The New Man

As he followed her, a slender teenage girl with an unmistakable resemblance to Kathleen came down the stairs. Her ponytailed hair was a shade lighter, and she had the impossibly delicate build of a ballerina, but her inquisitive blue eyes could have been her mother’s.

“Oh, Emma. This is Alec Fraser. Alec, my daughter.”

“Nice to meet you.”

He could see through an archway into the living room, where a dark-haired young man slouched on the sofa with a laptop computer open on his knees. From the other direction came music; Alec recognized the voice of a singer who recorded CDs for children. A man called for Kathleen from some other part of the house.

Who were all these people?

“In a minute, Logan,” Kathleen called back. “Helen, Alec’s here!”

He was reassured to hear her voice float from above, “I’ll be right down.”

A moment later, she appeared, coming down the stairs as lightly as the teenage girl had. Something squeezed in his chest at the sight of her in linen slacks and a rust-colored, sleeveless top that he thought must be made of silk. Her hair was drawn up in two tortoiseshell clips and then flowed, like rivers of dark molten lava, over her shoulders. She was…oh, hell, not beautiful, but something better. Not so artificial. Her eyes were a warm, smiling brown, her skin the creamy pale of a true redhead—although her cheeks and shoulders were rather pink—but she lacked the freckles. Instead, her nose was peeling.

“You got sunburned.” Way to go, he congratulated himself. Surely he could have thought of a greeting that was slightly more suave. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Kathleen and Emma agreed.

But Helen only smiled. “Yup. I always get sunburned. I’m incapable of tanning. If I don’t put enough suntan lotion on, I burn, over and over, all summer long.”

“It’s not good for you.” Oh, better and better.

“I know.” She wrinkled her nose, then winced. “Truly. I try.”

“Sorry. I bug my kids to wear suntan lotion, and…” He smiled crookedly. “It’s that parent thing. There’s a secretary at work always having to brush her bangs away from her eyes. I want to clip them back with barrettes in the worst way.”

Helen laughed. “Oh, dear. I know the feeling.” She started down the hall. “Let me go say good-night to Ginny.”

Ah. Well, at least there wasn’t yet another child in the house.

Alec turned to Kathleen. “I’m going to have to buy more of your soap. My son stole the bar Helen gave me. He’s at that stage where he showers three times a day. You wouldn’t know it from his hair or choice of clothes, but he really likes to be clean.”

“Helen said he’s fourteen?”

Alec nodded.

“Trouble with acne?”

He pictured his son’s face. “Uh…some.”

“I have just the thing for him.” She’d gone into saleswoman mode. “We’re not selling it yet because I haven’t made enough, but this soap has eucalyptus, aloe and peppermint. It’s really good for oily complexions.”

“I’d love to buy a bar.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ll get you one.” She flapped a hand and headed into what he presumed was the kitchen.

Emma looked at him. “It really works.”

Her delicate porcelain skin didn’t look as if anything as unsightly as a pimple would dare mar it.

“Devlin will appreciate it.” Alec had pretended to be irritated but had actually been amused when his soap disappeared and he found it in the kids’ bathroom. So, his son had taken to browsing Dad’s bathroom for personal hygiene products.

“The soap in our shower smells girly,” Dev had groused, when Alec mentioned the case of the missing bar.

“That’s good stuff, isn’t it?” Alec had asked, and gotten a surprisingly enthusiastic response.

“Yeah, it lathered great and it smells really cool.”

Maybe, Alec thought, he should suggest the boy star in a TV ad for Kathleen’s soaps. He could see it, Devlin scrubbing his underarms and grinning disarmingly at the camera.

“Smells cool and lathers great. Any guy my age would love it.”

Right. Nice picture, except Dev didn’t smile very often these days. He’d apparently forgotten how.

The two women returned from the kitchen, Kathleen with a grocery sack in her hand.

“Here’s several bars.” She handed it to him. “Compliments of the house.”

“Hey, thanks.”

“The green one is for your son.”

“He’ll appreciate it.”

“Shall we go?” Helen asked.

The heat hit them the minute they stepped outside.

“Doesn’t that feel good?” She raised her face to the sun. “I swear, I’m cold most of the time.”

“Maybe you should move to Arizona.”

“I’ve thought about it, but then I’d be freezing all the time because everyone cranks the air-conditioning up so high. Besides…I like a green landscape. So let me enjoy this rare summer heat wave.”

“And get sunburned,” he added.

Reaching the sidewalk ahead of him, she looked back with a guilty face. “I can’t resist basking just a little. Why can’t I have a skin that likes to brown?”

