Page 34 of Married at Midnight

He’d ordered black-olive pizza. Her favorite. A part of her delighted in the fact he’d remembered some small detail from their past. She accepted a slice while he opened the bottle of Chianti and poured them each a glass.

“So you wanted to get to know me better. I promise to answer any question you ask me tonight.” He raised his glass for a toast.

She met his glass, took a sip, then set her wine back down, studying his face. He had soft crinkles in his skin near his eyes as he smiled at her. He smiled a lot. She’d always liked that about him. She liked a lot of things about him, as she’d been reminded over the past few days. “Anything at all?”

“Anything. Even if it’s about the past.”

She drew a breath and forged ahead. “If Viola has so much money, why were you so desperate to get a scholarship back in high school?”

He set his glass down and settled back in his chair. “I don’t know much about Viola’s finances, but I don’t think she had access to her money until she turned seventy-two years old. That’s when her annuities forced her to start taking withdrawals.

“When I was in high school, she had enough money to get by in this house, but not much more. She didn’t have the funds to pay for college, and neither did my father. So when Harvard, Purdue, and Berkeley all wanted to talk about scholarships, I couldn’t turn them down.

“I ended up picking Harvard, which offered a full-tuition scholarship for my undergraduate studies.”

“That’s quite an achievement,” Ellie said, suddenly understanding the situation from his perspective. She’d wanted a date. He’d wanted a future. “I was unfair to you about the interviews. I see that now. Harvard was your dream.”

Age and distance have a way of making some things clearer. Thinking about how to proceed, she studied the tiny dust particles that danced in the moonbeams overhead. “I didn’t ever mean to come between you and your dreams. You’re going to change the world with your self- driving car, Connor. Maybe what happened that night was for the best. Otherwise we both wouldn’t be where we are now—you with your car, me with my events business.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Seems only fair,” she replied. “What do you want to know?”

“Is that why you became an event planner? So you’d be in charge and no longer waiting around for people to disappoint you?”

She drew back. “Wow. You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

He shrugged. “It’s just an observation.”

And a little too close to the truth for her liking. Ellie laughed, the sound hard and brittle. “I do what I do to help others’ dreams come true.” She kept her head up despite the heaviness in her chest.

He tightened his fingers around hers. “I know we’ve gone about this whole relationship wrong, but can we be friends, now and after this is over?”

Ellie glanced down at the diamond ring on her finger. “Friends?” Could she be friends with a man she lived with, was married to, and wanted to have sex with? “We can try,” she said past the thick lump in her throat.

“That’s all either of us can do.” He gave her a quirky, fleeting smile before he changed the subject. “Do you really think we can have Grayson House back to her former glory in the next four and a half weeks?”

It took her a minute to switch gears in her head. One minute they were talking like intimate friends; the next they were back to business as usual. “The hardest part of the renovation is the exterior. The crews are doing great work. The only thing that might hold us back is rain.”

“The forecast looks favorable,” Connor said between bites of his pizza.

Ellie looked through the hole in the roof. “You and I have both lived in Seattle long enough to know that could change at any minute.” She returned her attention to the man across the table. “At least Viola budgeted for all the contingencies. If things start to look bad, I’ll try to hire extra crews to get things done faster. At least the interior isn’t weather dependent.”

“But there’s a lot of work on the interior, too, especially with refurbishing the furniture.”

Ellie nodded. “I finally found the perfect craftsmen for that job. They start tomorrow. They’ll focus on the wood, and I’ll get busy with the fabrics.”

“It sounds like everything is under control,” he said, sipping the last of his wine. He lifted the bottle to refill their glasses, then frowned at her nearly full glass. “You’re not drinking tonight?”

“I’m a little distracted by other things,” she admitted.

He set the wine down. “By me?”

“Yes.” The word faded away; all that remained was the soft creaking of wood and the whisper of the wind as it swirled around the attic.

He stood and came around to her side of the table. Offering his hand, he helped her up, pulling her close until she could feel the slow warmth of his breath brush her cheek. The silence that hovered between them seemed charged with invisible sparks. He reached up and touched her cheek.

She went hot, then cold at the gentleness of his touch. Giving herself over to the moment, she leaned in and brought her lips to his. As if by their own volition, her hands slid up his chest and locked behind his neck.