***
“Have you heard back from the bank yet?” Mia asked as the swan boat completed its journey around the lagoon. Once again she’d hidden her hair under her baseball hat and skipped any makeup in an attempt to blend in. The night before when they’d returned from their picnic lunch, they’d been ambushed by photographers waiting outside her hotel.
Sean shifted his legs in an attempt to get more comfortable. Whoever designed the boats hadn’t considered tall people. Thankfully the boat ride only lasted fifteen minutes. “No, not yet. I expect to hear back in another week or two.”
The driver maneuvered the boat back to the dock and as soon as he gave them the green light, Sean got out with Mia right behind him.
“Has your mom come around yet?”
Hand in hand they started down the pathway through the park and toward the Commonwealth Avenue Mall which would take them right into Back Bay where they planned to have a late lunch.
“We—” Sean began to answer as an elderly couple holding hands approached them.
“You two look so happy and in love. You remind me of us when we came here on our honeymoon.” The thin gray-haired woman stopped in front of them. “Don’t they, Will?”
“What?” the older man asked, his voice louder than necessary as he inclined his head toward his wife.
“I said they remind me of us,” the woman shouted louder this time and her husband nodded. “It goes by fast. We’re here celebrating our fiftieth anniversary this weekend,” she said, her voice back to a normal volume now. “Enjoy every minute together.” With her final words of wisdom, the couple shuffled off again.
Happy and in love? Evidently, the elderly woman assumed they were newlyweds. Something he knew would never happen with Mia. If he ever got married it would be to someone who lived in or near North Salem. A woman that would be content to live either at The Victorian Rose or near it. While the woman got that part wrong, she had gotten the happy part right. Since spending time with Mia, he had been happier and having more fun than he’d had in a long time. When she left in another few weeks, he’d miss their time together.
“I love seeing older couples who still look in love like that. So many people I know get married and divorced, then married again, as if it’s a game. My friend Becca Kent—she played my older sister on Family Life—is only three years older than me and on her fourth marriage.” Mia looked back over her shoulder at the couple that stopped them. “I forget sometimes that not everyone is like that. That people can stay married to the same person for the rest of their lives.”
Something in the tone of her voice caused the hairs on his neck to stand up. She hadn’t said it, but her message got through loud and clear. She wanted what that couple had someday.
She doesn’t mean with me. His brain pushed aside his emotions. Right now she was having some fun, a way to pass her free time until she went back to California, nothing more, nothing less. If she wanted someone who was husband material, she’d look toward men like her co-star, not to him. His words of logic wiped away his unease, but at the thought of her co-star a burning started in his chest. Then the image of Mia and Mark naked in bed, wrapped in each others arms, formed and bile surged upward. Tonight I’ll be the one naked with her. He forced himself to replace the image of her and Mark together with the memory of them together that morning.
“You never did answer me,” Mia said, when they hit the edge of the park.
He glanced over at her. The sun danced across the highlights in her hair and for a moment he could only stare. Damn, she was beautiful. Then with a mental shake, he cleared his throat. “We have not talked about it again, but Ma will come around.”