When the woman glanced over and saw her, Jasmine did her best to recover from her bewilderment, plastering a smile on her face and changing from a knocking pose to a wave. The woman’s eyes narrowed. She set the bottle on the counter before approaching the door.
“What’re you doin’ back there?” the woman asked through the glass in a heavy southern accent. “That area is off-limits.”
Did she look like a damn photographer? Jasmine thought with increasing impatience. The bigger question was who this woman was and what she was doing looking quite at home in Will’s kitchen.
“I’m Jasmine,” she said. “I’m here for Katie’s dance lesson.”
The woman’s blue eyes moved to the bags in Jasmine’s hands. “She’s not here right now,” she said. “Her grandpa took her out to give me and Will some time together.”
That didn’t make any sense. “Who are you?”
“I’m Katie’s mama.”
Jasmine’s first instinct was to shout that the woman was a bald-faced liar. But the color of her hair…the shape of her nose…the heart-shaped mouth.
The resemblance was unmistakable.
She suddenly had to remind herself how to swallow. Why wouldn’t Will have contacted her if the lesson was canceled? Had he wanted her to come face-to-face with this woman? Did he want her to know that if she wasn’t interested in being a mother to Katie, the woman who gave birth to her was?
Don’t jump to conclusions, she told herself over the loud pounding of her heart. That’s what got you here.
“Can I talk to Will?” she asked, feeling more and more foolish standing there holding the bags of groceries.
“Sorry. He’s a little, uh, indisposed. We’re spendin’ the day gettin’ reacquainted, if you know what I mean.”
She added a little wink, as though there was any chance of mistaking what she was implying.
“In fact,” she said, “I’d appreciate you givin’ us some privacy. No offense.” Lifting her hands to the edges of the curtains hanging over the doors, she started tugging them closed. “Nice to meetcha,” she tossed through the doors before the curtains completely closed.
Jasmine stared blankly at her reflection in the glass. Embarrassment and anger waged war in her chest.
What could she do? It wasn’t like she could force her way into the house.
Her brain couldn’t fully process what had just happened. The one thought that snuck through was that she had food in her hands that wasn’t getting any fresher standing out in the mid-July heat. That finally got her moving, one foot in front of the other until she once again reached her car. She didn’t bother popping the trunk. Instead, she opened her door and reached over to put the bags on the passenger seat before getting behind the wheel.
Then she just sat there. That was where Gareth found her a few minutes later when he opened the door to the house and peered into the garage.
Spotting her through the passenger side window, he stepped into the garage and leaned down to smile and wave at her.
“Hi there, Miss Jasmine,” he said in his deep, cheerful voice. “Looks like you’re gonna make a fine meal tonight. You need some help carrying those bags next door?”
She burst into tears.
Somehow the kind man managed to finagle her out of the car and into a warm, comforting hug that only made her cry harder. He coaxed a shuddering and garbled explanation about the groceries out of her and seemed to get the gist. Keeping one of his arms around her shoulders, he led her into the house and sat her at the café table in his eat-in kitchen. Her tears multiplied when he thoughtfully placed a box of tissues in front of her. After making another trip out to collect the groceries and then putting the cold items in his fridge, he joined her at the table.
Rather than talk, he simply reached over and placed one of his large hands over hers on the table.
It took a while before she got herself back under control. She wasn’t generally a crier, but when that dam finally broke, it was an epic flood.
“I’m sorry,” she said when she could finally speak again. “I’ve interrupted your afternoon.”
“I’m retired,” he said with a gentle smile. “All you’re interrupting is the daily crossword I usually do while Althea volunteers at the church’s soup kitchen. I was stuck on forty-three down anyway.”
That prodded a watery laugh out of her.
“You want to talk about it?”
It felt like all she’d done lately was talk…with her family, with Alima,