In her long and illustrious history of bad ideas, inviting Dr. Eli Sanderson out to grab pizza with them had to rank right up there with the lousy perm she got in seventh grade and losing her virginity to Cody Fielding after the prom her junior year.
Technically, Skye had invited Eli, but Melissa should have figured out a polite way to wiggle out of it, for all of their sakes.
Why had Skye invited him along? Her daughter did love Dr. Sanderson Sr., but she usually wasn’t so spontaneously open to strangers.
Maybe her daughter had responded, as Melissa did, to that air of loneliness about Eli. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was just something sad about him. A shadow in his eye, a particular set to his mouth.
She had tried hard to teach Skye how important it was to be kind to others. Okay, maybe she tried to overcompensate a little on her end, knowing her daughter wouldn’t receive similar lessons on the rare occasions she was with her dad. Maybe she had tried too hard, if Skye was going to go around inviting random gorgeous men to share their Friday-night tradition.
So much for her lectures all day about keeping her head on straight around him. That was fine advice in a professional setting when he was her boss but might be harder to remember in social situations.
It was no big deal. They were only sharing pizza. A Slice of Heaven had notoriously fast service, even on the weekend. With any luck, they could be seated, served and out of there within an hour. Surely she could manage to control her hormones for sixty lousy minutes.
“I like the second Dr. Sanderson,” Skye said from the back seat as they drove to the restaurant. “He seems nice...maybe not quite as nice as the first Dr. Sanderson, but better than Dr. Wu or Dr. Charles. Whenever they used to talk to me, they never even looked at me. It’s like they didn’t think a kid could have anything important to say.”
How did a seven-year-old girl become so very perceptive? The doctors in the clinic where Melissa worked in Honolulu before coming back to Cannon Beach had treated her that way, too, as if her opinions didn’t matter.
“They were very good doctors,” she said.
“But are they nice humans?”
That was an excellent question. She hadn’t been sorry to leave, though her coworkers had only been one of the reasons she had moved from Honolulu back to Oregon. Her mother was here, for one thing, and she found she missed being close to Sharon.
And the cost of living had been prohibitive. She had stayed in Hawaii for the last few years mostly because Cody had lived there and she wanted to do all she could to keep Skye’s father in her daughter’s life. His visitations had become so few and far between as he traveled around on the professional surfer circuit that her efforts had begun to seem laughable. When he had told her the previous summer he was moving again, she had given up trying.
Skye needed a stable home base. Melissa couldn’t keep dragging her from town to town, hoping Cody would eventually start paying attention to their child. She had tried for years after the divorce, then decided being closer to her own mother would provide more benefit to her child than infrequent, disappointing visits with her immature father.
Melissa would have loved four or five children, but life hadn’t worked out the way she planned. Good thing the one daughter she had was so amazing. Skye was smart and kind and amazingly intuitive for a child.
“Can I play pool tonight at A Slice of Heaven?”
And persistent. Once an idea took root in her head, she could never let it go.
“If there’s an empty table, maybe. Otherwise, nope,” Melissa said as she pulled into the pizzeria’s restaurant, the same answer she gave every time they came.
The people who hung out at the popular restaurant and played at the three tables in the back were serious about the game. They were probably good humans, but they weren’t at all patient with a seven-year-old girl just learning how to wield a cue.
Skye sighed as they parked and walked toward the restaurant but she didn’t argue, to Melissa’s relief. Her wrist was throbbing, and she really wanted to go home and rest it. She would definitely break out the ice pack after her daughter was in bed.
A wave of garlic and the delicious scent of the pizzeria’s wood-fired crusts hit the moment Melissa opened the door. Oh, yeah, she suddenly remembered. She was starving. She’d kind of forgotten that while she was talking to Wendell and Eli. Now her stomach growled and she had a fleeting wish that the wisecrack she had made to Eli was true, that none of the calories or carbs of the delicious Slice of Heaven pies counted when they were shared.
Somehow Eli had made it there before they did. He was inside talking to the hostess and daughter of the owner, Gina Salvaticci, who had been a year or two ahead of Melissa. She had never liked her much, she remembered now. Gina had been friends with Cody before Melissa and her family moved to Cannon Beach, and always acted as if she thought Melissa wasn’t good enough for him. Since the divorce and Melissa’s return to town, she hadn’t necessarily warmed to her.
If her father’s restaurant didn’t serve such good pizza, Melissa would do whatever she could to avoid her. Fortunately, Gina usually wasn’t here on Fridays.
But she was here this Friday, and Gina looked as shocked by the changes in quiet, nerdy Eli Sanderson as Melissa had been and she was obviously flirting with him. She touched his arm as she spoke to him and looked at him from under her half-closed lids, her body facing him and her mouth slightly open.
Melissa felt a sharp kick in her gut, a weird tension, and realized with chagrin that she was jealous of the other woman, even though Eli seemed completely oblivious to any interested body language.
He looked up when they approached. “Here’s the rest of my party. You said you had a table ready for us?”
