As their eyes met something passed between them that never had before.
A zing.
An awareness.
Oh, no. Had he figured out that she’d been secretly crushing on him for the last few months? How embarrassing. She gave him her cotillion smile—the one she always used to put boys in their place back in the day—and then pushed her chair back. “I think I should be getting home.”
“I’ll walk you back,” he said. “Or we can steal one of the golf carts.”
She shook her head. “I thought we both agreed to never speak of golf carts.”
“No one will suspect a thing,” he said.
“That’s what you thought the last time. And I’m pretty sure that the groundskeeper knew it was us, even though he could never prove it.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re right. So, walking might be the safer option,” Derek said in that easy way of his.
She felt silly thinking that there might have been something between them. It was probably all on her side. It had been a very long time without sex—since before Beni was born—and she wasn’t dead. She had been hoping she’d at least feel okay hooking up with one of her mom’s blind dates. But so far it hadn’t worked out.
“You okay?” he asked, coming around to hold her chair while she stood.
“Yes. Sorry. Just tired. Being ‘on’ with a stranger is draining,” she said.
Derek put his hand on the small of her back and she felt that zing again. This time a shiver spread up her spine and she stepped aside, fumbling for her handbag.
He followed her out of the dining room. She had an account at the club like all of the families who were members, so they didn’t have to settle any bill.
“I need to let my brothers know I’m leaving,” Derek said.
She nodded, still more in her head thinking about what he’d asked of her. His family was large, like hers, and she understood the dynamics of having siblings around.
The evening was warm; the unseasonable heat of the day hadn’t dissipated yet. The parking lot was full of cars and though it was the middle of the week it felt like the weekend. The night was busy and full of life and she realized that was what she’d been missing.
She hadn’t felt busy in a long time. She wasn’t saying she had the whole mothering thing licked but she and Beni had fallen into a routine where she knew what to expect. And life had become routine instead of fun. She knew that was why she was thinking of taking Derek up on this idea. It was the first unexpected thing to happen to her since...well, for a really long time.
“I’m glad you’re back in Cole’s Hill,” he said.
“Me, too. Remember how badly we wanted to get out of here?” she asked. “I really thought modeling was going to be the life for me. I mean I figured I’d be like Kate Moss and spend the rest of my life living in the jet set...but now, I’m sort of glad that I’m right here.”
“Was Benito planned?” he asked.
“That’s kind of personal,” she said, but only because he’d stumbled onto an argument she and Jose had had many times.
“We’re going to be ‘engaged’ and we’re friends,” he said. “Just asking because your dream life didn’t sound like it included motherhood.”
“It didn’t. With all my brothers, I never thought about having a family of my own. I figured I’d be the cool auntie to my nieces and nephews,” she said.
“So what happened?” he asked.
“Well...” She paused as they turned off the sidewalk onto the path that led to the manmade lake adjacent to her parents’ house. She stopped on the bridge over the lake.
“Well?”
She put one hand on the railing and looked over at Derek. He was her good friend but there were so many things about her he didn’t know. The embarrassing stuff that she shared with no one. And this was something that she never needed to tell him. This bit of humiliation had died with Jose.
She looked into Derek’s eyes and started to tell him what she always did when she was asked about the baby. But in her heart, she remembered Jose saying that a baby and a family would stop him from looking outside of their marriage bed for company. That a family would ground him in a way nothing else could.
Derek thought she’d have some sort of easy answer. Her modeling career hadn’t been conducive to children, but she came from a big family as he did. It might be a bit old-fashioned but he had assumed she would end up wanting kids after she married. But her hesitance told him there was something more to it. He’d struck a nerve that he hadn’t meant to and he should have just let it go.
But this was Bianca, and there was that look of sadness in her eyes that he didn’t glimpse very often. He put his hand on her shoulder, felt that spark of awareness and shoved it down. She needed a friend not a guy who was turned on by her. That damned perfume of hers wasn’t helping. It was subtle and floral and when the wind blew, he couldn’t help inhaling a little more deeply.
“Bia?” he asked. “It’s okay if you don’t want to answer me.”
She just glanced over at him with those big brown eyes of hers and he was lost. He realized this was exactly how he’d let himself get friend-zoned by her. She had very emotive eyes and he had always been suckered into wanting to comfort her, to be there for. To slay dragons for her. But Jose was dead so if he was the dragon there wasn’t anyone to slay.
Besides she’d had the fairy tale: first-love marriage with Jose. That wasn’t the problem.
“Hey, forget I asked. I was just making small talk,” Derek said even though that was the farthest thing from the truth.
He heard his old man’s voice in his head: start out as you mean to go on. Well, lying didn’t seem like a really good place to start. But he’d asked her to be his pretend fiancée, not his real one. So maybe that meant they both were entitled to their secrets.
“It’s okay. It’s just that once I got married my life changed... I mean my priorities changed and then I got pregnant and once I held Beni in my arms, everything just sort of...” She paused, glancing over at him and arching one eyebrow. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“Why would I?”
“Well, when I had my son it was like a veil was lifted from my life and I realized how shallow I had been. When I considered that little face I wanted to be more. To be better. To give him the world—not material things—but experiences. It changed me.”
He could see that. She pretty much glowed whenever she talked about her son. And Derek had seen her in town with the little boy and she seemed to be in her element when she was with him. He couldn’t reconcile it but she almost seemed prettier when she talked about her son.
He remembered something his brother Hunter had said once...that women in love were more beautiful. And he finally saw that. He saw it on Bianca’s face when she talked about her son. He had to be very sure that he was careful when she moved in with him. She might be his secret crush from adolescence but she was a woman now, a mother, and he couldn’t afford to explore a “crush” unless she was looking for the same thing.
He took a deep breath, put his hands on the wooden railing and looked out over the lake. He’d grown up on the Rockin’ C but he’d spent a lot of time with his dad on the golf course and hanging out at the club after school.
And as he looked at the moonlight reflecting on the water he thought about how much his town had changed. There was now a NASA training facility on the Bar T. Bianca was a famous supermodel,