“The book club starts at seven. Why don’t I pick you up at twenty minutes to seven? That gives us plenty of time to make it to Barbara’s house without being the first ones there.”
“Perfect.”
His cell phone rang and he gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry. This is the call I’ve been waiting for.”
“Go ahead. I’ll see you this evening.”
He smiled in response and answered his phone. As he headed up the stairs to his attic office, she could hear him speaking in a brisk, businesslike tone that did funny things to her insides.
Face it, she thought. Everything the man did affected her like that. Whether she liked it or not.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Andrew
“Thanks for picking me up,” Andrew said as he slid into the passenger seat of Rosie’s late-model Volvo SUV. “I should have offered to drive. I didn’t think about it.”
“It makes more sense for me to drive. I know exactly how to get to Barbara’s house.”
Her car smelled like her, of springtime and flowers and lemons. Delicious.
“You don’t have Emma or your mom?” He gestured to the back seat, empty except for a covered platter.
Rosie shook her head. “No. Em had a problem at the bookstore so she’s going to be late. And Emma’s picking up her grandmother on her way, since her car is easier for my mom to get in and out of.”
“What about Olive?”
“One of the employees at the bookstore agreed to babysit her. She’s at the house now.”
“She’s a really cute kid. You must enjoy having her live with you.”
Rosie’s features softened with a radiance that sent a funny quiver through him. “It’s a dream. I’m sure your mom feels the same way about having your kids close. Some day you’ll understand that, when you have grandkids. It’s an entirely different kind of love.”
“Is it?”
“Raising kids is like having to tend a garden you planted yourself. It’s hard work, full of worry and responsibility. Butloving a grandchild? That’s like walking into a beautiful, wild meadow that’s already in bloom. You get to marvel at its beauty without the burden of having cultivated it yourself. That probably sounds silly.”
“It sounds lovely,” he assured her.
“It’s a love that’s just as deep, but lighter somehow. You see all the joy and possibility without feeling the weight of knowing you’re quite possibly shaping their entire future. It’s a second chance to savor childhood, this time with the wisdom to know how fleeting and precious these moments truly are.”
She had changed clothes from the jeans and work shirt she had been wearing earlier. Now she wore a pretty sundress with a matching sweater over it against the chill of the coastal evening.
She hardly looked old enough to have a daughter, let alone a granddaughter. If he were a smooth, slick kind of guy, he might be able to figure out a way to communicate that to her without sounding smarmy.
Instead, he kept his mouth shut, wishing he were better at this sort of thing.
He had never been much of a womanizer. After his first few books came out and he started to get a fan following, he had plenty of women proposition him at signings or book events. Though he did know a few other tomcat authors who leveraged their quasi-celebrity status to take advantage of their fans, that had never appealed to him.
He had only one serious relationship before he met his wife, with a woman he had known in college and met up with again while he was writing his first book. She had been a chef and the two of them had lived together for two years. The food—and the sex—had been great but Soledad hadn’t wanted to commit, too married to her career.
When she left him for the owner of the restaurant where she worked, he hadn’t really been brokenhearted.
Two years later, he had met Tracy in a meet-cute straight out of a romance novel. On a rainy afternoon, he had been finishing up meetings in New York with his publisher when they had both jumped into the same cab. She had been an editor at the same publishing house—nothiseditor and not even his imprint, but she had known and read his books.
One thing led to another and he had asked her out for drinks that turned into dinner. Before he quite realized how it happened, they were taking turns flying between his place in Los Angeles and hers in New York City.
Their relationship had seemed easy and comfortable from the very beginning and it had seemed a natural progression when he proposed. Since he could write anywhere, he had fully intended to move to New York, but Tracy had been frustrated with her job and wanted to strike out on her own as a freelance editor and literary agent. She had been the one who pushed for them to buy a house in the hills above Los Angeles and settle there, where they could raise the children they both wanted.
