The Art of Romance (34 page)

Yet if her plan for Caylor was going to work, Sassy would need to start getting along with Sage better—much better.

Sage came back and perched on one of the tall chairs at the bar on the far side of the new kitchen island. Sassy looked around at the bags of groceries still on the countertops.

“I think I’ll call some of the girls and see if they want to study tonight.” Sage started on her second pastry then glanced up and caught Sassy looking at her. “What?”

Sassy shook her head in defeat and moved on to the next bag. “Nothing. I think it’s wonderful that you’ve made friends in your classes.”

“I know. I can’t believe how much I’m actually enjoying going to school,” Sage said around a mouthful of chocolate.

Squeezing her eyes shut against the sight of half-chewed food, Sassy pulled the bag containing salad vegetables off the island and put it on the counter beside the fridge. She hadn’t been certain she would like having the freezer on the bottom, but she loved the double doors of the fridge section on top. She could fit all of her serving and party trays in with no problem. Not that she’d need them again until Easter, when she had all the girls’ families over for dinner after church. Perty had tried usurping Sassy’s Easter dinner last year when the remodel of their house was finished, but then Gerald had come down with the flu and they’d all ended up back at Sassy’s house. She couldn’t wait for Trina, Lindy, and Maureen to see the new open layout of the house.

She did find herself wishing it had taken longer than a month, though, as the whole point of the remodel was to throw Caylor and Riley Douglas together as often as possible.

“What’s wrong, Sassy?”

“Wrong?” She turned, the pack of mushrooms still in her hand.

“You sighed.”

“Oh…I didn’t realize. Do you think you’ll eat supper here before you go or after you come home?” She set the mushrooms on the counter, thinking about making a stir-fry for supper.

“I’ll probably pick something up while I’m out.” Sage brushed the remaining crumbs of her toaster pastries onto the floor and slid down from the chair. “I’m going to go get out of these wet clothes and take a shower, and then I’ll probably be off.”

As soon as Sassy heard the water start running, she pulled the small, lightweight duster-vacuum out of the laundry room and got rid of all traces of crumbs from the floor—not that she could actually see the chocolate against the darkly stained wood. But she couldn’t live with the knowledge the crumbs lay on her floor.

Shortly after Sage left to meet her friends to study—or go out to eat or drink coffee or whatever it was they were really doing—Caylor got home. She immediately set her coat and bags down at the foot of the stairs and came back to the kitchen sink to wash her hands.

“What can I help with?” She hung the dish towel she used back on the hook under the upper cabinet beside the sink. The one Sage had used still sat in a wad on the island.

Yes
, Sassy thought, she and Caylor got along much better. Maybe it would simply be a matter of reminding Sage to help out around the house. “Slice the peppers and mushrooms, if you don’t mind.”

“I’d love to.” Caylor pulled out a cutting board and a favorite prep knife and set to work. Though not a fantastic cook herself, she was fabulous at cutting everything quickly and into precise, uniform pieces.

She finished, and Sassy shooed her off upstairs to change into something more comfortable.

“Thanks, Sassy. Unless you’ll need me again in the next thirty or forty-five minutes, I have some e-mails I really need to get written and sent.” Caylor frowned at the towel on the island and then picked it up, sighing when she felt how wet it was.

“I think I have everything under control here. I just put the rice on, so that’ll give you the forty-five minutes you need.” Sassy looked at the clock. That would put them eating around six thirty—a little later than she usually liked to have supper ready, but anything to accommodate Caylor.

“Thanks, Sassy.” Caylor carried Sage’s wet dish towel out to the laundry room then gathered all her stuff and headed upstairs.

Sassy stopped chopping the onion and closed her eyes. “Father, Caylor deserves more than this. She deserves to fall madly, passionately in love and experience having someone love her the way Frank loved me for so many years. Teach me to appreciate Sage and the unique and lovely things about her that I have yet to understand or experience. Because when You answer my prayer for Caylor, I know I’ll be stuck with—I’ll be depending on—Sage.” She clucked her tongue at herself. “Show me how to help both of my granddaughters find the blessings You have in store for them.”

