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“The Clarion won’t.”
“Not if I can help it.”
Her heart seemed to spill over with joy. She knew how much Charles loved his work, how committed he was to the community. “I’m so excited about this.”
“Me, too,” he said, his smile boyishly proud. “I’d say this calls for a celebration, wouldn’t you?”
“Most definitely.”
“Dinner?”
She nodded eagerly and they set the date for Thursday evening, deciding on a restaurant that overlooked the Columbia River Gorge, about an hour’s drive north.
Steffie felt as if her feet didn’t touch the pavement as she hurried across the street thirty minutes later to meet her sister. Never, in all the time she’d known Charles, had she seen him happier. And she was happy with him, and for him. That was what loving someone meant. It was a truth she hadn’t really understood before, not until today. This intense new feeling had taught her that real love wasn’t prideful or selfish. Real love meant sharing the happiness—and the sorrows—of the person you loved. Yes, she understood that now. She realized that her past obsession with Charles had focused more on her own desires than on his. Her love had matured.
Charles had wakened within her emotions she hadn’t known it was possible to experience. Emotions—and sensations. When she was with him, especially when he kissed her, she felt vibrant and alive.
“You look like you’re about to cry, you’re so happy,” Valerie said when Steffie joined her in the car. “I don’t suppose Charles popped the question.”
“No,” she said with a sigh. “But he asked me to dinner to help him celebrate. Guess what? Charles is the new owner of the Clarion.”
Valerie didn’t seem nearly as excited as Steffie. “He’s going to be working a lot of extra hours then, isn’t he?”
“He didn’t say.” If he spent as much time at the newspaper as he had three years earlier, there wouldn’t be any extra hours left.
“I suppose his eating habits are atrocious.”
Steffie suspected they were, but she shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”
“I bet he’d enjoy a home-cooked meal every now and then, don’t you?”
Steffie eyed her sister suspiciously. “Is there a point to this conversation?”
“Of course,” she answered with a sly grin. “I think you should heat up some of that fabulous spaghetti sauce and take it to him later. You know what they say about the way to a man’s heart, don’t you?”
“Funny, that sounds exactly like a suggestion of Dad’s. What’s your interest in this?”
“Well,” Valerie said coyly, “that way I wouldn’t feel guilty about asking you if I could take some to Colby’s. If he tasted your spaghetti sauce and happened to assume, through no error of mine, that I’d cooked this fabulous dinner—” she paused to inhale deeply “—he’d be so overcome by the idea of marrying such a fabulous cook that he’d go over the wedding list with me and not put it off for the third time.”
“There’s method in your madness, Valerie Bloomfield.”
“Naturally. Colby doesn’t know that I can’t tell one side of a cookie sheet from the other. I don’t want to disillusion him quite so soon. He suggested I make dinner tonight and, well, you get the picture.”
“I do indeed. I’ll be happy to share the spaghetti sauce with you.”
“I’ll hang around the kitchen to be sure some of the aroma sticks to me.”
“I’ll give you the recipe if you want.”
“I want, but if I have trouble cooking with a microwave, heaven only knows what I’ll do once I’m around a stove. One with burners and a real oven.”
Steffie chuckled. She certainly had no objection to helping her sister prepare dinner for Colby, but she wasn’t sure taking a plate over to Charles’s house was such a good plan.
Valerie and Norah convinced her otherwise.
“Charles never did get to sample your cooking,” Norah reminded her. “He stopped by and you offered him dinner, but he’d already eaten. Remember?”
“How’d you know that?”