Gina turned and Melissa knew the moment she spotted her. Her gaze narrowed and her hand slid away from Eli. Gina didn’t look at all pleased to see another woman joining him.
Melissa couldn’t really blame her. A hot doctor coming back to town, even temporarily, was bound to stir up all the single women.
Not her. She was willing to entertain a friendship with the man but that was all she could give him. She had no room in her life for anything more, especially not a wandering doctor who would be heading off to the next hot spot on the globe the moment his dad had his knees under him again. Been there, done that, with a man whose career was far more important than his family. She would never even consider it again.
Her priority had to be Skye, and providing her daughter the most stable home life possible, after the chaos of her daughter’s earlier years.
She smiled to let the other woman know she wasn’t a threat. If Gina was interested in Eli, she should go for it.
“Right this way,” Gina said coolly.
She led them back to a fairly good table with a nice view of the sunset.
“Will this be okay for you?” Gina asked. She looked only at Eli when she asked the question. He in turn deferred to Melissa.
“Does this work for you and Skye?” he asked.
“Looks great,” she answered. “Thanks.”
He reached for the back of a chair and pulled it back. Nobody had held a chair out for her in such a long time, it took Melissa an awkward moment to realize he meant for her to sit there.
“Uh. Thanks.”
She really needed to get out more.
She sat down and Skye plopped into the seat next to her.
“Can I get a root beer?” she asked.
They had a pretty strict no-soda/low-sugar rule 95 percent of the time, but Melissa tended to relax a bit on pizza night. “One. A small.”
“I’ll let your server know,” Gina said. “Here’s a couple of menus,” Gina said. “Our special tonight is the arugula and prosciutto with our house-pulled mozzarella.”
“Sounds delicious,” Eli said. “Thanks.”
The next few minutes were spent perusing the menu. Skye ordered her favorite, half cheese, half pepperoni, while Melissa and Eli both ordered the special, along with salads with the house dressing on the side and, of course, an order of their cheesy bread.
“If I can’t play pool, can I at least go play the pinball machine?” Skye asked. “I brought all my own quarters.”
“All of them? I thought you were saving up for a new scooter like your friend Alice has.”
“I am. But Sonia gave me two dollars for helping her pull weeds yesterday, so I put that in my piggy bank and took out six quarters.”
Skye reached into her pocket and pulled out change that jingled as she set it on the table. “I want to see if I can do better than last time we came.”
“It’s your money. If that’s the way you want to spend it, go for it.”
“Thanks.”
She shoved her chair back and hurried to the row of gaming machines along one wall of the pizzeria. This was an ideal setup, where she could keep an eye on her daughter but didn’t have to stand right over her shoulder.
“She seems like a sweet kid,” Eli said. “I know my dad thinks so, anyway.”
Melissa had made plenty of mistakes in her life—including a disastrous marriage—but her daughter was not among them.
“She’s amazing. Kind, compassionate, funny. I won the kid lottery.”
He smiled at that and sipped at the beer their server had brought him. “Does she see her father very often?”
All her frustrations from earlier in the day rushed back, and Melissa did her best not to tense.
“Not as often as she’d like. It’s been tough to have a relationship when he’s always heading to the next beach with the pro surf circuit.”
“Must have made it tough on a marriage.”
“You could say that.”
“How long have you and Cody been divorced?”
“We split up when Skye was three and officially divorced a year later.”
“Yes.”
The sense of failure never quite left Melissa, even after four years. She knew she had no reason to feel guilty, but somehow she couldn’t seem to help it.
She didn’t tell Eli how hard she had tried to salvage the marriage for her child or how even after it became clear that Cody wouldn’t stop cheating, she had chosen to stay in Hawaii, Cody’s surfing home base, so her daughter could still see her father.
“Where is he these days?”
“He’s coming back to Oregon. His new wife is expecting a baby, and he wants to be closer to his family in Portland so they can help her out.”
She wouldn’t let herself be bitter about that. When Melissa had been pregnant with Skye, Cody hadn’t been nearly as solicitous about her needs. He’d been training for a big wave competition, totally focused on it, and couldn’t take time away. Instead, they had lived in a crappy studio apartment on the North Shore. He had refused to come back to Oregon, even for her to deliver the baby close to her mom.
Maybe the fact that he was putting his new wife and unborn baby first for once was proof that her ex was finally growing up. She hoped so, but she didn’t think anyone could blame her for being skeptical.
“And how long have you been back in Cannon Beach?”
“About seven months. For the past few years, Cody’s home base has been Oahu. Last year he moved overseas, so I decided it was time Skye and I came back to be closer to family.”
“That’s nice. And you live in Brambleberry House.”
“For now. We love it there, but I’m saving up to buy a house.”
“And going to school, I understand. Carmen or Tiffany mentioned it today.”
“I’m working to become a family nurse practitioner,” she said as their server set down salads in front of the two of them.
“How’s that going?”
“Not going to lie, it’s been tough while juggling a full-time job and a child. I still have two years to go. I can do most of the work online, which helps.”
