“I know, and I appreciate it, but…being a charity case sucks. I just want to be in control of my life. Adam was always unpredictable, and I spent the last six years in fight-or-flight mode. I could never relax. I finally feel like I can, but I know I won’t fully until Jonah and I are completely on our own.” Pausing, she took a sip of her wine. “I know you don’t understand that feeling, but trust me, it’s my biggest dream.”
“I may not know financial struggles, but I know how strong the desire is to be in control of your own life and not have other people dictating it to you.”
She heard the resentment in his voice and knew she had to ask…
“How are things with your parents now? I mean…since your divorce.”
He shrugged. “We’ve come to an agreement, and they’re very involved in Annabeth’s life. They realized they shouldn’t have interfered, and they’ve apologized. I accepted it, but sometimes I find it hard to…I don’t know…to love them. Does that make sense?”
There wasn’t a suitable answer to that, so she simply nodded.
“Sometimes I can’t help but think about how different my life would be if they hadn’t interfered.” Then, he boldly reached over and took her hand in his. “If we had been allowed to have the future we used to talk about.”
Uh-oh…this was so not the direction she saw the conversation going.
“Connor, we were just kids. You can’t know that we would have ended up together. By the time we all stopped coming here…there was college and…and…”
“I know what you’re saying, but I know how I felt. I would have gone anywhere to be with you, Lexi, and I’m so sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to stand up to my family.”
Tears stung her eyes, and she had to force herself not to look directly at him. “Oh, Connor. We can’t keep looking back. It won’t change anything.” Now she did look at him. “Thinking about all of life’s what-if moments will only hurt us. We’re here now, and we should be thankful for that.”
The kitchen timer went off, and he kissed her hand before he stood and went to the stove. Watching him from behind wasn’t a terrible option because it gave her a chance to study him.
And maybe ogle his physique just a bit.
She knew they couldn’t just spend the night in silence, so she tried to find a neutral topic.
“So talk to me about how you became a chef.” She got to her feet and walked over to watch him finish their meal. And as it turned out, it was the perfect question to ask. He was so passionate about his career, and he took such pride in it, that just listening to him talk about it made her happy.
He held her chair out for her before serving her, and when he sat down and topped off their wine, he held up his glass again. “To new beginnings.”
She felt herself blush. “To new beginnings.”
The meal was spectacular, as expected. Connor continued sharing about his career and how his plan was to open a restaurant right here in Harbortown that was all his and not connected to the resort.
“That’s pretty ambitious,” she said. “How are you going to find the time to do it all and take care of Annabeth?”
“That’s the hardest part. When Rachel left, I leaned heavily on my parents to help me take care of her, but it wasn’t until we moved here that I realized how much I had been missing out on. And how I wasn’t being much of a father.”
“Again, that’s the plight of the single parent, right? We can’t be everywhere at once.”
“I know, but that doesn’t make it right. Right now, I have Ruth and you, but I have to remind myself that it’s okay to delegate some of the work and that the sky isn’t going to fall if I don’t work eighteen hours a day.”
“That is very true.”
He regaled her with stories about some of the wildest things that happened while running his previous restaurants, and she shared her less than glamorous stories from working in childcare. They ate, drank a little more wine, and then cleaned up together.
“I hope you left room for dessert,” he said as he walked out to the living room area with two small bowls of chocolate mousse topped with fresh fruit and whipped cream.
Lexi was about to say that he certainly knew his way to a girl’s heart, but that seemed right up there with the Marry Me Chicken. Too many innuendos for their first date.
“I know how much you love chocolate, and I figured you might appreciate something other than s’mores.” Connor handed her a bowl and then sat on the sofa beside her.
This was one of her all-time favorite desserts, and it meant a lot that he remembered it from all those years ago.
“Mmm…” she hummed around a spoonful of decadent chocolate. “So good.”
“I remember how much you used to love when they had it for dessert up at the lodge,” he admitted.
