She nodded. “Nothing serious,” she said. “But yes, I thought we liked each other.”
“And I was with you on the plane when you prayed with your dad,” he said.
She nodded slightly.
“That was a special time,” he continued.
“OK,” she agreed.
“Then I went through my ordeal and couldn’t wait to get back here to tell all of you about it.”
Chloe’s lip quivered. “That was the most incredible story I had ever heard, Buck, and I didn’t doubt you for a second. I knew you were going through a lot, but I thought we had connected.”
“I didn’t know what to call it,” Buck said, “but as I told you in my note that Sunday, I was attracted to you.”
“Not only to me, apparently.”
Buck was speechless. “Not only to you?” he repeated.
“Just go on with your speech.”
Speech? She thinks this is a speech? And she thinks there’s someone else? There hasn’t been anyone else in years! Buck was deflated and thought of giving up, but he decided she was worth it. Misguided, jumping to strange conclusions for some reason, but worth it.
“Between Sunday and Friday night I did a lot of thinking about us.”
“Here it comes,” she said, tearing up again. What did she think? That he was prepared to sleep on her porch just to dump her for someone else when she finally let him in?
“I realize that Friday night I was giving you mixed signals,” he said. “Well, maybe not so mixed. I was pulling away.”
“There wasn’t much to pull away from.”
“But we were getting there, weren’t we?” Buck said. “Didn’t you think we were going to progress?”
“Sure. Until Friday night.”
“I’m a little embarrassed to admit this—” he said hesitantly.
“You should be,” she said.
“—but I realized I was being pretty premature, given how recently we had met, and your age, and—”
“So, there it is. It’s not your age that’s the problem, is it? It’s my age.”
“Chloe, I’m sorry. The issue was not your age or my age. The issue was the difference in our ages. Then I realized that with only about seven more years ahead of us, that becomes a nonissue. But I was all mixed up. I was thinking about our future, you know, what might come of our relationship, and we don’t even have a relationship yet.”
“And we’re not going to, Buck. I’m not going to share you. If there was a future for us, it would be an exclusive relationship, and—oh, never mind. Here I go talking about stuff neither of us even considered before.”
“Apparently we did,” Buck said. “I just said I did, and it sounds like you’ve been looking ahead a little, too.”
“Not any more, not since this morning.”
“Chloe, I’m going to have to ask you something, and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. This may sound a little condescending, even parental, and I don’t mean it to be.” She sat stiffly, as if expecting a reprimand. “I’m going to ask you not to say anything for a minute, all right?”
“Pardon me?” she said. “I’m not allowed to speak?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“It’s what you just said.”
Buck came just short of raising his voice. He knew his look and tone were stern, but he had to do something. “Chloe, you’re not listening to me. You’re not letting me finish a thought. There’s some subtext here I know nothing about, and I can’t defend myself against mysteries and fantasies. You keep talking about not sharing me—is there something you need to ask me or accuse me of before I can go on here?”
Rayford, who had been lying still and nearly holding his breath trying to listen, had heard very little of the conversation until Buck raised his voice. Rayford heard that and silently cheered. Chloe increased her volume, too. “I want to know about anybody else in your life before I even think—oh, Buck, what are we talking about? Aren’t there a lot more important things to be thinking about right now?”
Rayford couldn’t hear Buck’s whispered response, and he was tired of trying. He moved to the doorway and called down to them. “Could you two either speak up or just whisper? If I can’t hear, I’m going to sleep!”
“Go to sleep, Dad!” Chloe said.
Buck smiled. Chloe was also suppressing a grin.
“Chloe, all weekend I’ve been thinking about all the ‘more important things’ we have to think about. I almost had myself talked into giving you the let’s-be-friends routine . . . until I was sitting in that office this afternoon and you came over me.”
“I came over you? You saw me at the Global Weekly office?”
“The Global Weekly office? What are you talking about?”
Chloe hesitated. “Well, what office were you talking about?”
Buck grimaced. He hadn’t planned to talk about his meeting with Carpathia. “Can we save that until we’re back on even ground here? I was saying I was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to see you, to talk to you, to get back to you.”
“Back from where? Or back from whom, I should ask.”
“Well, I’d rather not get into that until I think you’re ready to hear it.”
“I’m ready, Buck, because I already know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I was there!”
“Chloe, if you were at the Chicago bureau office, then you know I wasn’t there today, I mean, except for early this morning.”
“So you were there.”
“I was just dropping off some keys to Alice.”
“Alice? That’s her name?”
Buck nodded, lost.
“What’s her last name, Buck?”
“Her last name? I don’t know. I’ve always just called her Alice. She’s new. She replaced Lucinda’s secretary, who disappeared.”
“You want me to believe you really don’t know her last name?”
“Why should I lie about that? Do you know her?”
Chloe’s eyes bored into him. Buck knew they were finally getting somewhere. He just didn’t know where. “I can’t say I know her, exactly,” Chloe said. “I just talked to her, that’s all.”
