Keith (Hathaway House #11) - Dale Mayer Page 0,32

greeted her staff as they came in one by one, got the kitchen started, and then as she headed back to deliver a coffee to Keith.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said, as she walked into his room.

“Why?” she said lightly. “It appears to be working for us.”

A smile slipped out of the corner of his mouth. “Good point,” he said. “Okay, I was just feeling guilty that you keep doing this.”

“Hey, I like seeing you first thing in the morning, before the world is awakened, before your full schedule starts, and before my kitchen goes crazy,” she said, laughing. “It’s nice to think it’s just the two of us in the world, at least for a little while.”

“Oh, I agree,” he said. “I was just hoping you would be on the same page for that.”

“We appear to be on the same page for a lot of stuff,” she said, “but it’s not always quite so simple.”

“It never is. It seems like the more you get to know somebody, the more layers you peel back. And then, as you peel them back, you have to figure out who that person is underneath.”

“Or you don’t have to figure it out,” she said, “and you just relax and let things happen as they’re meant to happen.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I was always a doer in life.”

“Interesting,” she said, “because I’m the same. But you have to consider that, right now, while you’re doing what you’re doing, you’re not a doer, but you’re somebody who’s letting the world happen.”

“Well, when I first arrived, I was letting the world happen,” he corrected. “But since I’ve been here, and definitely now that I’ve seen the progress, I’ve gone back to being a doer again.”

“Good,” she said, as she headed back out again. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Can we have a meal together?” he asked.

She stopped and looked at him in surprise. “Sure. Which one?”

He laughed at that. “I guess you’re busy at mealtimes though, aren’t you?”

“Well, I am, and I’m not,” she said. “I’m always crazy busy up until lunchtime, but, once we start serving, usually it calms down fairly well in the kitchen.”

“Lunch,” he said instantly. Then he stopped.

“Not a good time?”

“Potentially,” he said. “I just don’t know if it’ll be a bad morning for me, therapy-wise.”

“Well, how about this? If you show up, you show up, and, if you don’t show up, I’ll take that to mean you’re in bed. And we’ll see how it goes on another day. No pressure. We have time.”

“I can deal with that,” he said.

“I’ll look forward to it.” As she walked back into her kitchen, she realized that it was almost a date. She shook her head at that. “A date?”

“What’s this? You’ve got a date?” Gerard asked beside her.

She rolled her eyes at him. “No, I didn’t say that.” She laughed.

“It’d be good if you had,” he said. “It’s been a long time for you.”

“How would you know?” she teased. “The last time I went out on a date, I wasn’t working with you, so you wouldn’t even know when it was.”

“Oh, we would know now,” he said, “because everybody here would be watching you primp and get ready for it.”

She smiled a secret smile because, of course, there wasn’t a whole lot of that to be had today or here. And that made something about this experience very different. She’d always gone out with healthy able-bodied males. Not that Keith wasn’t, but he definitely wasn’t as healthy as he could be yet. She could still see the pain in his eyes, the creases around the corners of his eyes and sometimes around his lips when she saw him. It’s obvious that he was doing better, but he was a long way from being fully on his feet. Yet should be there in a matter of months. Amazing.

Still, his mental outlook seemed to be improving with his physical progress. That was a plus on both fronts. And those guys from before, the healthy able-bodied males? She always ended up disappointed with their mind-sets or just their lack of plain ethics. And the peeling-back-the-onion reference from earlier? Those walls? Both just seemed to hide ugly aspects that she couldn’t handle.

So it didn’t bother her in the least to have things start out differently with Keith. It seemed to be a sign of better things to come. So there would be no primping today. Just showing up as who she was. Which was never a bad thing,