The Single Dad's Second Chance. Brenda Harlen

of the kitchen assistants cleared away their salad plates and another immediately set bowls of steaming pasta on the table. He looked from his to hers, noticed they were the same.

      Rachel speared a chunk of spicy sausage with her fork, popped it into her mouth.

      “What about you?” he asked. “Why are you alone tonight?”

      “I’m on a dating hiatus,” she admitted.

      “Why?”

      She shrugged. “I made a lot of bad choices with respect to relationships, so I decided to take a break from men.”

      “How long have you been on this break?” he wondered.

      “Sixteen months.”

      “You haven’t been on a date in more than a year?”

      “No,” she admitted. “But even when I was dating, I never liked dating on Valentine’s Day.”

      “Why not?”

      “There’s too much pressure to make a simple date into something more on February 14, too many expectations on both parties.” She nibbled on her penne. “Did you know that ten percent of all marriage proposals take place on Valentine’s Day?”

      He shook his head.

      “It makes me wonder—is the popularity of proposals on that day a result of romance in the air or a consequence of the pressure to celebrate in a big way?”

      “The Valentine’s Day chicken and egg,” he mused.

      She nodded. “And then there are the Valentine’s Day weddings, which seem to me the lazy man’s way of ensuring he’ll remember his anniversary.”

      Andrew waited a beat before he said, “Nina and I were married on Valentine’s Day.”

      Chapter Two

      Rachel pushed her plate aside as her cheeks filled with color. “I don’t think I can finish this with my foot in my mouth.”

      Andrew smiled and nudged her plate back to her. “We were actually married the twenty-second of November.”

      “Since I tend to speak without thinking, I’ll forgive you for that,” she said, picking up her fork again.

      Gemma bustled into the kitchen, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks flushed with excitement. “Look at this,” she said, holding her hand out to show off the princess-cut diamond solitaire on the tip of her finger. “Isn’t it stunning?”

      “It’s beautiful,” Rachel agreed. “But you’re already married.”

      The hostess rolled her eyes. “It’s not for me, obviously. One of our customers is going to propose to his girlfriend, right here, tonight.

      “He told me the story when he called to make the reservation. They met on a blind date in our dining room, and he said the minute he first saw her, he knew she was the one. Now, eight months later, he’s ready to ask her to share his life.”

      “So why do you have the ring?” Rachel wondered.

      “Oh. Right.” She turned to call out to the pastry chef. “Edouard—I need a tiramisu.” Then she continued her explanation: “That’s what she had for dessert that first night.”

      “You’re not going to bury the ring in the cake, are you?” Andrew asked.

      “No, I’m going to put it on top,” Gemma explained. “The dark chocolate will really make the gold shine and the diamond sparkle.”

      “And the band sticky so she can’t get it off her finger if she changes her mind,” Rachel mused.

      He grinned; the hostess scowled.

      “You don’t appreciate romance,” she scolded Rachel.

      “I do appreciate romance,” his dinner companion insisted. “I’ve even done bouquets with engagement rings tied to the ribbon. But I think that words spoken from the heart make a more memorable proposal than the staged presentation of a ring.”

      “What about a ‘will you marry me?’ spelled out on the big screen at a sporting event?” Andrew asked.

      Rachel opened her mouth to respond, then snapped it shut again and eyed him warily. “Is that how you proposed?”

      He chuckled. “No.”

      “Should we make a wager on what her response will be?” Andrew asked, as Gemma left the kitchen with the dessert.

      Rachel shook her head. “I might not be a fan of public proposals, but I hope she accepts. He obviously put a lot of thought into his plans tonight, bringing her back to the restaurant where they first met, remembering the dessert she had on that first date.

      “And I don’t think he’d pop the question in this kind of venue if he wasn’t sure of the answer,” she noted, before asking him, “How did you propose?”

      “Oh.” He pushed his now-empty bowl aside. “It wasn’t very well planned out at all.”

      Her lips curved, making him suspect that the tips of his ears had gone red as they sometimes did when he was embarrassed.

      “Impulsive...and in bed,” she guessed.

      Since he couldn’t deny it, he only said, “She said yes.”

      Her smile widened, and he couldn’t help noticing the way it lit up her whole face. She was an attractive woman—he could acknowledge that fact without being attracted to her. But looking at her now, he felt the stirring of something low in his belly that he suspected might be attraction.

      “Did you at least have a ring?” Rachel asked, as she dipped her fork into the slice of chocolate-raspberry cake that had been set in front of her.

      “No. We went to get one the next day.” He realized, as he shared the details with Rachel, that it no longer hurt so much to remember the special moments he and Nina had spent together. He’d grieved for his wife for a long time after her quick and unexpected death, but he’d finally accepted that she was gone—that it was time to move on with his life without her.

      “I hate being alone on Valentine’s Day,” Rachel admitted. “But it must be even harder for you—to have found the one person you expected to share your life with, and then lose her.”

      He shrugged. “Being alone on Valentine’s Day isn’t really any different from the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year.”

      She considered this as she took another sip of her wine, then shook her head. “Logically, I know that’s true. And I’m generally satisfied with my own company. But somehow, on February 14, being single is suddenly spelled A-L-O-N-E, all in capital letters.

      “I blame the greeting card companies,” she continued. “And the jewelers and chocolate shops—”

      “And the florists,” he interjected dryly.

      She smiled again. “I’m well aware of the hypocrisy. I’m also grateful that the shop keeps me busy so I don’t have a lot of time to think about it. But when I lock the door behind the last customer, there’s a strange sense of emptiness.” She shook her head, as if to shake off the negative thought. “And I just filled that emptiness with too much pasta and bread.”

      “So let’s do something,” Andrew suggested impulsively.

      She blinked. “What?”

      “That was the advice my mother always gave me,” he told her. “Don’t stew, do.”

      “Sounds like good advice.”

      “Are you up for it?” he challenged.

      She eyed him with a combination of curiosity and wariness. “I guess that depends on what ‘it’ is.”