“This ought to do the trick,” he said.
She followed him into the living room, where she watched him assemble the panels into an octagon-shaped pen. Paige suspected it had once been used for a youngster of the human variety, but it worked nicely for canines as well.
“That should hold them,” Lucas said as they placed the last pup next to his mother. “Looks like their dinner is ready. I better get started on ours.”
“Can I help?” Paige asked.
“You’re the guest,” he said. “I might be far from a website superhost…” Even he couldn’t keep a straight face as he said those words. “Okay, I might be the worst in the site’s history. But I draw the line at having a guest cook her own dinner.”
“At least let me set the table.” She glanced at her laptop. “Otherwise I might be tempted to log into my work email, and then I really can’t be held responsible for my assistant’s actions.”
He shook his head. “Can take the girl out of the office, but can’t take the office out of the girl?”
“Hey, I’ll have you know that I haven’t checked my email once this trip.”
“Which has nothing to do with the fact that the Wi-Fi was down.”
“Aaand,” she added to her defense, “I read an entire book the other night.”
“Well, then I’d say you’re totally winning at this whole vacation thing.”
“That’s exactly what I said!” The words were barely out of her mouth when she noticed the corner of his mouth quirk up. “You’re mocking me, aren’t you?”
“Not mocking.” His smirk turned into a full-on grin. “Only teasing.”
Paige narrowed her eyes. “Just for that, I’m absolutely setting the table.”
“You’re a tough negotiator, Paige Parker.” He was still smiling. “But you have a deal.”
This time she didn’t extend her hand. Instead she turned, giving him the middle finger over her shoulder as she made her way to the kitchen, a response that elicited an outburst of robust laughter. Mission accomplished.
* * *
When he finally stopped laughing, Lucas told her she could find most anything she needed in the two built-in cabinets that sat in opposite corners of the dining room. She popped the doors open to find china that looked as though it had once belonged to someone’s great-grandparents. Oooh, fancy dishes! Seemed as though Lucas was taking this whole “special celebration” thing seriously, a realization that made her far happier than she would ever admit.
After organizing the shelves so all the bowls were on one and the plates on another, Paige set to work, laying out china and stemware. As she was arranging the napkins and flatware, she heard a cell phone ring in the kitchen.
“Hey, Peanut, what’s up?” she heard Lucas say. Then a moment later, “No, I will not stop calling you Peanut. And yes, I will sing the special song.”
Special song? Paige had to admit, she was more than a little curious. She listened intently, but Lucas had lowered his voice to barely a whisper.
Casually, she inched backward until she was next to the door that led to the kitchen. It wasn’t technically eavesdropping. He knew she was in the next room. She was just…adjusting the volume.
“‘Skidamarink a dink a dink, skidamarink a doo,’” he began to sing. Paige’s mouth dropped open and she quickly covered it with a napkin. “‘I love you in the morning, and in the afternoon,’” he went on. It was simultaneously the sweetest and most ridiculous song she’d ever heard, and all at once her heart clenched at the thought of Lucas trying to find his way as an unexpectedly single parent. It couldn’t have been easy, but from what she was hearing, he’d more than mastered it.
His voice grew closer. “‘I love you in the evening, and—’”
Not wanting to be discovered, Paige scurried through the living room and onto the back porch. As she passed the canine family, she could have sworn she saw the momma stray shoot her some serious side-eye. “Don’t judge me,” she whispered. Great. If imagining a dog was giving her a dirty look wasn’t bad enough, now she was talking to her as though she were Sammy. Oh! That’s it, she thought. Samantha would be the perfect name for the sweet, if not slightly disapproving, canine.
The rain had slowed to nothing more than a drizzle, giving the porch a much more serene feeling than when the water pelting the windows had made Paige feel like she was in a drive-through car wash. She watched the light-gray clouds moving across the horizon until she assumed enough time had gone by for her to return to the dining room and finish setting the table. As she passed by the living room windows, she noticed a cluster of bright-yellow daffodils blooming in the front yard. Were those there yesterday? Perhaps they were and it had been raining too hard to notice. Either way, they were just the finishing touch the table needed.
Paige slipped outside to grab a few of the blooms and, after rooting around the cabinets for a vase, headed to the kitchen to fill it with water. Lucas had finished his call, and from the looks of it, had finished cooking dinner too. As she rounded the island, she could see he was spooning the last of a vegetable stir fry into a serving bowl.
“Food is ready,” he said, scraping some very sticky rice into the next bowl.
“And the table is all set.” She turned on the faucet and filled the crystal vase. “Well, except for the flowers.”
Lucas froze with a bowl in each hand. “What flowers?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he headed to the dining room, with Paige not far behind. When he saw the pile of blooms on the table, he stopped short, nearly sending her colliding into him. “Where did you get those?”
“The front yard.”
He turned to looked at her. Paige couldn’t figure out what was happening. Surely he wasn’t this upset over her picking a few flowers from the garden?
“I hope it’s okay that I snipped a few? I know it makes me rather basic,” she said in an attempt to lighten the mood. “But daffodils have always been my favorite—maybe because they remind me of sunshine?—and I thought after all this rain, we could both use a little brightening up.”
For a moment, he just stared at her, unseeing, but then something happened and he relaxed. It was as though every muscle in his body had been released from a vise. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, it felt like he was seeing her for the first time. Even in her head, it sounded ridiculous, but she felt the shift. It was palpable.
“It was a great idea.” He smiled as he lifted the bowls higher. “Now let’s eat before my masterpiece gets cold.”
The two of them sat across from each other at the table, spooning rice and vegetables onto their respective plates.