Even though I had just finished agreeing with Adam’s summation that the three of us should remain only friends, I found myself opening my arms to her.
She stepped into my embrace with a relieved sigh and planted her face in my pecs as her arms twined around my waist.
“Thank you,” she breathed.
I kissed the top of her head and held her for a long moment until the chicken frying on the stove started to spit. Adjusting her so that I didn’t have to break our hold, I turned back to the stove to flip the chicken, and satisfied with its sear, I flicked off the heat. She stood quietly against my side as she watched me assemble everything I had organized by the side of the stove. First, the fresh pasta in each bowl, then a few pieces of chicken, finished with the fragrant, creamy yellow sauce, and garnishedwith a sprinkle of flat-leaf parsley, freshly grated parmesan, and a generous crack of black pepper.
“It smells incredible,” she told me as I handed her a bowl and took two more into my other hand carefully before we walked in tandem to the living room.
“In Italy, we have the pasta dish separate from the meat dish,” I explained. “But here, you have condensed it because it is not very American to eat courses. Even though Mama would cluck at me, this is more efficient.”
She smiled, as I’d meant her to, though I’d been hoping for laughter. Linnea liked to laugh, and I loved to hear her do it. But the day had taken its toll, and she was soft, almost pliable as we went into the living room to see what Adam had come up with.
By the way we both froze, it was safe to say that he had surprised us both.
The cluttered living room had been transformed, and I wasn’t even sure how he had managed it.
The velvet couch was still against one wall facing the television, but the rest of the furniture had been taken out so that a wide space was left before the couch. In that place, he had added a mattress, maybe even two, along the floor and draped them with a collection of a white duvet and colorful, crocheted blankets that Linnea had probably made herself, as well as an array of pillows. Above it all, he had managed to string up some fairy lights I knew Linnea used on the back-porch railings, and a few of Miranda’s vibrant silk scarves to create a kind of glittering canopy.
It looked, quite simply, magical.
“Mr. Meyers,” Linnea said on a breath. “What have you done?”
He stood beside what was essentially a whimsical pillow fort with his hands clasped in front of him and feet braced in a military stance he’d habituated from his time in the RoyalArmed Forces. But Adam had always been better at lying with his body than his eyes, which were low-lidded as if to hide the vulnerability in them.
I wondered when the last time before he met Linnea that he had taken care of anyone.
Even himself.
“It seemed like something you would enjoy,” he said a little stiffly.
And I thought he was speaking to both of us.
Linnea moved out from under my arm to walk straight across the mattresses to him. Even though he didn’t open his arms, she plunked her head in the center of his chest as she had done with me and looped her arms around his waist, one hand still clutching her dinner bowl.
“Thank you,” she whispered just loudly enough for me to hear the thick words.
Adam stared down at her head, her hair wetting his expensive shirt, and softened into her embrace, wrapping his arms tightly around her back so that she snuggled even tighter to him. His eyes connected with mine over the top of her head, and the smile he gave me was one of camaraderie and shy satisfaction.
We were taking care of our girl.
I lifted my chin at him, feeling my own smile play at the corner of my mouth as I got onto the mattress fort and sat down to one side.
“Come eat before the delicious food I labored over goes cold,” I directed them, lifting Adam’s bowl in offering.
Linnea pulled her face from Adam and whipped around to beam at me as she tugged the Brit with her free hand up onto the cushions with her. When she plopped down between us, her shoulder bumped into me, and she made sure Adam was that close on her other side.
She propped the bowl in her lap, crossed her legs so that an indecent amount of tanned leg was showing that drew both Adam’s and my regard, and happily stabbed her fork into the pasta.
“Who has the remote?” she asked.
A moment later, Adam dragged his gaze from her legs, caught me doing the same, and winked at me before he lifted the remote and hit play onCasablanca.
After Ingrid Bergmanchose the wrong man inCasablanca, both Adam and I were subdued, probably because it too closely mimicked the moment I had asked Savannah to leave with me in London and she had chosen to stay with Adam only to divorce him less than six months later.
So Linnea suggested we watch Adam’s favourite film.
Which was Alfred Hitchcock’sVertigo.
