Wedding Willies

Kit pictured Ad as a boy who felt that kind of responsibility, and she was torn between her heart breaking for him and admiring how at even that young age he’d taken action to help his family.

“How did you get hired when you were hardly more than a baby?” she asked.

“Bing—Bingham Murphy—owned the place then and he sponsored and coached our little league baseball team. He was always saying he needed help sweeping the floors or taking out the trash if somebody wanted to earn a little money for a new bike or something. It wasn’t really like being hired, it was more like getting an allowance for doing chores. But when I talked to Bing and told him what was going on at home, he let it be my job exclusively from then on.”

“Did you work every day? After school? Weekends?”

“After school or after baseball practice and on weekends. I’d sweep floors and the sidewalk out front. Wash windows. Take out the trash. Bus the tables. Pour water for customers. Small stuff.”

“And this Bing-person would pay you?”

“Right. Plus, folks around here knew us and knew what had happened to my Dad and wanted to help without it seeming like charity, so they’d tip me. It added up. I didn’t do too bad.”

“For a ten-year-old.”

“Hey, I ended up owning the place,” he joked as if his childhood earnings had accomplished that.

“How did you end up owning the place?” Kit asked.

“Stick-to-ittiveness. I stayed put, moved up from busboy to doing just about everything else there was to do—wait tables, tend bar, cook. By the time I was working my way through the local college for my business degree, Bing had retired and I was running things. Then he offered to sell out to me and I made payments to him until it was all mine—the business and the building. Two years ago I renovated and remodeled until it really felt like my own place.”

“So you found your niche at ten years old?” Kit summarized.

“That’s really the truth. I always liked being here. I liked the work, the socializing. I just felt right at home from the start.”

“I understand that. I felt that way at my uncle’s place. It was hard work but it was nice.”

And so was sitting there like that, with Ad, having an excuse to look at him, to get to know the intricacies of his features, the way his eyes could actually go from aquamarine to dark turquoise with the changes in his emotions….

But letting herself be mesmerized by it all was not wise, and Kit knew it.

It just wasn’t a breeze to tear herself away.

She did it, though, standing up and taking her glass with her.

“Those cakes should be cool enough by now.”

Ad stood, too, following her back to the kitchen.

He played assistant again as she wrapped the cooled cakes in plastic and then sealed them in bags and stored them in the walk-in freezer where they would be left undisturbed by his staff.

Then Kit gathered her equipment, Ad turned off the lights, and they went out the alley door, locking it behind them.

The whole way up the stairs Kit had to fight feeling sad that her time with Ad was ending but she did that, too, reminding herself that this was a temporary, superficial relationship and not the beginning of something. Even if it did feel like the beginning of something.

“Did Kira tell you that we have fittings on the wedding clothes tomorrow afternoon?” Ad asked when they reached the landing of the side-by-side doors to the two apartments.

“She did,” Kit confirmed, trying not to breathe too deeply of the scent of his cologne because either that or just being so near to him was making her head go a tiny bit woozy.

“The tailor is just up the street, how about if we walk over together?” he suggested.

That pleased her way, way, too much.

“Okay,” she said as if it didn’t make any difference.

“I thought maybe afterward we could have dinner back here—Kira and Cutty and you and me. Since they’ll already have Betty staying with the twins and I know they’re both tired and stressed out dealing with the wedding and the construction on the house, dinner out might be a little break for them.”

“I think it might,” Kit agreed.

He nodded toward his door. “I’ll go in and call Cutty right now to make the arrangements.”

“Good idea.”

But he didn’t do that. Instead he glanced over her head at her door and said, “Did you do all right in the apartment last night? You had everything you needed? The bed wasn’t too hard or too soft?”

“I did great, had everything I needed and the bed was perfect.” Except that she’d had trouble not thinking about him in his bed next door.

“So you’re okay over there?”

“Fine,” she said, wondering if she was imagining it or whether he was purposely dragging this out.

Not that she was rushing inside herself. In fact she wasn’t even altogether invested in what they were talking about because even though she was making all the right responses to what he was saying, Kit was suddenly finding her thoughts split between that and a scenario that was forming in her head.

A scenario in which they were at the end of a date.

A date she’d enjoyed.

And they were about to kiss good-night.

But they weren’t about to kiss good-night.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” she forced herself to say, attempting to escape her daydream.

Ad nodded, but he continued to look at her as if he were trying to read something in her eyes.

A moment of panic ran through Kit at the notion that he could somehow tell what she’d been thinking.

But then Ad finally took the last step to his own door and said, “Good night.”

“Thanks for the use of your kitchen and all your help tonight,” she added as she unlocked and opened her door, doing a little prolonging of her own.

“Don’t mention it. I’d be your assistant anytime,” he joked with another lascivious note in his voice, tossing her a sexy half-smile to go with it.

“Careful, I might take you up on that,” she warned as she stepped into the studio apartment and closed the door behind her.

And that was when it struck her again that Ad Walker absolutely was not like any other guy.

And that spending the last couple of hours with him hadn’t cured whatever it was she’d been infected by the moment she’d met him.