“I know,” she told him. “My mother loves April Fresh Downy. Stinks, doesn’t it?”
He finally turned a circle and lay down, looking up at Shannon with grateful doggie eyes. That’s okay. It’s still my blanket. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
She ran to the bathroom and showered in record time. She’d just thrown on a clean pair of jeans and a nice shirt when the doorbell rang. She blew out a breath of frustration. The man was so punctual you could set Big Ben by his departures and arrivals.
She opened the door to find Russell looking tall and handsome and impeccably dressed as always, wearing a sport coat and slacks, which practically screamed special occasion.
“I overdressed,” Russell said.
“No. You didn’t. I underdressed. The, uh…the dress I was going to wear…I didn’t get it back from the cleaners in time.”
He handed her a bottle of white wine. As she took it, it dawned on her that she hadn’t seen the casserole before her mother shoved it in the oven. Please let it be chicken.
“How was your day?” she asked as they went into the kitchen.
“I did Mrs. Hunsacker’s crown. A few fillings. Then a checkup and fluoride treatment on the Martin kid. He bit me.”
Shannon pulled the casserole out of the oven. “That’s kids for you.”
When Russell frowned at that, she said, “So do you want kids someday?”
“Well, sure. Eventually. That’s one of the steps, isn’t it?”
Russell lived his life as if he was painting by numbers. Fill in all the blue spots, then the red, then the orange and green, and pretty soon the picture was complete. He went to school. Got his degree in dentistry. Opened an office. Drove a certain kind of car, lived in a certain kind of house. Sometimes she felt as if she was a certain kind of girlfriend he eventually intended to make into a certain kind of wife.
The kind of wife her mother was.
Shannon cringed at the thought. She’d hated painting by numbers in kindergarten, and she didn’t like the figurative version of it now.
Russell opened the wine, and they sat down to eat.
“Smells good,” he said. “What is it?”
Let’s find out together, shall we?
She took the lid off and cringed. She couldn’t say exactly what it was, but there were definitely chunks of beef swimming around in it. Russell looked distressed.
“You said you were making chicken,” he said. “So I brought white wine.”
I don’t care about the damned wine!
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Shannon said. “But it’ll be fine. What is it they say? Good wine is whatever you like. And I like white wine with beef.”
Russell was one of those men whose thoughts were written all over their faces. And right now his face was telling her what horrifically plebian taste she must have if she was even considering such a thing.
As they ate, Russell said, “Mmm. This is good. I wouldn’t mind if you cooked more often.”
Shannon realized she could either tell the truth and sound grossly incompetent, or lie and set herself up for the kind of future expectation that only her mother’s cooking could meet. In the end she just said nothing.
They chatted about nothing in particular through dinner, and afterward they sat on the sofa with another glass of wine. Shannon had been selling Russell to herself all evening long, but when he leaned in and kissed her, it was like point of purchase packaging on a candy bar. Good enough to get her attention, but the more she ate of the candy itself, the more she wished for something more substantial.
No. Knock it off. Give him a chance, or you may be alone forever.
Russell dragged his lips along her neck. “I’d like to stay tonight.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth, Shannon just about choked. In that moment, she knew just exactly how wrong this was. No, they hadn’t been dating long. But if he’d been a man she was truly interested in, her reaction would have been something other than sheer panic. Clearly she’d sent the wrong signals by making dinner for him at her apartment. What was she supposed to do now?
Tell him. Tell him right now this is going nowhere.
Then her phone rang.
“Don’t answer it,” Russell whispered, kissing her neck again. But she pulled it from her pocket and checked the caller ID.
Luke?
Her heart jumped halfway to the moon.
“Ignore it,” Russell said, but she leaned away and punched the Answer button.