Chapter 2
“Arrrg.” Giving the handle one last turn, to no avail, Cate let out a sigh of exasperation. Class was supposed to start in two minutes, but the door was locked, lights out, and not a student to be seen. Dropping her bag to the floor, she slid down alongside it. Her gut was telling her class had been canceled and she just missed the notice, but just in case, she was going to wait a solid ten minutes. Not that her teacher had been even a second late in the past three weeks since class began, but you never knew.
Back in her day, they had the decency to post a paper on the classroom door when classes were canceled, but according to her syllabi, they canceled them now via the school email… which would be brilliant, if not for the fact that her phone was old school and anything emailed after she left for the day would remain unseen until she got home.
Taking out her phone, she dialed Jamie. Maybe she could, in Jamie’s words, “parlay” this into a nice evening together.
“Hey, Mom, what’s up? Don’t you have class?” The noisy background gave away her location. Cate wanted to kick herself for bothering Jamie at work.
“It looks like class was canceled without anyone even bothering to put up a note. Sorry, I thought you finished at five.”
“No worries, Mom. Mr. Stanford just let us out of our intern meeting.” The voices made it challenging for Cate to hear Jamie, muffled and quieted before Jamie added, “He asked about you.”
“Why would your…” Stanford. There were a bazillion Stanfords in the world, surely it couldn’t be her Stanford from all those years ago. “Levi?” She dared not dream it. It wasn’t like they could simply continue where they left off. Over twenty years had lapsed. They had grown up, moved on, and for all she knew he was married with a family.
“Yeah, him. He said you went to high school together.”
“We did.” Cate stood, picking up a stray brush that had fallen from her bag as she did so. It was one thing to have Levi be part of her past. When she thought of him in that context, it was safe. Now that he was a flesh-and-blood person she might very well see, he was no longer safe. All of the emotions a first love held came flooding back to her, which she knew was beyond crazy. Heck, it had been over twenty years since they had last seen each other, so the chances of them still even having anything in common were slim to none.
“You sound off, Mom.” Her daughter had always been far too intuitive for her own good. She got that from her father.
“Just miffed about class,” Cate lied as she officially gave up and started to make her way toward the parking lot.
“They probably sent you an email.” A bing came through the phone, followed by her daughter mumbling a number, not to her.
“And I probably still don’t have a smartphone.” She wasn’t going to take her daughter’s bait. Jamie didn’t like Cate being without what she deemed a “necessity” while Cate didn’t want to deal with all the techno gobbledygook. “So you’re off now?”
“Just about.” The elevator binged again. “Wanna pick me up here and I’ll take you for a burger?”
“You’re offering to take me to dinner?” Cate reached her car and popped open the trunk, depositing her school bag in there. She smiled at the thought. Her school stuff. Not for the classes she taught, but for the one she was taking. It made her happy, even if she had showed up for a class that was canceled. “Deal. Where should I meet you?”
“Just ask at the security check-in, and they’ll direct you.”
Security check-in. Things were so different in the tech world her daughter strived to become a part of than in the boring world of teaching. Not that Cate’s job was boring. A classroom full of energetic kids having fun was anything but, but as far as career paths, it saw very little change over the years. Sure, education always saw curriculum changes and political sways, but the essence of the job was always about the kids, and that never wavered.
“Sounds like a plan. See you soon.” Cate started her car, prepared to be slammed with rush-hour traffic.
No one would ever describe Cate as a fan of city driving, especially not at rush hour. The congestion of city life never appealed to her the way it had to so many of her college friends. Even living half an hour away from what true city people considered “city” was far too close for her. Thankfully, Jamie’s company was on the outskirts of the city, and even better, it had a parking garage.
Cate found herself smoothing her hair as she caught her reflection in her car window. It was silly. After all, even if she did run into him, what did it matter? Yet there she was, preening like she was that teenage girl again.
The lobby was sparse, with office doors lining the sides, elevators in the back, and a small security counter at the entrance. She scuttled up to the counter and was greeted with a warm smile from the older man in uniform.
“Hi, I’m Cate Rhodes. I’m here to see Jamie Rhodes.” She reached into her purse to pull out her ID, and he held his hand up slightly indicating she wouldn’t need it.
“Yes, ma’am. I got a call asking for me to direct you to the middle elevator up to the tenth floor.” He reached into a side drawer and pulled out a lanyard sporting bright orange letters letting everyone know she was just passing through. “Here. You’ll need this visitor badge.”
“Thanks.” She smiled at him as she pulled it over her head. As she made her way to the elevator, she caught her reflection in the door and frowned. She was a hot mess.
