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6:48 P.M.
“So, where are we going tonight?”
Aggie was beaming up at him with unadulterated enthusiasm. She was so excited, so genuine, so pure, so innocent. This was getting harder and harder to do. And yet do it he must. Nick forced his lips to curve into a smile. “Someplace indoors since it’s raining.”
“I love the rain,” Aggie gushed. “When I was little, my mom and I used to put on our raincoats and gumboots and play out in the rain. We would jump in muddy puddles, and I'd stand under trees and try to catch drops of rain on my tongue. If it was storming, we’d sit together and watch the lightning. Then we would go indoors, have steaming hot showers, put our pajamas on, and drink hot chocolate with marshmallows.”
“Sounds like fun.” She had managed to coax another genuine smile out of him. Nick could totally imagine little Aggie, with her long blonde hair blowing wildly in the wind, her blue eyes twinkling, and her pale cheeks tinted pink from the cold, playing outdoors in the rain. “I love the rain too, but anything outdoors is probably not the best idea for today given that your arm is in a cast.”
“You're probably right.” Aggie smiled the sweetest smile he’d ever seen. “So, whatdoyou have planned?”
“Dinner and a movie right here at your place.” He picked up a box. “Homemade pizzas, they're ready to go straight in your oven. I made the bases and the sauce myself. And homemade brownies for dessert.”
Her eyes lit up. “You bake? I love to bake, and brownies are one of my favorites.”
Lucky guess on the brownies, but unfortunately, it pleased him to have made Aggie so happy. He was going to have to stop that. It wasn't his job to make Aggie happy. “I find cooking and baking relaxing. Let me get the pizzas in the oven, and then we can talk while we wait.”
Aggie led him into the kitchen. “Do you want to eat at the table or in the living room?”
“Living room, it’s more intimate.”
Her cheeks heated, her eyes clearly told what she was thinking; that after dinner and the movie things might get a lot more intimate between them. “I don’t drink, but I have soda in the fridge.” Aggie deliberately turned her back on him and rifled through the fridge. He hadn’t pegged her as the shy type, but he hadn’t detected a change in her feelings toward him, so she must be a little bashful.
“You were close with your mom?” he asked, redirecting the conversation as he set about heating the pizzas. Nick knew a bit about her family background, but he wanted to get her take on it. Because it might be useful he assured himself andnotbecause he was interested.
“I was.” Her voice had dropped, turned sad and little girl-like. “She died when I was eight.”
“I'm so sorry.” He went to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and guided her back so she rested against his chest. “That must have been rough.”
“It was,” she said softly. Turning her around so that she could rest her head on his shoulder and wrap her arms around his waist, he engulfed her in an embrace. “After my mother’s death, my father remarried another three times. It was his way of coping I guess.”
“You have any siblings?”
“I have a brother, Andrew. He’s eight years older than me.”
“Are you two close?”
She shrugged and pressed closer against him. “I guess we have a typical big brother little sister relationship. He teased me when I was little, was over-protective of me once I started dating. He went off to college two years after our mom’s death, so mostly it was just me and my dad and stepmothers.”
“Did you get along with them?”
“I hated the first woman he married after my mom’s death. She’d only been gone a year when he married her. I wanted my mother not some substitute. I was sixteen by the time he married the next one, I just kept my distance from her. The one after that was younger than me.”
“I'm so sorry, honey, that’s rough. It doesn’t sound like he was really there for you after you lost your mom. You weren’t really close with your brother. Did you have someone else you could go to for support? Any other siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents?”
“I have two half-siblings, but no one else.”
“Your dad had kids with one of your stepmothers?” He injected a note of sympathy into his voice as he asked the question to which he already knew the answer.
“No.”
When she didn’t say more, he took hold of her shoulders again and eased her back so he could see her face. “Did your dad cheat on your mom?”
Tears welled in her eyes, which cut at him in a way it shouldn’t. “Twice. At least that I know of. I have two half-sisters, we’re kind of triplets but not. We all look the same, and we share the same birthday, but we all have different mothers.”
“Are you close with your sisters?”
