“You don’t look too happy about it.”
He shook his head and forced a smile. “No, I am. Of course I am.”
She twined a finger around one of his and gave it a gentle shake. “Evan’s going to be happyto see you.”
Jeff stared at their loosely connected hands, tempted to pull her across the table and kiss her until neither of them could hold a thought. “It’s been a long time for a four-year-old. He might not remember me.”
“Maybe if he’d only met you once or twice—or if you’d been apart for years—but he saw you every week, right? He knew you were his dad. That’s a whole other level of emotionalattachment.”
Jeff nodded. Asking her to stay had been the right choice. “You’re right. I’m just nervous. My brain won’t stop running scenarios.”
She smiled. “That’s a sign of intelligence, you know. Not everyone knows how to mentally prepare for what’s ahead.”
He chuckled and shook his head. He loved her view of the world. He loved a lot of things about her. “It’s probably more a reflectionof my training than any great intelligence on my part.”
Popping a French fry in her mouth, she chewed and swallowed before responding. “You’re studying to be an engineer, right?”
He nodded.
“And you made it through the weed-out classes already. So you’re no dummy.”
He shrugged. “I’m motivated and I work hard, but it doesn’t come naturally or anything. I’m no Einstein.”
“If it came easilyto you, I wouldn’t be as impressed.”
She was impressed? Jeff had no idea how to respond to that, so he started eating.
He was proud of his accomplishments, he’d worked hard for his 3.5 GPA, but it wasn’t like he was doing anything that thousands of people hadn’t done before.
“What do you like about engineering?” Tara asked, rolling her crumb-filled wrapper into a ball.
Good question. Hestood to clear their trash and thought about it. “I’ve always liked knowing how and why things work. As a kid, I played with Legos, and took apart watches and calculators, and helped my dad work on cars.” When his brother Ian was otherwise occupied, anyway.
“Why didn’t you major in meteorology?”
“I enjoyed it. There’s definitely some crossover, like thermodynamics, but I’ve always wanted towork on something tangible. Mechanical engineering combines physics, math, materials science, electrical circuits, programming, a little bit of everything. I could design cars, appliances, manufacturing equipment, almost anything. It’s creating rather than forecasting.”
“Tangible and predictable.”
He slid in across from her with two beers he’d taken from the fridge, opened the bottles, andset one in front of her. “You make it sound boring.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She sipped the IPA and gave an approving nod. “I was thinking about business school. Instead of working out problems with unambiguous solutions, we memorized lists of approaches for dealing with various scenarios, learned theories of human behavior, tools for negotiation, how interpretation and application of thelaw depends on the judge and existing case law. You can’t just understand a formula and solve for the answer.”
“More like being in the field.”
She nodded. “Do you miss it?”
Every day. “Sometimes.” Was she psychoanalyzing him, or just making conversation? He took a swig of the bright, hoppy ale. “But engineering requires problem solving skills too. Creative application of all those equations.The root of engineering is ingenuity, after all.”
“I wasn’t maligning your choice. Just curious.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s fine.” He reached into the cupboard overhead and grabbed a deck of cards. “I left the Air Force because of Evan, and I have no regrets. I had a good, long run.” Shuffling the cards with a practiced hand from years of downtime, he asked, “Want to play?”
“What’d you have inmind?”
Anything to keep his mind off tomorrow, to pass the time. “Poker?”
“What are the stakes?”
Asking for kisses might be coming on too strong, even if they had been naked in bed two hours ago. Somehow he’d fucked that up. Asshole that he was, he wanted her again, despite knowing there was no future for them. Even if he didn’t have to make his choices with Evan in mind, he couldn’t makeplans based on one smoking-hot tumble.
Glancing around for inspiration, his gaze landed on the kitchen drawer. “Silverware.”
She laughed and slid her toe up the side of his leg, nearly launching him out of his seat. “I have a better idea.”