“Because—” he flipped one of her curls “—it wouldn’t go with this.”

“You know, there are no redheads in my family?” She sounded outraged at the genetic betrayal. “Not one. Dad still teases my mother about having a changeling. But, she insists his great-grandmother looks like her hair is auburn, too, in a couple of old pictures.”

“Which are black-and-white.” Alec stopped beside his car, unlocked the passenger door and opened it for her.

“Mm-hmm. And if my great-great was a redhead, she didn’t have freckles either.”

Helen was buckled up by the time he got in.

“This is nice.” Helen stroked the leather seat. “I’ve never been in a Mercedes before.”

“I felt like I’d arrived when I could afford one.” She could see the boyish pleasure he felt owning the luxury sedan. “I’m not a car guy, but growing up, I used to look at them and think, now, that’s status.”

Her big brown eyes held curiosity. “I didn’t think to ask what you do for a living.”

“I manage a small company working on wind turbines.”

“Wind?” She sounded as mystified as if he’d said he made thingamajigs.

He’d gotten the same reaction often enough to have a practiced explanation. “Same concept as windmills. Have you been to eastern Washington lately? Seen the rows of turbines on ridges?”

“No.”

“I’ll have to take you,” he said absently, backing out of the parking spot. “They’re quite a sight. Some people think they’re ugly. I don’t. In that barren country along the Columbia River, they seem to belong. There’s something spare and clean about them, like the landscape.”

“I vaguely knew that the utility companies were buying some wind power. I guess I hadn’t thought about how it was generated.” Her brow furrowed. “And your company builds them?”

“We don’t actually install them. Or manufacture the tower. What we’ve done is to design a turbine with flexible, hinged blades that reduce fatigue, so the turbine can be quite a bit lighter and therefore cheaper.”

“Are you an engineer, then?”

He shook his head. “Financial management. I have degrees in economics. I’m a C.P.A.”

“Oh, dear.” She cast him an embarrassed look. “Our little business must seem like awfully small potatoes to you.”

“All businesses start small.”

“Did your wind company?”

“We had big financial backing, but we faced a lot of the same challenges. We needed to manufacture our turbine and then prove it worked as well if not better than existing ones. It was several years after start-up before we actually had any commercial success.”

“You mean, before you sold one?” Helen sounded horrified. “Several years?”

Alec laughed. “That’s normal, believe it or not. The investors were gambling. We could have spent all that money and never made a sale.”

“Good heavens.” She gazed at him in awe. “How terrifying.”

“It was a little scary,” he admitted, merging onto the freeway. “But I’ve worked in the wind industry before, so I recognized the brilliance of my partner’s concept. I thought it could help bring wind energy into the mainstream by reducing costs. Think about it.”

No matter how many times he’d given this speech, genuine passion still infused his voice. “We’re running out of fossil fuels. Dams cause ecological damage. But wind…it has all the power of a great river like the Columbia, and we can’t use it up. We borrow it, then let it whip on its way, unharmed by having spun the blades. It’s a nonpolluting source of electricity, it’s indigenous…” He glanced at her. “We don’t have to buy it from foreign nations. What’s the down side?”

She smiled at his fervor. “You tell me.”

He grimaced. “Well, the wind does die down sometimes, so it’s not a steady flow like a river. Better storage could solve that, though. The turbines do make some noise, and they can kill birds.”

“And they’re ugly,” she finished.

“Alien, maybe,” he conceded. “The beauty of it is, the land where the wind blows hardest is the least populated. Yeah, if we had a row of turbines climbing Capitol Hill or Queen Anne in Seattle, people would protest. But on a bare lava ridge beyond Vantage…why not?”

“The person who lives there might not agree,” she argued.

“That’s true. But what are the alternatives? More dams? Atomic power plants? They’d look like hell rearing above the Columbia River.”

Helen nodded thoughtfully. “That’s true, of course.”

He’d chosen a Greek restaurant right off Broadway on Capitol Hill, near the Harvard Exit Theater, which showed foreign and independent films. He and Linda had come here often, before they’d had children and started going to Disney movies at the multiplex instead.

Parking was always tricky here, but he got lucky and found a spot only a couple of blocks away. Walking the short distance, he asked Helen what movies she enjoyed, and found her tastes were similar to his.