Between her “I don’t care if they get ruined” clothes for painting class and her bright orange visitor pass and her flyaway hair, she couldn’t look less like she belonged in the lobby of such a successful business. She chided herself as she stepped into the open elevator.
This was not her. She wasn’t the woman who put on make-up just to go to the grocery store or went to the salon every time she saw a gray. Goodness, she didn’t even own a pair of heels, yet here she was, wishing that just that morning she had decided to be that woman, just in case she saw her Levi. No, that wasn’t right. He was no longer hers, but her heart didn’t believe it in those moments as the elevator ascended to the top floor.
8 – 9 – 10
She watched each number light up, willing her nerves to go down. She was just picking up her daughter, who was probably waiting at the elevator for her. It was no big deal. Not. At. All. Except it was. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did.
The doors glided open and she stepped out, her eyes examining the carpet. She inhaled deeply before bringing her eyes up. The elevator opened into a reception area, which she hadn’t been expecting.
“May I help you?” A young woman with glasses and a messy bun called from behind the desk.
“I’m here to pick up my daughter, Jamie Rhodes.” The reception area was empty, save the two them, but given the time it wasn’t a huge surprise. Cate glanced at the desk, looking for a sign-in sheet, but seeing none. She righted her posture.
“You must be Cate.” The woman smiled brightly and stood up before walking around the mammoth desk. “Follow me, then. You are to wait in here.” She stopped at the door labeled Conference Room A, and swiped her badge to unlock the door. “It should only be a moment.”
“Thanks, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause extra work.” Cate stepped inside as the woman waited, holding the door ajar. Brilliant. She’d managed to waste more of the woman’s time by apologizing for wasting her time.
“Nonsense. We’re glad you are here.” With that, the woman winked and wandered back to her station. Odd.
“Umm, thanks,” Cate mumbled as she meandered into the room. The room was bright with a wall of windows at the far side. The furniture was typical of what she would expect of a conference room—a long table surrounded by chairs. It was the walls that caught her attention. They were covered with art. Not just the “art” you saw in most public buildings. The paintings, collages, and photos all drew her in.
She stepped closer to the first one that caught her eye. It was a multi-media collage of what the artist most likely had found in the recycle bin. At first glance, it appeared almost random, as if a child had glued random things to a canvas, but the longer she looked at it, the more it enthralled her, taking her on a journey. She wasn’t sure where she would end up, but the path was beautiful.
She stepped backward and forward, swaying from left to right, taking it all in. The artist had filled the canvas with hope. Most people, if they could hear her inner thoughts, would think she was wackadoodle for delving so deeply into a collage of trash. Cate hoped that one day someone just as wackadoodle would enjoy one of her paintings in the same way.
“Cate?”
The deep voice startled Cate, and she let out a little gasp before twirling around. It was him. He had changed so much, yet so very little, in all the years since she had last seen him. His eyes still sparkled that green, almost golden hue, his dimples still echoed the warmth of his smile, and his hair, while slightly grayer, still had that one piece she wanted to smooth down. He was taller than the boy of her memory and had filled out his suit in a way that told Cate he had also bulked up over the years. Time had done well by him.
“Remember me?” he added as if she could’ve forgotten their time together; the first time he took her hand while they were walking, their first kiss, their first dance, their first… everything.
“Levi.” His name slipped past her lips as almost a whisper.
“It’s good to see you.” The sentence felt awkward. Levi appeared to be just as nervous and unsure of what to do and say as Cate was, and that helped her relax a bit.
“I’m here to pick up my daughter.” She focused on not standing there with her mouth open, which was a challenge, especially with all the butterflies dive-bombing in her belly.
“Yes. Jamie. She’s an asset around here.” His smile was kind. He meant every word, and that filled Cate with pride. Her daughter had always worked hard to achieve her goals, and getting her foot in the door of a huge tech company before graduation had always been part of her plan. It was nice to see it working out so well.
Cate nodded as if it was a yes or no question. She needed to get a grip.
“She looks so very much like your mother. I was taken aback when I saw her picture on the incoming interns.” His stance was relaxed, as if they had only seen each other last week instead of a couple of decades ago, but his eyes didn’t fool her. They always gave him away. He was affected by this conversation as much as she was. How, she wasn’t altogether sure.
Jamie really was the spitting image of her grandmother, but it shocked Cate that he remembered the woman so clearly. Her mother was always working, and hardly what she would call hands-on at that point in Cate’s life. Yet, he remembered her clearly enough to see the resemblance in Jamie.
“Then I saw her middle name and knew it was no coincidence.”