“You talked to Alice,” he repeated, trying to make it compute.
“She told me you and she were engaged.”
“Oh, she did not!” Buck shouted, then quieted, peeking up the stairs. “What are you talking about?”
“We’re talking about the same Alice, aren’t we?” Chloe said. “Skinny, spiky dark hair, short skirt, works at Global Weekly?”
“That’s her.” Buck nodded. “But don’t you think I’d know her last name if we were engaged? Plus, that would be mighty big news to her fiancé.”
“So she’s engaged, but not to you?” Chloe said, sounding doubtful.
“She told me something about picking up her fiancé today,” he said. Chloe looked stricken. “Do you mind if I ask how you happened to be at the Weekly and talking to her? Were you looking for me?”
“As a matter of fact, I was,” Chloe said. “I had seen her earlier, and I was surprised to see her there.”
“Like I said, Chloe, I wasn’t there today.”
“Where were you?”
“I asked you first. Where had you seen Alice?”
Chloe spoke so softly Buck had to lean forward to hear. “At your condo.”
Buck sat back, everything coming into focus. He wanted to laugh, but poor Chloe! He fought to stay serious. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I invited you, my plans changed, and I never told you.”
“She had your keys,” Chloe whispered.
Buck shook his head sympathetically. “I gave them to her so she could deliver some equipment I was expecting at the office. I had to be in New York today.”
Buck’s frustration with Chloe melted into sympathy. She couldn’t maintain eye contact, and she was clearly on the verge of tears. “So you really didn’t send the flowers,” she whispered.
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“If I’d known I needed to, I would have.”
Chloe uncrossed her arms and buried her face in her hands. “Buck, I’m so embarrassed,” she moaned, and the tears came. “I have no excuse. I was worried after Friday night, and then I just made a big thing out of nothing.”
“I didn’t know you cared that much,” Buck said.
“Of course I cared. But I can’t expect you to understand or to forgive me after I’ve been such a, such a—oh, if you don’t even want to see me again, I’d understand.” She was still hiding her face. “You’d better go,” she added. “I wasn’t presentable when you got here, and I’m certainly not now.”
“Is it all right if I sleep on your porch? ’Cause I’d like to be here when you are presentable.”
She peeked at him through her hands and smiled through her tears. “You don’t have to do this, Buck.”
“Chloe, I’m just sorry I contributed to this by not telling you about my trip.”
“No, Buck. It was all my fault, and I’m so sorry.”
“OK,” he said. “You’re sorry, and I forgive you. Can that be the end of it?”
“That’s just going to make me cry more.”
“What’d I do now?”
“You’re just being too sweet about this!”
“I can’t win!”
“Give me a minute, will you?” Chloe sprang from the couch and hurried up the stairs.
Ever since asking them to either speak up or quiet down, Rayford had been sitting just out of sight at the top of the stairs. He tried to get up and sneak back into the master bedroom, but he was just rising when Chloe nearly ran into him.
“Dad!” she whispered. “What are you doing?!”
“Eavesdropping. What does it look like?”
“You’re awful!”
“I’m awful? Look what you did to Buck! Way to hang a guy before he’s tried.”
“Dad, I was such a fool.”
“It was just a comedy of errors, hon, and like Buck said, it only shows how much you cared.”
“Did you know he was coming?”
Rayford nodded.
“Tonight? You knew he was coming tonight?”
“Guilty.”
“And you made me answer the door.”
“So shoot me.”
“I ought to.”
“No, you ought to thank me.”
“That’s for sure. You can go to bed now. I’m going to change and see if Buck wants to take a walk.”
“So you’re saying I can’t come along? Or even follow from a distance?”
Buck heard whispering upstairs, then water running and drawers opening and shutting. Chloe came back down in jeans and a sweatshirt, a jacket, a cap, and tennis shoes. “Do you have to go?” she said. “Or do you want to take a walk?”
“You’re not kicking me out after all?”
“We need to talk somewhere else so Dad can get to sleep.”
“We were keeping him up?”
“Sort of.”
Rayford heard the front door shut, then knelt by his bed. He prayed Chloe and Buck would be good for each other, regardless of what the future held for them. Even if they became only good friends, he would be grateful for that. He crawled into bed, falling into a light, fitful sleep, listening for Chloe’s return and praying about the opportunity that had been presented him that day.
The night was nippy but clear as midnight approached. “Buck,” Chloe said as they turned a corner to wend their way through the fashionable Arlington Heights subdivision, “I just want to say again how—”
Buck stopped and snagged Chloe’s jacket sleeve. “Chloe, don’t. We’ve got only seven years. We can’t live in the past. We’ve both stumbled this weekend, and we’ve apologized, so let’s be done with it.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.” They continued walking. “’Course, I’m gonna need to find out who’s sending you flowers.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, and I have a suspicion.”
“Who?”
“It’s kind of embarrassing, because that might have been my fault too.”
