jaw fell. “You couldn’t possibly be telling me you’re not going!”
“Chloe,” Eleanor searched her meager experience for the best way to handle this. “Chloe, I don’t have time to explain.” According to her wristwatch, it was only ten minutes to liftoff; she had to jettison this mission while there was still time. “Just tell Mr. Sullivan that I forgot I had other plans.”
Chloe closed her eyes, shook her head and tapped her ear as if she was certain she’d lost her hearing. “I must have misunderstood. A man who is living proof of a loving God asks you out and you have—” she drew quotation marks in the air “—‘other plans’? No.” Pressing her peach-tinted lips firmly together, she wagged her head. “I don’t think so.”
Eleanor spoke as coolly as she could, given her urgency to flee. “I have other plans. They slipped my mind yesterday.”
“Today is Wednesday,” Chloe argued. “Wednesdays are only egg foo yung night at Yee’s. You can miss egg foo yung.”
Eleanor’s face grew hot. This is what comes from getting chummy with your employees. “I have other other plans tonight.”
Chloe eyed her doubtfully. “Cancel them.”
“No. Now I’m going. Just give him the message.”
“But—”
“Good night, Chloe. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ignoring Chloe’s plea to discuss this further, Eleanor escaped the building and hopped into her Toyota.
When she arrived home forty minutes later, she was carrying a bag from Yee’s Chinese Takeout, which she virtually slammed onto the kitchen counter. Gus leaped up, enthusiastically sniffed the bag, then hissed.
“Szechwan eggplant,” Eleanor informed him grumpily. “You need a change.”
Her mood was turning darker by the minute. Mr. Yee had greeted her tonight in his customary manner—with a big smile and a booming, “Hello, egg foo yung!” He never called her by name, anymore; he simply referred to her as the daily special.
“I’m in a rut.”
The feeling of dissatisfaction with her circumstances was unlike her. She was twenty-eight, owned her own town home and had a wonderful career. She had a frequent-diner punch card at Yee’s and a cat that liked egg rolls. What more did she need? Even with all the badgering her parents and Chloe had been doing about her social life, Eleanor hadn’t been discontent—until the day before yesterday. Already, Cole Sullivan’s reappearance in her life was wreaking havoc with her peace of mind.
“I’m grateful I didn’t go out with him tonight. I definitely am,” she told Gus, who had settled atop the heat vent. “You and I are going to have a terrific evening, Guster Buster. We’re going to get out of this rut, and we don’t have to prove anything to anyone in order to do it. I can’t wait to try that spicy eggplant, and after dinner we can tune in to the sci-fi channel. That’ll be a change, won’t it? See? Already this is good. It’s a good evening.”
Eleanor kept up a running commentary as she unpacked the dinner from Yee’s. One whiff made her eyes water.
Mr. Yee had frowned heavily when she said she wanted the eggplant dish. “No.” He’d shaken his head, waving a hand emphatically. “Too spicy for you.”
That was all it had taken for Eleanor to insist, “The hotter the better, Mr. Yee.” Carrying her tray to the coffee table in the living room, Eleanor was about to sit down when the doorbell rang. Who— she wondered, then winced. “Mrs. Grilley.” Shaking her head, she crossed the living room. The elderly woman had slipped her mind until that moment.
Florence Grilley was her eighty-three-year-old neighbor, whose King Charles spaniel, Pearlie, suffered from ear mites. Eleanor had promised to make a house call earlier this week. She readily agreed to her neighbor’s frequent requests because she knew that, in part, Mrs. Grilley simply needed the company.
Opening the door with an apologetic smile, Eleanor exclaimed, “You must think I’m the most absentminded person in the world—”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
Eleanor froze in surprise.
Cole Sullivan stood in her doorway, dressed in a fawn sport jacket, straw-colored shirt and pants. His wavy hair had been trimmed since yesterday, falling in thick waves, neat enough for a boardroom, but enticing enough to tempt a woman’s fingers to comb through it.
Never had he looked more wonderful.
Never had she felt more awkward. “What are you doing here?”
Cole gazed at her with pointed irony. “I think that’s my line.”
Chapter Three
Glancing at his watch, Cole arched a brow. “We had an appointment at six-thirty.”
Relaxed, as if he didn’t mind at all conducting this discussion in Eleanor’s doorway, he leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms. “I haven’t been stood up in years.”
“I told Chloe to tell you—”
“Ah, yes, the ‘prior engagement.’ Did you know Chloe’s neck itches when she lies?”
He reached out a hand. Eleanor stood rooted to the threshold as his index and middle fingers grazed her just below the jaw.
“Right there,” he said, folding his arms again. “Copious scratching.” He shrugged. “It’s a dead giveaway.”
His tone and words were pleasantly ironic, but his kaleidoscopic eyes darkened from Pacific blue to stormy gunmetal gray.
Eleanor cleared her suddenly dry throat. “I asked Chloe to tell you I forgot I had a previous engagement, because I do.” The aroma of Szechuan eggplant called her a liar. “Did,” she amended awkwardly. “I had plans, but…now I don’t.”
She should probably wash her mouth out with soap. She hadn’t lied since the third grade when she broke her father’s favorite petri dish and told him the dog did it.
“My plans were canceled,” she ended in a small voice.
“Yours, too?” Cole glanced toward the living room. “Mind if I come in, then?”
He straightened away from the door frame and walked past her without waiting for a reply. Stopping a few paces into the room, he made a brief study of Eleanor’s small home.
When his gaze found the coffee table, where her solitary meal awaited her, she blushed.
Cole turned to regard her, noting the heightened color in her cheeks, the way she fiddled with a pearl button at the top of her sweater. He felt a measure of satisfaction in her discomfort—unchivalrous, he knew, but he wasn’t used to being stood up. He didn’t like it.
Worse, he had not been stood up by just any woman, but by Eleanor Lippert.
A lot had changed in the dozen years he’d been away from Oakdale, superficial changes like the landscape around Quinn Park and new businesses along California Street. Other things appeared to be exactly the same, and he found himself wanting, fairly or not, for Eleanor Lippert to be one of those things.
He had not returned to Oakdale for pleasure or because he’d had a sudden urge to stroll down memory lane. He was not a sentimental man.
Moodily Cole gazed at Eleanor, who looked hopelessly awkward, then glanced again at the food laid out on the coffee table. Plowing a hand through his hair, he shook his head. Maybe she’d had a prior engagement, after all.
“I’m interrupting your dinner.” The words emerged more gruff than graceful.
“How did you find out where I live?”
Cole tried not to