Charlotte furrowed her brow. “What kind of business?”
Tom cocked his head. “Am I being interrogated?”
“That depends,” she said. “Do you have something to hide?”
Cowboy bumped her chair while reaching for her plate, then apologized as if it had been an accident. Charlotte knew it had not.
“Of course not,” said Tom. “I would like us to get along. I know you’re suspicious of me, but I’m not a threat, truly.”
She was not assuaged. “What kind of business?” she repeated.
“I was the chief financial officer for a bank. But I longed for something more… influential. What could be influential than teaching the next generation?”
Cowboy shot Charlotte a clear look of warning as he backed up to the swinging door to the kitchen and pushed it open with his backside, his hands full of dishes.
Charlotte took full advantage of her time without her keepers. “But now you’re happy to leave that behind for a drafty old house on an isolated little island. Why is that?”
“I’m happy to be with your grandmother.”
The door to the kitchen swung open and Grams entered with a platter loaded high with roast beef, potatoes, and carrots, which she placed in the middle of the table. Cowboy followed on her heels so quickly, Charlotte thought he might have thrown the dishes into the sink in his haste to return.
“That smells fantastic, Grams,” he said, his earnest tone calling to mind a TV commercial from the 1950s. “You’ll have to teach me how to make it.”
“It’s a pot roast,” Charlotte nearly snarled. “You put a roast into a pot and you cook it.” She turned her attention back to Tom. “So, how did you two—” she broke off, jerking her head back as the smell from the pot roast suddenly hit her in with an unexpected intensity. It was the same savory scent she’d smelled hundreds of times in her life, but this time it made her instantly nauseas.
“You all right?” asked Cowboy.
“I’m fine.” She did her best to shake it off and began again. “How did you two get in touch after all these years?”
“It was so romantic,” said Grams. “He was?—”
Charlotte lightly squeezed her grandmother’s arm. “Let Tom tell it.”
Grams’s mouth opened and closed. She looked resolutely tatTom.
“Loretta, you’ve outdone yourself,” he said, passing his plate to Charlotte. “I’d love a portion from the middle.”
Charlotte took the plate and considered tossing it at his head like a throwing knife. Clearly, he expected the womento serve him, and she was about to protest when Grams took the plate from her hands and spooned roasted vegetables onto it.
Distracted by the misogyny, Charlotte almost forgot her line of questioning. Why did it feel like getting him to answer a simple question was akin to waterboarding? He was so evasive. “I asked how you two reconnected.”
He grinned like a Cheshire cat. “Just waiting for some of that delicious roast. Your grandmother frequently distracts me with her cooking.”
Charlotte had little choice but to wait as her grandmother buttered Tom’s roll and tucked it against the side of the plate laden with roast beef and gravy. Her hands trembled, something Charlotte had never noticed before. Was something wrong with her? Maybe Parkinson’s or MS?
Begrudgingly, Charlotte took Tom’s plate from her grandmother and passed it back to him.
“Thank you,” he said, setting it down in front of him before slipping a cloth napkin out from under his silverware and placing it in his lap.
When he carefully sliced the meat and potatoes before taking a bite, Charlotte had waited long enough. “Just can’t remember how your betrothed came back into your life?”
Again Grams started to speak, and again Charlotte put her hand on her grandmother’s arm to stop her. “I want to hear Tom tell it.”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten,” he said, taking a bite of his food and chewing it carefully. Finally, he swallowed. “I called her.”
“You called her,” parroted Charlotte. “That’s it?”
“I heard from a mutual friend she’d been widowed some years ago, and I asked forher number.”