“That’s terrific. There’s such a need for well-trained nurse practitioners right now. Good for you.”
The approving look in his eyes sent warmth seeping through her. Going to school and working was tough work, and she had sacrificed sleep and a social life for it, but she was trying to build a solid future for her and her child. All the sacrifices were worthwhile, an investment toward security for Skye.
“What about you? I’m surprised you haven’t done the whole family thing yet.”
He shrugged, a hint of a shadow in his eyes. “You know how it is. Some guys can handle starting a family while they’re in med school, but I wasn’t one of them.”
“You’ve been out of med school—what?—five or six years now? There hasn’t been a chance in all those years to find somebody you want to make Mrs. Dr. Elias Sanderson?”
“No,” he said quickly. Too quickly. The shadows seemed to intensify. Eli Sanderson had secrets. What were they? She had the feeling he had lost someone close to him. Was it a woman?
She wanted to probe, but Skye came back before she could ask a follow-up question.
She was relieved, she told herself. Eli’s secrets were none of her business. He was her employer, at least for the next few weeks. Okay, he might also be becoming a friend. That didn’t mean she needed to know everything that had happened to him since the day he had left Cannon Beach for college.
“Your quarters are gone already?” she asked her daughter.
“Pinball is hard,” Skye complained. “Simon made it look so easy.”
Simon was the son of her friends Will and Julia Garrett, twin to Maddie, a girl who sometimes babysat Skye for her. The last time they had come to A Slice of Heaven, their family had been there, too, and Skye had been fascinated, watching the older boy.
“Simon is a teenager, honey. Almost eighteen. He’s probably had a lot of practice at it.”
She pouted but didn’t have time to fret more as their server fortuitously came by just then with their pizzas, fragrant and hot.
They were all too busy the next few moments savoring their meal, which didn’t leave a lot of room for talking.
In between bites, Skye kept looking back toward the billiards tables with a wistful look.
“You look like you’re wanting to try your hand at pool,” Eli said.
“Mom says I can’t. It’s too busy here on Friday nights. There are people waiting their turn to play.”
“My dad has a billiards table in the sunroom,” Eli said. “You’re welcome to come over and practice a little there before you try to play in the big leagues over here at A Slice of Heaven.”
“Thanks,” Skye said, eyes wide with excitement.
Melissa tried to hide her frown. She really wished he hadn’t said that. Eli would forget he made the offer, but Skye wouldn’t.
Her daughter had spent entirely too much time being disappointed by empty promises. She didn’t need more.
Maybe she was being too cynical. Maybe he wouldn’t forget.
She distracted Skye with their favorite game of I Spy for the rest of the meal, and Eli joined in willingly. He had a unique eye and stumped both her and Skye more than once with the things he observed.
“I’m totally stuffed now,” Skye said after two slices. She eased back in her chair and placed her hands over her belly.
Eli chuckled. “That was delicious, wasn’t it? The best pizza I’ve had in a long time. I forgot how delicious the crust here is.”
“They have a magic recipe,” Melissa said.
“They must, especially if they can make it calorie-free.”
His smile made her hormones sigh. Seriously, this was becoming ridiculous.
After they boxed up their leftover pizza, Eli insisted on paying the tab. She would have argued, but her friend Sage and her husband, Eben, part owners of Brambleberry House, came in at that moment and distracted her. By the time she waved goodbye to her friends, the server had already completed the bill.
“Next time is my treat,” she said.
“I’ll look forward to it,” he answered. His words had a ring of sincerity that again warmed her far more than they should.
They walked outside into a lovely April night, rich with the scent of the ocean, with flowers, with new life.
She could hear the low murmur of the waves along with the constant coastal wind that rustled the new leaves of the trees next to the restaurant.
Oh, she had missed it here. She had lived in many beautiful, exotic places since she’d left Cannon Beach, but none of them had been the same. She had lived here longer than anywhere, from the age of thirteen to eighteen. It was home to her.
“That was lovely,” he said when they reached their respective vehicles in the parking lot. “The most enjoyable meal I’ve had in a long time. Thank you for inviting me.”
“You’re welcome. Thank you for insisting on paying for it.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” Skye said cheerfully. “It was fun.”
Melissa couldn’t make a habit of it. She was far too drawn to him.
“Have a good evening, Eli.”
Their gazes met, and those shadows prompted her to do something completely uncharacteristic. She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, intending it only as a warm, friendly, welcome-home kind of gesture.
He smelled delicious, of soap and male skin, and it was all she could do not to stand there and inhale.
She forced herself to ease away, regretting the impulse with every passing moment.
“Good night, Melissa. Skye, it was a pleasure. Persuade your mom to take you to my dad’s place sometime soon so you can practice your pool game.”
“I will! Thanks.”
“Put some ice on that wrist,” he answered, his voice gruff.
She nodded and ushered her daughter to her vehicle. Though her wrist still ached, the injury seemed a lifetime ago.