“Who are you talking to? And why are you crying?”

Sassy jumped at the sound of Caylor’s voice. Maybe having the squeak in the third step fixed hadn’t been such a great idea. “Just chopping onions and having a little chat with God.” She went back to the task at hand, hoping Caylor hadn’t heard anything specific she’d been praying about.

“I figured it would be just as easy to bring my laptop down here to work and keep you company at the same time. Looks like the right decision if you’re starting to use onions and prayer as covers for crying while talking to yourself.” Caylor winked at her, settled in to one of the bar chairs, and flipped open her shiny purple laptop.

Sassy reminded herself not to hum and disturb Caylor, who was now wearing her glasses—meaning she was tired and had most likely stayed up too late last night, writing.

The next half hour was filled with the intermittent tapping of Caylor’s fingers on the keyboard as she worked. When she finally arched her back and stretched her long arms over her head, Sassy took that to mean she’d come to a stopping point. “Is that writing stuff or school stuff?”

“School stuff. Dr. Fletcher reassigned two more graduate students to me today. Apparently they weren’t quite ready to be teaching on their own, after all. But she did take the freshman comp class from me and give it to one of her other teaching assistants, so at least that’s off my plate.” Caylor rubbed the bridge of her nose under the nose pads of the rimless glasses.

“It’s unusual to make those kinds of changes midsemester, isn’t it?” Sassy dropped the cubed-up chicken into the hot iron skillet on the stove.

“A bit. It means these two are at least one semester further behind on their PhDs now—and that I’ve got to set meetings with them to discuss their dissertations and figure out where they are and how much they still need to do. But both are in my Literary Criticism class, so that makes it a little easier to connect with them.” Caylor went back to typing.

The small pieces of chicken had browned quickly, so Sassy tossed the onions into the pan with them. She hoped it wouldn’t take too much longer to get the hang of this professional-grade gas stove—the cast-iron pans got hot so much faster on it, which was changing the cooking time of a lot of her dishes.

Caylor’s cell phone rang—the general ring, not one of the assigned tones for her friends. She made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat before answering. Must be someone from school or something.

“Hello?…No, it’s fine. I was just finishing up something for work.”

For
work.
, not for
school
? No, maybe not someone from the university.

“This weekend? I can’t—I’m going to be out of town.”

Someone asking Caylor if she was available this weekend? Perhaps Dylan Bradley? With her back turned to Caylor, Sassy didn’t bother trying to hide her smile.

“Next Tuesday night—a week from tomorrow? Sure. I think I could do that.”

Sassy wanted to grab the phone and remind Dylan he was teaching the painting class at Acklen Ave. But maybe he wanted to do something with her afterward.

“Six. Okay, I can meet you—” Caylor paused, obviously interrupted by the person who was not Dylan Bradley. “Why don’t you pick me up on campus, then? That’ll be closer to downtown.”

Excited—but consternated—Sassy composed herself before turning around to face Caylor as she made her farewell and hung up.

“That was Riley Douglas.” She set the phone down beside the computer. “He wants to take me to hear one of his favorite bands that’s playing at the Wildhorse next Tuesday.”

“And that’s why he asked you about this weekend?” Disappointment oozed in, squelching Sassy’s earlier excitement.

“He originally wanted to take me to a hockey game.”

“Oh—that’s too bad. I know you’ve enjoyed that the few times you’ve been.”

“I’m still learning the sport, but going to the games is a lot of fun. So that’s kind of disappointing.” She narrowed her eyes and scrutinized Sassy. “What?”

“What what?” Sassy tried to feign the excitement from earlier.

“I can tell from your expression that you don’t like the fact I’ve just made a date with Mr. Fantastic. Why?” Caylor leaned back and crossed her arms.

