“But it doesn’t sayanythingabout you, becauseyouare...”
And here at last the confidence he’d been pulsing with seemed to falter.
“You’re...” he said again, and Merritt realized that their faces were closer together than they had been before. She could smellthe wine on his breath, and beneath that, the old-fashioneds he’d had earlier, and beneath that, something like cedar and mint.
The idea returned to her with force that perhaps this nightwassomething more than the casual, low-key thing she’d convinced herself it was. Whit’s river stone eyes were heavy with emotion as he took a breath, and then they dropped to—it couldn’t be—but they did, they dropped to her lips, and her eyes dropped to his.
She watched as he dampened them, and then they were moving, slightly open, in her direction. Merritt took a deep breath, feeling as though she was smelling all of him.
The door to the house opened.
“Dad,” a voice called, and Whit slid several more inches away from Merritt.
There was Annie, dressed as Velma fromScooby-Doo. Willa and Adrienne’s son—a twelve-year-old Beetlejuice—was standing behind her.
Annie looked intrigued at finding the two of them on the porch, confused even, but then her mind clearly turned to more important things.
“Can you come inside? Albie and I want to ask you something.”
Whit shot a look at Merritt, both wary and apologetic, before turning back to his daughter.
“Sure thing.”
Whit’s face was still turned away from her, but Merritt could see the anxiousness in his body. She felt it in her own. What had Annie seen?
“Hurry,” Annie said rapidly, and Merritt forced a smile at her childish desperation.
Slowly Whit looked back to Merritt, his eyes wide and jaw clenched in barely contained worry.
“Coming, sweetheart,” he said, not turning from her.Sorry, he mouthed.
Merritt lifted a hand jerkily, as if controlling it with a spotty remote control, and waved dismissively.
Go, she said with her face.Of course you should go.
She sat outside for a minute longer, finishing her wine, nearly consumed by a buzzy feeling in her chest. Then she grabbed Whit’s now-cool mug and—what the heck—threw it back as well. Almost instantly, the buzziness subsided into a warm vibration.
He had been about to kiss her. There was no doubt about it. She had been thinking about this moment, or something like it, and here, tonight, it had almost happened. Whit Longacre had felt what she felt, and he had beenthis closeto doing something about it. And yes, Annie had almost seen them, and he had not liked that, but Merritt... she was pretty certain that he did like her.
She grinned, gripped a clear glass mug in both hands, and stood to her feet. Instantly, wooziness swirled in her head, like the shaken contents of a snow globe, and she steadied herself against an oversized terra-cotta pot. As she waited for the feeling to pass, a wisp of chilly uncertainty met the warmth inside her.
He was her new boss. This was her big break. She was going to be a writer.
What was shedoing?
She went inside, deposited the mugs in the sink, and made for the front door, abandoning her lost top hat. It was time to go home.
Whit could not find Merritt anywhere.
The thing Annie had needed to ask him was about a picture she’d found with Albie, of the four parents, several years younger: Willa, Adrienne, Whit, and Helen, dressed asLord of the Ringscharacters. Whit was, embarrassingly, a sad sexless imitation ofAragorn, and Helen was resplendent in a blond wig, a pregnant Galadriel.
It hadn’t really made sense to have a baby just then. They were two struggling writers. Whit had an agent and a manuscript on submission with publishers, and he was writing the occasional piece for regional travel magazines about local flavor—things he didn’t have to actually travel to do. Helen was writing trade manuals by day, hating every second of it, and by night completing what would becomeThe Door in the Garden Wall. They felt their pennilessness all the time, but they believed in each other so much, and then along came this baby, a girl, like they had wanted—and they were very, very happy. Helen looked so lovely.
“Albie said that’s me in there.”
“It is,” Whit had said, resting his hand on the top of her head. “Your first Halloween. Do you think you dressed up in there?”
Annie had laughed. “In her belly?”