“Your old boyfriend?”
“No! I told you when we first met, we dated when I was a freshman and he was a senior. He graduated and I never heard from him again. He’s married.”
“Then it had better not be him. Any other guys at Stanford who wish you would come back?”
“Nobody with the style to send flowers.”
“Your dad?”
“He already denied it.”
“Who does that leave?”
“Think about it,” Chloe said.
Buck squinted and thought. “Bruce!? Oh, no, you don’t think . . . ?”
“Who else is there?”
“How would you have encouraged him?”
“I don’t know. I like him a lot. I admire him. His honesty moves me, and he’s so passionate and sincere.”
“I know, and he has to be lonely. But it’s only been a few weeks since he lost his family. I can’t imagine it would be him.”
“I tell him I enjoy his messages,” Chloe said. “Maybe I’m being more friendly than I need to be. It’s just that I never thought of him that way, you know?”
“Could you? He’s a sharp young guy.”
“Buck! He’s older than you!”
“Not much.”
“Yeah, but you’re on the very end of the age spectrum I’d even consider.”
“Well, thank you so much! How soon before you have to have me back to the home?”
“Oh, Buck, it’s so embarrassing! I need Bruce as a friend and as a teacher!”
“You’re sure you wouldn’t consider more?”
She shook her head. “I just can’t see it. It’s not that he’s unattractive, but I can’t imagine ever thinking of him that way. You know, he asked me to work for him, full-time. I never even thought there might be an ulterior motive.”
“Now don’t jump to conclusions, Chloe.”
“I’m good at that, aren’t I?”
“You’re asking the wrong person.”
“What am I going to do, Buck? I don’t want to hurt him. I can’t tell him I don’t think of him in that way. You know this all has to just be a reaction to his loss. Like he’s on the rebound.”
“I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose a wife,” Buck said.
“And kids.”
“Yeah.”
“You told me once that you were never serious about anyone.”
“Right. Well, a couple of times I thought I was, but I had jumped the gun. One girl, a year ahead of me in grad school, dumped me because I was too slow to make a move on her.”
“No!”
“Guess I’m a little old-fashioned that way.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“I lost whatever feeling I had for her real quick.”
“I can imagine. So you weren’t the typical college guy?”
“You want the truth?”
“I don’t know. Do I?”
“Depends. Would you rather hear that I have all kinds of experience because I’m such a cool guy, or that I’m a virgin?”
“You’re going to tell me whatever I want to hear?”
“I’m going to tell you the truth. I just wouldn’t mind knowing in advance which you’d want to hear.”
“Experienced or a virgin,” Chloe repeated. “That’s a no-brainer. Definitely the latter.”
“Bingo,” Buck said softly, more from embarrassment than from braggadocio.
“Wow,” Chloe said. “That’s kind of hard to believe these days.”
“I have to say I’m more grateful than proud. My reasons were not as pure as they would be today. I mean, just about everybody I knew was sleeping around, and I didn’t abstain out of any sense of morality. I had opportunities but usually with women I wasn’t that into. I’m not saying I wasn’t tempted or even that I didn’t want to. Truth is, people always assumed I got around because I ran in
pretty fast circles. And it’s not that I was backward when it came to stuff like that. But kind of conservative.”
“You’re apologizing.”
“I don’t mean to be. I suppose it should be embarrassing to be a virgin at my age. I’ve always been ahead of my generation in a lot of other ways.”
“That’s an understatement,” Chloe said. “You think God was protecting you, even before you were aware of him?”
“I never thought of it that way, but it very well could be. I’ve never had to worry about disease and all the emotional stuff that goes with intimate relationships.”
Buck rubbed the back of his neck.
“This is embarrassing you, isn’t it?” Chloe said.
“A little.”
“So I suppose you’d rather not hear about my sexual experience or lack of it.”
Buck grimaced. “If you don’t mind. See, I’m only thirty and I feel like an old-timer when you even use the word . . . sex. So maybe you should spare me.”
“But Buck, what if something comes of our relationship? Aren’t you going to be curious?”
“Maybe I’ll ask you then.”
“But what if by then you’re already madly in love with me, and you find out something you can’t live with?”
Buck was ashamed of himself. It was one thing to admit to a woman that you’re a virgin when it seemed to put you in one of the smaller minorities in the world. But she was so straightforward, so direct. He didn’t want to talk about this, to hear about it, to know, especially if she was more “experienced” than he. And yet she had a point. She seemed more comfortable talking about their future than he did, but he was the one who had decided to pursue a relationship. He shrugged.
“I’ll spare you the mystery,” Chloe said. “My boyfriends in high school, and my boyfriend my freshman year at Stanford and I were not models of, what did my mother call it, propriety? That’s probably why I never lasted with any of them in the long run.”
“Um, Chloe, could we talk about something else?”
“You are an old codger, aren’t you?”
“I guess.” Buck blushed. “I can interview heads of state, but this kind of frankness is new to me.”