt me; it just makes it uncomfortable to eat certain things. I also have trouble with bananas.” She scrunched up her nose and concentrated on pushing her own spinach around. When his fork snuck onto her plate to capture a nut, she was too stunned to do anything but stare it into his mouth.
“You can’t eat it and we shouldn’t let it go to waste.”
“No. We shouldn’t.” She reached over with her fork and gathered a forkful of salad. “Guess I’ll help you out, as well.”
Once again, the waiter ruined the perfectly nice mood with his question. They assured him, once more, that everything tasted fine and waiting in an uncomfortable silence while the next course was brought out.
“Please tell me we’re done soon,” she whispered as the waiter left them to go in search of the diet cola that Chailyn requested. He had looked down his nose just a tad, giving her the feeling that they weren’t all that accustomed to serving soft drinks. They had both declined the wine and the required glasses had been sadly removed immediately.
“I think there’s just dessert after this. I should have specified how many courses. That’s something I’ll think of next time.” His eyes were crinkly with silent laughter. When they looked like that, she was able to see the intense color that rimmed his pupils.
“Next time?”
He inclined his head, color suffusing his cheeks. “Sure. I’m hoping that you’ll take me out for your favorite cheeseburger next time.”
The maitre de started to walk out of the kitchen and Chailyn stopped him where he was by putting up her hand. “Stop right there, Millar. We think the food is great. We’re starting to get a little irritated with you, though. We’d like some horrible service. Think you can do that?”
“You sure you don’t hang out in places like this?”
She nabbed some of the salmon off his plate, chewing thoughtfully as she thought about where’d she like to take him. “I could get used to it because this food really is awesome, but I’d rather eat in a place where a diet Coke is normal. I’m a diet Coke sort of girl.”
“Even with a hot dog?” he asked, twirling some pasta around on his fork absently. “Those are better with regular soda.”
Sipping the watered down cola, Chailyn grimaced. “Have you ever tried one with diet? It’s not so bad.”
“That’ll be one of the next things we try. How about that?”
“Only if I get a bag of peanuts, too. It’s just not the same without peanuts.”
A waiter came to fill the water glasses and both Lucas and Chailyn blinked at each other. Yet another moment interrupted. If we were at the ballpark, we’d be left alone, she thought as she tried not to show her disappointment. But that wasn’t right. At the ballpark, he’d be down on the field and why wasn’t he there now?
“Lucas? Why are you here in Stetson Hills instead of doing your job? Aren’t there games this week? Wasn’t there a game tonight?”
“I did an interview with one of my old college buddies. Forrest talked me into coming to do him a favor while I was recovering. It felt stupid to be waiting on the bench while I knew I couldn’t do anything. Do you follow the team close enough that you know our schedule?” He leaned forward, pushing his plate impatiently toward the waiter hovering nearby.
Chailyn nodded, snagging the last piece of Chicken Marsala off her plate before it could be taken away. “You talked to my father. Didn’t you pick up on his utter devotion to the game? I’ve been to more games than I can remember. Now that I live closer, I think I’ve been to less, though. Dad hasn’t been able to get away as often after he made Fire Chief and it’s not the same when I’m there with people who don’t care as much.”
The plates of dessert were sat in front of them, and they each looked up with almost identical smirks. “You want to get out of here and find something that’ll take more than one bite to finish off?” Lucas asked, already scooting his chair out in anticipation of her answer.
“Deal. Let me pick the location.”
When he touched her shoulder, she made a concerted effort not to rub her cheek along his fingers. “I owe you something before we leave,” she said, looking up at him.
He shook his head. “I’m not letting you pay for dinner.”
“No.” She found that she needed to touch him to remind herself why exactly she was doing this. “I’m sorry. I’m not normally so stupid. I respect you as a man and I’m sorry for thinking poorly of you.”
He laced his fingers with hers and drew her out of her seat to stand next to him. “Thank you.”
“Now that we have that out of the way, let’s go get the best ice cream sundae you’ve ever had. Besides, Maxie told me she wants to say hello. She’s missed you.”
“Is she fond of ice cream?”
“No, but it’s right by my parent’s house so I figured we could park there and walk over.” He stopped outside the door, staring at her with a look of surprise on his face. “What?”
She noticed there was also a ring of color on the outside of his iris that complimented the darker area near the pupil. Every time she looked at him, she found something new and interesting that fascinated her.
“Have I told you yet how much I’m enjoying getting to know you? You continually surprise me. That doesn’t happen much.”
“I do what I can.” She hadn’t meant to giggle but he didn’t seem to mind. If his smile was any indication, she could have giggled a couple more times. Maybe, by the end of the night, she’d have another chance.
