Take Me Home for Christmas (Whiskey Creek #5)(62)
Author: Brenda Novak

“Did I say something wrong?” he asked.

Sophia answered. “No, of course not. What kind would you like?”

“A nice Chablis.” He sat at the table to talk to Alexa while Sophia went into the cellar, but Alexa seemed distracted. She kept turning around, looking for her mother.

He waved to attract her attention. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” she said. “Where’s your corkscrew? I’ll get it out so you can open the bottle.”

He was fairly confident that Sophia could handle that, but he directed her to the right drawer and she got it for him. Then, as soon as Sophia emerged, Alexa took charge of the bottle and brought it over. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.” He popped the cork while Sophia brought him a glass. “Would you like some?” he asked her, raising the bottle.

It seemed as if she didn’t even want to look at it. “No, thanks,” she said and busied herself with finishing up their meal.

“How are things going with Connie, Babette and the others?” he asked Alexa as he sipped his wine.

“Okay. I don’t talk to them anymore.”

“They’re not giving you any trouble?”

“Sometimes they make fun of me when they see me, but…it’s okay.”

When Sophia removed the potpie from the oven, Ted could tell it had been made from scratch. It looked as good as the ones from Just Like Mom’s. “That smells fantastic,” he said.

Sophia glanced up at the appreciation in his voice. “I hope it tastes as good as it smells.”

She hadn’t gone wrong yet.

She put it on top of the stove. “I set a place for you in the dining room, but—” she gestured at the table where he was sitting “—if you’d rather eat in here, I can move your plate.”

He remembered stipulating that they eat separately. Although that seemed silly now—to be on the same property and eating the same meal but purposely splitting up—he didn’t ask them to join him. He needed to keep some separation between them, didn’t want their relationship to drift in the wrong direction just because they were starting to feel comfortable with each other.

“The dining room is fine,” he said, so she served him there. She even put out one of the candles she’d bought for his romantic dinner with Eve. The dancing flame added a nice touch in the gathering twilight. But as he sat in the silence of his big house, eating alone, he could see her crossing the backyard with her daughter. Both of them had their hands stuffed into pot holders and were carrying dishes as they walked and talked, and somehow the camaraderie he sensed between them made him feel left out.

Maybe that was why he decided to go over a little later to see if they wanted to come and watch a movie. Or maybe it was because Sophia wouldn’t let him order cable for the guesthouse. She said she needed to save her money for other things, which was true. But with such limited funds, and no TV, he couldn’t imagine what they’d do on a Saturday night. They wouldn’t continue to unpack; they’d been doing that for days—and Alexa deserved to have some fun. Everything she used to have, including her friends, was gone.

So he convinced himself that by picking up ice cream and other treats and heading over to Redbox to rent a movie, he was just trying to do a nice deed for a kid who’d had a rough go of it lately.

But he knew in his heart that she wasn’t the only one he was hoping to please.

24

Ted had never expected Sophia to turn him down. He figured a woman in her situation would be desperate enough to accept almost any invitation—just to get out of the house, if for no other reason. What fun had she had since her husband jumped off that damn yacht?

He couldn’t believe she’d had any. But if not for Alexa, begging her to agree, Sophia would’ve sent him away. As it was, she came but kept to herself.

“Thanks for inviting us over.” Alexa was almost enthusiastic enough to compensate for her mother. Almost, but not quite. Although she seemed to have none of the qualms Sophia did about sitting next to him, Sophia tried to coax her off the couch. Did she think Alexa might be crowding him? Or getting on his nerves? Or…worse?

He couldn’t figure it out, so when Alexa asked him to pause the movie so she could go to the bathroom, he waited until she was out of the room and asked Sophia. “Why do you keep telling her she can’t sit on the couch? Is it because I’m on the couch, too?”

“There are other chairs.”

“But a couch is meant for more than one person, so what’s the big deal? It’s not… I would never do anything to hurt her. You know that, right? You don’t think I’d ever act inappropriately with your daughter….”

“God, no!” she said, dismissing his concern. “It’s just…her father really let her down.”

Ted didn’t immediately see the connection. “What’s that got to do with me?”

“Quite a bit. She likes you—a lot. I don’t want her to latch on to another man who—whom she’ll lose contact with when we move.”

“You’re trying to make sure she and I don’t become friends even though you’ll be living here for months?”

“We might not be here that long.”

“It’ll take time to save up the money you need to relocate.”

“I just feel bad. I know Eve doesn’t want us here, and that could change our situation. Why set my daughter up to be disappointed?”

Sophia had a point. Eve was a wonderful person, but she felt threatened, and he couldn’t expect her to put up with that for long. Still, there was a part of him that believed he should have the right to befriend anyone he wanted to, especially a child who was lonely and needed him.

Unsure of how it would sound if he said that, he hesitated. Then Alexa came back, so he let it go and started the movie.

“Where’s your girlfriend tonight?” Alexa asked during a slow part of the show.

Blinking, he drew himself out of his thoughts. “Eve?”

“Do you have more than one girlfriend?” she teased.

He pretended he’d needed clarification because he’d been engrossed in the movie, but even after sleeping with Eve, it was difficult to think of her as his girlfriend. “She’s out of town.”

“I bet you miss her.”

When he made a noise he hoped would pass for agreement, Alexa spoke in a conspiratorial manner. “Too bad you don’t still like my mom.”