Jamie Taylor Rhodes. She had wanted to give Jamie her father’s last name and legally changed her own to it as well to avoid awkward questions like she had encountered when she was in school. Having a mother with a different last name had made for more than a few uncomfortable encounters when she grew up. She wanted to avoid that for her daughter, but still wanted her to have a part of her maternal heritage, so Jamie Taylor Rhodes it was.
“She told me you asked about me.” Cate willed the words back as soon as they flew from her mouth, but once said, they were there, hanging in the air. Cate leaned into the chair beside her, trying to feign an ease she wasn’t feeling as she waited and waited and waited.
“Is that all she told you?” The words surprised her. There was nothing cheeky or cocky about them.
“What do you mean?” Cate wasn’t sure what other information Jamie had on Levi, but she was ready for it. She crossed her toes, for fingers would be visible, that it wasn’t that he was married. She shouldn’t be thinking that way after five minutes with the guy, but she couldn’t help it. He brought back all the squirmy goodness that comes with young love.
“Did you know you were meeting me here?” He copied her pose, leaning into the chair beside him, raising his eyebrow just slightly. Most people probably never noticed the subtle gestures Levi made, but Cate always had. She found them fascinating to decipher. This was a new one for her, or at the very least one she hadn’t remembered, but she would figure out its meaning. If she saw him again, she added on at the thought, because for all she knew he was married with twenty kids and a passel of pups.
“I was hoping.” She scrunched her lips, a nervous habit she had never been able to break.
“As happy as that makes me…” Levi took the slightest step forward, his dimples calling to her finger, which itched to dance over them like she used to. “And it makes me extremely happy…” Another slight step forward. The butterflies in her stomach must have swapped out for hummingbirds. Scratch that, bats, and he wasn’t even in arms distance yet. “That isn’t what I meant.”
One more step. He stood, leaning ever so nonchalantly on the same chair as she did, his closeness practically overwhelming her. Her body responded to his warmth, the smell of his cologne, the feel of his breath on her collar bone. “Did you know you were meeting me here, now, and that she already left for the day?”
Did she what? Jamie had left. This was a set-up. “That little sneak,” she mumbled under her breath, more to herself than to Levi.
“I’ll take that as a no.” His hand reached out and tapped her nose, a gesture straight out of the past, and Cate’s face heated as she blushed, just as it always had.
Her phone buzzed, and she ignored it until it buzzed again. He gave her a subtle nod before pushing away from the chair to give her privacy. Reason five hundred why she hated having a stupid phone. It buzzed for a third time before she had the messages open. All three of them were from her daughter. Of course.
Where are you?
Sorry, Mom, it’s for your own good. He’s really hot.
Call me when you get home. Even if it is really, really late.
Cate typed back that they would talk later and she wasn’t mad before shutting down her phone and sticking it back in her purse.
“That was a no.” She shook her head at the entire situation. It wasn’t like she would’ve turned down an invite to see Levi again after all these years. Who was she fooling? She would have hemmed and hawed, made excuses and summer would be over before she actually had the courage to see him. Jamie had been spot on.
“Disappointed?”
She shook her head with a smile. That was so not what she was feeling. “More like surprised. I only knew you were even here less than an hour ago. Last I knew, you were off to Guam.” And out came her babble.
“I didn’t want to go.” The pain in his words was practically palpable. It had been horrific for her to be left alone, but his entire world had been tilted on its axis.
“Nor did I want you to, but life has a funny way of not caring about that kind of thing.” She knew the truth of that better than most. She fidgeted with the snap on her purse, unsure what to say or do next.
“Dinner?”
His invitation surprised her. It shouldn’t have, considering he and her daughter had set her up, yet it did. She looked down at her disheveled state. She was not even close to being in date attire.
“What?” She was buying time to make an excuse, or a plan, or she didn’t know what, but she needed time.
“May I take you out to dinner?” He inched closer with each word, his voice slightly deeper than it had been even a minute earlier. His sex appeal was downright dangerous.
“Now?” Surely he saw her current state of disarray. He was dressed in a suit that made her want to undress him more than go out with him. Whoa, where did that come from? Sure they had history, but Cate was very much not that kind of person. She dated infrequently and only ever got frisky with her battery-operated boyfriend. She was a single mom and had priorities. Although, technically, she was an empty-nester now. Did that make all those hormonal feelings come back? No. Levi. Levi made those feelings reemerge.
“That was the idea.” He tapped her nose again.
“I’m not really dressed for dinner.”
“You were going to go anyway when you thought it was Jamie taking you.” He held out his arm to her, assuming he had won his case, which he had. She took his arm and let him lead the way.
“Some things never change.” She gave him a slight shoulder bump just as they reached the door. “You always did call me on my bologna.”
“And I plan to keep up the habit.” With that, he allowed the door to shut behind them, and they headed on their way.