“Well, I thought we could use a little warmth.”
Her gaze lingered for a moment, as if she was thinking of saying something, but she turned her attention back to her food, and he was glad. The truth — which he was sure had crossed her mind, because she was a bright woman — was that it was plenty warm in here, and they didn’t need the fire for that. There was a better argument for the idea that they needed it for the light, but the sun hadn’t gone down yet, so even that would have been a tough case to make.
Theo had started a fire for ambiance.
She probably knew it. But if she did, she wasn’t saying anything — or, at least, she wasn’t saying anything beyond “this is nice”.
Then again, it probably went without saying. There was no practical reason for needing to open a bottle of wine. For that matter, there was no reason she’d needed to make steak — he had seen the boxes of pasta in the kitchen, and they would have done perfectly well. On that gas-powered range, she could have prepared almost anything, even without electricity.
Instead, by unspoken agreement, they were sitting in comfortable armchairs with their feet up on the stone edge of the firepit, eating what Theo had to concede was a perfectly cooked steak dinner and sipping the nicest Merlot he had been able to find that wasn’t behind a locked door. Though neither of them had said it, he surmised that this was their way of apologizing to one another for the argument that had taken place. He was glad. It was going to be a tough couple of days, stuck out here, and it wouldn’t be made any better by fighting with one another.
“You have a point about this place,” he told her.
She looked at him. Her normally tamed hair was loose around her face — she’d unclipped it after she had finished in the kitchen. He had never taken much notice of it before, but now he did. It was big and wild, full of uneven curls that made her look like an actress from a 1980s film. There was auburn in it, too. He had thought it was basic brown, but the fire glow was bringing out the red, and he found himself suddenly captivated.
In spite of himself, he found that he could picture the wedding here. He could picture Max and Tara curled up side by side next to this fire, her head on his shoulder, their guests coming up to them one by one to congratulate them on their marriage. It wasn’t as fancy, in his imagination, as a party at the CrystalBallroom would be. It wasn’t as impressive. But there was something cozy about it that the Crystal Ballroom could never hope to achieve, and for the first time, he really understood what Harper meant when she talked about making memories.
Eventhismoment—sitting here drinking wine with Harper—is going to be a memory. And she and I are hardly anything to one another! If I feel that way, imagine how it’s going to be for Max and Tara.
“I told you,” Harper said.
He looked at her more closely, but she wasn’t being arrogant or conceited. She wasn’t trying to score points on him. She was just happy that he had come to see things her way.
“Well, I’m not agreeing we should have the wedding here,” he cautioned her. “I’m just saying you’re right that it’s a nice place.”
“Don’t worry, we’re clear,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re willing to consider it. For Tara’s sake, not mine. I think she’d really like this.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know Tara as well as I should,” he confessed.
She looked up from her dinner, eyebrows raised at that confession. “You don’t know her well? I know they aren’t married, but she’s the mother of your niece and nephew. You guys are family.”
“I don’t spend that much time with my family,” he told her. “I wish I had more free time to devote to that kind of thing, but work keeps me so busy that I just don’t.”
“What about holidays?”
“I see them then, but… again, it’s always a little restricted. Last Christmas, Max and Tara had everyone over to stay at their house. Our family, Tara’s family… apparently it was a big to-do. And I was invited, of course, but I didn’t go. The Stallions had a game on Christmas morning, and I didn’t feel like I could get away.”
“They scheduled a game on Christmas Day? That’s a little annoying.”
“It makes a lot of sense from a sports perspective,” Theo countered. “A lot of people are home with their families on major holidays, and they want something to watch on TV, so it’s a great time for a game. You get a lot of publicity.”
“I don’t get it, though. Couldn’t you let the players take the day off? Let them spend that time with their families? And then you could also spend more time withyourfamily. It seems like a win-win.”
“We get big advertisers on holidays,” he said. “It’s probably the biggest marketing season of the year, apart from championships. Maybe even including championships. If you aren’t a baseball fan, you don’t tune in for pennant races, but everyone channel-surfs on Christmas Day.”
“All right,” she conceded. “Butyoudon’t have to be there, even if the players and the team manager do. You could be with your family for the holiday. Even if you’re worried something might come up that required your help, you could go and let them call you back if they needed you.”
“Is that whatyoudo? Walk away from work on holidays?”
“God, yes,” she said, taking a sip of her wine. “I don’t think I could stand it if my work followed me around on days that aresupposed to be just mine. I mean, Christmas Day? That’s for me to spend with loved ones. What’s the point of working if you can’t give yourself time away with the people you love?”
“You have to work hard, though,” Theo said. “Just look at this wedding.”
“This wedding? I don’t get it. What does the wedding have to do with taking holidays off?”
Theo gazed into the fire. The connection was so obvious to him that he couldn’t believe he was having to explain, but she truly didn’t seem to have thought of it. “I know you and I don’t agree on everything we want to do for the wedding,” he said, “but we both want to give Max and Tara the world, right? We both want to do everything we can for them, and for money to be no object?”
She nodded, but slowly. “I don’t think I knew you felt that way.”
