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“Huh? Nothing. This risotto is great.” She pretended not to notice him watching her and suppressed a sigh of relief when he picked up his fork again. They ate in comfortable quiet for a while. The more the quiet played out, the more it allowed Leah to think and wonder. “Callum?”
“Mm?”
“What are you doing?”
“Eating risotto. What are you doing?”
She smiled at the teasing note in his voice. “I’m wondering something.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m wondering what you are doing here. What made you come home?” He went still then, his expression shuttered. Leah felt a little frisson of discomfort, almost fear. “Sorry,” she said hastily.
Realizing that he’d put her off, he reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “You don’t have to apologize.”
She kept her hand lax in his, still unsure. “It’s none of my business, really.”
“Are we friends?”
The question surprised her. Were they friends? If friends could be defined as someone you cared about and liked to spend time with, then yes, they were definitely friends. What a lovely thought. She nodded.
He ran his thumb across the palm of her hand, almost absentmindedly. “I’m resting, I guess.”
Something about the confessional nature of his tone had Leah curling her fingers around his hand. “Resting?” She asked quietly when he didn’t continue.
His eyes were dark green in the flickering light of the candle flame, dark and brooding. “I’d barely been home above a handful of times in the last decade. I wanted to be someplace I could just be myself. No expectations. I mean, Mikayla couldn’t give two shits that I’ve got chart topping songs, platinum albums, millions of dollars. She just wants to hang out with me. Mum wants to feed me. A lot.”
Leah smiled at the gleam of amusement she saw in his eyes.
“And Dad gets a huge kick out of taking me to work with him, like I’m his apprentice again. Like I’m seventeen. So yeah, I’m resting.”
“That makes sense. I’m glad for you, that you can do that. That they give you that.”
“Me too,” he replied, with simple sincerity.
She looked at him for a long moment. “There’s a bit more to it?”
“A bit, yeah. But since this isn’t the Dr Phil show, we’ll leave it for another day. How about you? Your family?”
Leah suppressed a sigh. “I’m an only child of conservative and very overprotective parents.”
“Fun childhood, then?”
Leah couldn’t restrain the laugh that bubbled to her lips at the ironic tone. “It wasn’t too bad, I guess. But then again, it was all I knew, so what could I compare it to? The only people we spent any time with were just like us. We went to church every Sunday and prayer meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The dads all worked, the mums stayed home and kept house. It all made sense to me at the time.”
“And now?”
She shrugged. “It’s one thing to live that life as a child, but something completely different to experience it as a wife.” She paused, not really sure if she wanted to go any further. She looked down at their joined hands. He held her hand lightly, loosely, allowing her to pull back at any time. It was a comforting idea. She raised her eyes to his to find him watching her closely. “I have no idea if my parents love each other. Sometimes I think my dad barely tolerates my mum. That seemed very normal to me when I got married. But I did like my husband. At first.” No, that was enough. She pulled her hand away and leaned back in her chair, reaching for her glass of wine.
Understanding that the conversation was over, Callum didn’t push her. “It’s time to move on to the next part of our date.”
She was so grateful to him for letting it go, she smiled. “What’s the next part of our date?”
Callum pushed back from the table, grabbing the dishes and taking them to the kitchen. “We’re gonna watch a movie.” He grabbed a tablet off the kitchen counter and handed it to her. “I’ve bookmarked a few options, so you can choose which one you prefer while I do a quick clean up.”
“Oh, lovely.” She reached for the tablet, opening to where he’d indicated. But her heart sank when she saw the list.The Conjuring, The Grudge, Saw, 28 Days Later.These were not her kind of movies at all. She glanced up at Callum, not really sure what to say. There was an amused glimmer in his eye that made her suspect she was being pranked. “It’s quite a list.”
“Yeah, I thought you’d like it,” he replied, stacking the dinner bowls in the dishwasher.
