“No argument there,” she said with a rueful chuckle.Thad had to fight the urge to brush back several of her braids that had fallen out of place.
“I wouldn’t wish what happened to my family on anyone,” Ashanti continued. “But things have gotten better with time.”
“Was Duchess the inspiration for the daycare? Is she the reason behind the theme, because her name was Duchess?”
“Her name was originally Jelly Bean,” she said.
“Ah! Sothisis why she worships you. You rescued her from both a shelter and a stupid name.”
“Stop it,” she said, tapping his arm with a playful punch. The innocent touch stirred a prickle of awareness that penetrated through the layers of his shirt and jacket.
“My mom is the inspiration behind both Duchess’s name and the Buckingham Palace theme,” she said, blithely unaware of the havoc she was wreaking in him. “Her obsession with the royals makes Beyoncé’s BeyHive look like child’s play.”
“I hope this doesn’t make you think less of me, but I have no idea what Beyonce’s beehive is. Is it a line of flavored honey?”
Her laugh was rich and undiluted and without a single thought for his feelings. Thad joined her so that she would be laughingwithhim and notathim.
“Not well-versed in pop culture, huh?” Ashanti asked when she finally came up for air. “It’s theBeyHive, not beehive. And it’s what her fanbase calls itself. Come to think of it, my mom would have fit right in with them. She loved Beyoncé. She even learned the ‘Single Ladies’ dance with Kara and Kendra.
“But her love of the royals topped anything I’ve ever seen. She thought Princess Diana was the ultimate lady, and that Fergie, the Duchess of York, was the most badass woman inthe world. I was going to name Duchess Fergie, but I thought people would assume she was named after the singer from the Black Eyed Peas.”
“I do know who they are,” Thad was quick to say.
“I wouldn’t have judged you either way,” she said. A winsome smile drew across her lips. “You know, the first time I ever saw my mother cry was during Princess Diana’s funeral. I was maybe five or six at the time and had no idea what was going on. I just remember climbing onto her lap with this dirty little stuffed lamb that I used to carry everywhere. I put my head on her chest and watched the procession on TV.”
This time, Thad didn’t fight the urge to touch her. He reached over and tapped the toes of her simple canvas tennis shoes.
“I’ll bet it was quite the scene in heaven when your mom finally got the chance to meet Princess Diana.”
Her face instantly lit up with a smile so bright it outshone all the lights in the city. His vow to remain unaffected by her was no match for that smile. It was fast on its way to being broken.
“I can only imagine,” Ashanti said. She lifted his hand from her foot and squeezed it. “Thank you for that. I still have those days when the grief hits me out of nowhere, but it will make things easier to think about Mom up there with the woman she idolized so much. Seriously, thank you.”
She started to let go of his hand, but Thad wouldn’t let her. He slightly twisted his so that they were palm against palm, then he rubbed his thumb back and forth across her smooth skin, feeling a nick along the ridge of her knuckle. He wanted to ask how she got it, and how she managed to keep a smile on her face when she had suffered through suchtragedy, and how she’d managed to keep her head above water while shouldering more responsibilities than any single person should have to shoulder. He wanted to know a thousand and one things about her.
But he couldn’t ask her any of that. That wasn’t the type of relationship they had.
Relationship?
They didn’t have a relationship. He doubted Ashanti would call what they had a friendship. He was one of her customers.
Thad didn’t know how to classify the sharp ache that hit him in the chest. Regret? Frustration? A combination of both?
He finally dropped her hand and asked the only question that truly needed answering.
“Ready for that cupcake?”
24
Who’s the better dancer, you or Von?”
For the past half hour, Ashanti had intentionally stuck to lighthearted topics, trying to banish the lingering heavy weight of discussing her parents’ deaths.
She and Thad had started back for their hotel after buying a half-dozen cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery, deciding to walk instead of taking the subway so that she could see Times Square and other midtown Manhattan sites.
He’d rolled his eyes when she made him double back so she could walk through the mini plexiglass waterfall tunnel between Forty-Eighth and Forty-Ninth Streets and take pictures with the bronze Paparazzi Dogman and Paparazzi Rabbitgirl sculptures that shared a terrace with it. But when she told him the significance behind the art piece and its connection to Princess Diana—how the dog represented the media that literally hunted down the princess, leading to her death—he not only brought her back but stepped in as her photographer.
“Well?” Ashanti now prompted him as they turned thecorner onto Seventh Avenue. “Which of you is the better dancer? You or Von?”