“No—I’m happy.”

“You’re a bad actress. And a bad liar. Why aren’t you happy that I finally have a date?”

Sassy turned around, scraped the chicken and onions off the bottom of the pan where they’d stuck, and then turned back to face her granddaughter. “Okay—fine. I’m not thrilled that you have a date with Riley.”

Shock filled Caylor’s face, and she made sounds like she was choking. “You did all this”—she stretched out her arms as if to encompass the entirety of the kitchen, family room, living room, and dining room—”to throw Riley into my path, hoping that he’d ask me out. Now he has, and you aren’t happy about it. And I want to know why.”

How honest could she be with her granddaughter? Sassy scraped the very brown chicken and onions from the bottom of the skillet again and tapped the metal spatula against the side of the skillet. The clang sounded like the bell between rounds at a boxing match. Oh…how Frank had loved watching his boxing.

And Riley Douglas was no Frank. Because of that, Sassy needed to be honest with Caylor. “I’m very happy you’ve agreed to go out on a date. But I just wish it was with someone else.”

Caylor pressed her fingertips to her temples. “After all that”—she heaved a long, dramatic sigh—”who do you wish I was going out with?”

“I…I don’t want to tell you.”

“Excuse
me?” Caylor looked like she wanted to bang her head against the granite countertop. “You’re disappointed that I accepted a date with Riley—with whom you purposely threw me together, at quite a financial cost, I might add—but now you don’t want to tell me whom you
do
want me to go out with?”

Caylor was right—taking down all the walls and installing hard floors throughout the living areas made everything so much louder in here. “You’ll just get madder at me if I do tell you.”

“Sassy!” Caylor’s voice hadn’t gone that high-pitched since she was a teenager. “If you don’t tell me, I’m not taking you anywhere for…a month! A month—do you hear? You’ll have to rely on Sage to get you where you want to go.”

“I’m already going to have to rely on her while you’re in New York this weekend.”

“Yeah, well, see how you like it and then get back to me.” The corners of Caylor’s mouth twitched, but she kept her expression serious otherwise. She closed her computer, stood, and tucked her phone in the back pocket of her jeans.

Oh how Sassy loved this child—loved that even in a heated discussion like this, Caylor still found the humor in the situation. “Okay, fine. I’ll tell you.”

Caylor tucked the laptop in the crook of her arm and planted the other fist on her hip. “Do tell.”

“I wish you were going out with Dylan Bradley.” Sassy watched Caylor’s expression carefully.

A bit of color drained from Caylor’s face, and her lips flattened out.

“What—don’t you like Dylan? I thought on Sunday…” Defeat weighed Sassy’s shoulders down.

“There are…obstacles between us. Obstacles I don’t know if we can surmount.” Caylor sank back onto the bar chair. “Sassy—he’s the artist who did the covers of my Melanie Mason books.”

Sassy pulled the skillet off the burner—the onions and chicken well past done. “He’s the—he’s the face?”

Caylor nodded. “He’s been my muse for years, and I didn’t even know it. And he wigged out a little when I told him so on Sunday after he revealed his pseudonym to me. I don’t think he wants anything to do with someone who could write books like that.”

“But you don’t…not anymore. And he’s no angel himself.” Sassy pressed her lips together, angry with herself for almost revealing too much.

Caylor’s eyes snapped up in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything. He needs to tell you about his past, not me. But suffice it to say that if he’s going to condemn you for writing steamy romance novels years ago, he’s not the man I thought he was.” Sassy pulled the pan of overcooked rice off the stove. “See what you’ve made me do? There’s no way we can eat this now. You go put some shoes on while I dispose of this mess. We’re going out for dinner.”

Though she looked like she wanted to try to weasel the information about Dylan out of her, Caylor turned and went back upstairs.

Sassy looked up at the newly smooth ceiling. “Okay, Lord. Now I have a starting point. Thanks.”