There it was. That little twinkle in his eye as he took a sip of his wine. ‘That’s the thing. If you want your calendar filled, you’ll have to keep letting me into your flat. In fact, I’ll need unlimited access.’
She loved the way his smile stretched from ear to ear. The restaurant was dim, with subdued lighting and flickering candlelight. His eyes seemed even bluer than normal, their colour amplified as they reflected off his pale blue shirt.
‘Did you plan this just so you could get into my flat?’
He shook his head, his face becoming a little more serious. ‘I just think you’ve been a little quiet these past few days. As if something was on your mind.’ His fingers reached across the table and intertwined with hers. ‘I’m just trying to find a way to stay in your life.’
She felt shocked by the openness and honesty of his words. She kept her gaze stuck on the advent calendar as she tried to think of what to say. Things had been a little unsettled between them.
‘I’m just a little unsure of what’s happening between us,’ she started slowly. She lifted her eyes. ‘I like you, Brad.’
‘And I like you, too, Cassidy. You know that.’
He wasn’t making this any easier. It was hard enough, trying to get the words out. His fingers were tracing little circles on the palm of her hand. Just like he did after they’d made love together.
‘I’m just worried that I’m getting in too deep and before we know it you’ll be gone.’
His brow creased. ‘Why would you think that?’
She pulled her hand away from his. It was too distracting. ‘I don’t know. I just think that I’m from Scotland, you’re from Australia...’ She threw her hands up in frustration, then levelled her gaze at him. ‘I know you don’t want to stay here and I don’t want to move away. So where does that leave us?’
She could feel tears nestling behind her eyes. That was the last thing she wanted to happen. She didn’t want to cry.
Her mind was flooded with thoughts of her gran. Truth was, she would never find out what happened between her gran and Peter Johnson. Maybe it had only been a wartime fling, with no substance behind it. Or maybe her gran had given up the chance of a lifetime to go and live abroad with the man who’d made her face sparkle.
What Cassidy would never know was whether her gran regretted her decisions. If she could go back, would she do something different?
Was she about to make the same mistake?
Brad reached back over and took her hand again. ‘Cassidy, I have no idea what’s going to happen. All I know is I love spending time with you and I don’t want it to end. I’ve no idea what will happen in the next few years—I’ve been offered an extension to my job here for another six months, and I’ve decided to take it. You know I’m not going to stop looking for my daughter. Is that what this is all about? Melody?’
Cassidy shook her head. ‘No, it’s not about Melody.’ Then she hesitated. ‘But I don’t know what to think about all that. At the end of the day, Brad, we could continue to have a relationship for the next few months and then you could get a call one day about Melody and just disappear. I don’t think I could handle that.’
And there it was, staring him in the face. All the while he was practically telling her she was bullheaded and stubborn, her biggest vulnerability lay on the table between them. Abandonment.
He’d sensed it in her for a while. When she’d mentioned her ex-fiancé, her parents or her ill grandmother. That fear of being alone.
He shook his head, the expression on his face pained. ‘Remember, Cassidy, I’ve been on the other side of this fence. I’ve had someone disappear out of my life with no warning. And I know how much it hurts. I would never do that to another human being.’
She could tell her words had stung, and she hadn’t meant them to. It was just so difficult to describe the mishmash of emotions in her head. Even she couldn’t understand them, so how could she expect Brad to?
The waiter appeared at their side with some menus, and Cassidy pulled her hand from Brad’s to take one. Her eyes ran up and down the menu quickly before Brad lifted it from her hands.
‘Don’t tell me, you’ll have the mushrooms and the chicken.’
Cassidy groaned. ‘Don’t tell me I’m that predictable.’ She grabbed the menu back and ran her eyes along the text again with a sinking realisation that Brad was right. She did always have the mushrooms and the chicken. The only time she ever deviated was if neither was on the menu.
He leaned forward, giving her that smile again. ‘Why don’t you surprise us both and pick something totally different? In fact, close your eyes and just point at something and order that.’
Cassidy shivered. ‘Yuck.’ Even the thought of doing that was too much for her. Imagine if she ended up with something she didn’t like—or never ate? That would be hideous. ‘I can’t do that, Brad, I might get seaweed or fillet steak.’
His eyes gleamed as he did a pretend shudder. ‘Mmm, and that would be awful, wouldn’t it? Take this as a test, Cassidy.’
‘A test for what?’
He folded his napkin in his lap, as if he was choosing his words carefully. ‘For a thoroughly modern woman, you can be pretty closed-minded about some things.’
An uncomfortable feeling crept down her spine. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You can have some pretty fixed ideas.’
Cassidy shook her head. ‘I just know my own mind. There’s nothing wrong with that.’
He paused. ‘I didn’t say there was. But sometimes you make your mind up about things without looking at the whole picture.’
Cassidy was feeling rattled now and a little irritated. So much for a romantic dinner. ‘What do you mean exactly?’
He licked his lips and she saw him take a deep breath. There was something different in his eyes. The normal laid-back look was gone. ‘What I mean, Cassidy, is that you’ve written me—and others—off with no thought or regard for our feelings, just because we live in a different country. Now, if you’d been abroad and stayed there for a while and didn’t enjoy it, it might seem a reasonable conclusion to have come to. But you haven’t. You’ve never done it. You’ve never even tried. And what’s more—you won’t even consider it.’
He looked frustrated by her, angry even, and she felt a tight feeling spread across her chest. Not even Bobby, her Spanish fiancé, had called her like this. She’d just refused to go with him and that had been that. He hadn’t questioned her reasoning behind her decision. He hadn’t made her question h
er reasoning behind the decision.
But Brad hadn’t finished. He was on a roll. ‘It’s the same with your menu choices and your Christmas traditions.’ He leaned over and picked up the advent calendar. ‘You say you only like the picture calendars but you’ve never even tried one of these, have you?’ She saw his shoulders sag, tension easing out of them, and the tone of his voice altered.
‘All I’m trying to do is get you to look outside your box. To look at the world that surrounds you and open your mind to other ideas, other experiences, other...’ he paused before ending ‘...possibilities.’
He was holding his breath, waiting to see what she would say. She should stop, she should think and ponder what he was saying to her and why. But Cassidy went with her first instinct. She was mad.
She flung her napkin on the table. ‘So why are you bothering with me, Brad? You don’t date someone with the idea of changing them. You date someone because you like them the way they are, not the way you want them to be.’ She spat the words at him.
‘I’m not trying to change you. I like you, everything about you. But if we have any hope of a future together, you’re going to have to learn to bend a little.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning that I would love to promise to stay with you in Scotland for the next thirty years, but what if I do get that call about my daughter? What if I do need to go to the States? That’s it for us? Just like that—because you won’t even consider any other possibility?’
He made it all sound so unreasonable. So closed-minded. But inside she didn’t feel like that.
‘Or what if I get a great opportunity to work in another country? You won’t even consider coming with me? Because you can’t leave Scotland?’
‘But my gran, I can’t leave my gran.’ It was the first thing that sprang to mind. The first brick in her feeble wall of defence.
Brad shook his head. ‘I’m not asking you to leave your gran, Cassidy. Even though you know she’s somewhere she’s been taken care of. I’m just trying to see if you’ll at least consider the possibility.’