“Actually,” she admitted with a sigh, “I don’t see very many rated much above PG. Sometimes, Kathleen or Jo rent something for us to watch after Ginny has gone to bed. They both like blockbusters. You know, lots of special effects, sex, big-name actors. I’ve always preferred small movies.” She said it almost timidly, as if embarrassed by her tastes. “The kind where nothing huge happens, but you’re left feeling good. Like, a while ago we rented Italian for Beginners. It’s actually Danish. Have you seen it?”

He shook his head.

“It was…sweet.” She laughed. “Okay. Now you can tell me you love Jerry Bruckheimer extravaganzas. Or you’re a James Bond fanatic.”

Alec grinned and took her arm as they crossed the street. “Not me. Hey, I already admitted I was never a car guy, didn’t I? I like numbers and computers. I was a geek.”

She gave him a look that raised his spirits considerably. “I can’t believe you were ever a geek.” Then she blushed as if realizing what she’d given away and added hastily, “Besides, some of them probably live vicariously by watching Terminator and what have you. After all, if Clark Kent can turn into Superman…”

“They, too, can jump from a helicopter onto the roof of a speeding car to rescue the damsel in distress?” He laid a hand on her lower back and steered her into the doorway of the restaurant.

Her chuckle was a delicious gurgle. “Something like that.” Then she looked around. “Oh, this is nice. I don’t go out often.”

“Single parents don’t.”

The hostess approached them with a smile. “Two for dinner?”

They followed her to a corner table in a room with dark beams, murals on plaster walls and tile floors. He liked the atmosphere here as much as the food.

Helen opened her menu. “I suppose you wine and dine customers and investors all the time.”

“Sometimes. But these days, we do most of our business by e-mail or conference call. Why waste hours to get together face-to-face when you can make decisions or discuss a problem in a few minutes?”

They glanced through the menu and ordered in between snatches of conversation. Alec watched her sip wine, her fingers slender on the stem of the glass, her hair shimmering as she tilted her head back to swallow. Her neck was long and slim, her throat white. He imagined kissing her in the hollow at the base, perhaps tasting that pale creamy skin. He would tangle his fingers in her riot of hair as he worked his way to her delicate chin and soft, full mouth. Perhaps by then her cheeks would flush the color of wild roses.

Captivated by the sight of her across the table from him as well as by his parallel fantasy, he took a moment to realize she seemed to be waiting for an answer.

“You’re so pretty.” His voice came out husky.

Her cheeks did turn pink. “Why, thank you.”

He cleared his throat. “Your household seems unusual. Do all those people live there?”

She laughed, her gaze still shy, her cheeks flushed. “I didn’t tell you, did I?”

“Tell me?”

“I only rent a room from Kathleen. It’s actually her house. And, yes, we all live there, except for Raoul, Emma’s boyfriend. He was the one studying in the living room.”

Alec nodded.

She explained that Kathleen had bought the house after her divorce and, to help pay the mortgage, had taken in two housemates, herself and Jo Dubray.

“She was the friend who took care of the booth while I went to lunch that day,” Helen explained. “Kathleen got married, and Logan moved in.” She laughed again at his expression. “He sold his house, which was smaller, and moved his workshop—he’s a cabinetmaker—into the basement, which we weren’t using anyway. He and Kathleen insisted that they wanted Ginny and me to stay. But I’m looking for a place to rent now. Kathleen and Logan have been great, and Ginny loves Emma, but…” She hesitated.

“You want a home of your own.”

She nodded. “Exactly. And also I suppose I want to prove to myself that I can take care of us. That’s probably silly, considering how easy I have it. Do you know how nice it is not to have to make dinner every single night, for example? Right now, we rotate, Logan, Kathleen, Emma and I. So I only cook once or twice a week. That’s pure luxury!”

“So it would be,” he said, amused. And—face it—a little jealous. Linda had loved to cook, so he’d been spoiled. Coming in the door after work every day to the smell of dinner in the oven, the kids running to meet him, his wife smiling and waiting for him to hug them and kiss her.

In one day, that had changed. He’d arrived home only to have Lily put her finger to her mouth and say, “Mommy’s napping ’cuz she’s tired. So we’re supposed to be specially quiet.” But even before that first warning, he had sometimes felt so lucky it scared him. He and his family had stepped from the canvas of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Amid the grief and shock of Linda’s death, putting dinner on the table every night had become an onerous chore. The kids helped as much as they could, but he still had to do the planning, the shopping, and about seventy-five percent of the cooking.

“Maybe you don’t want to move out,” he said, only half kidding. “Do you know what I’d give to have someone else make dinner some nights?”

“But would you give up having privacy? I do have my own bedroom, but sometimes I’d like to watch what I want on TV, or pig out on ice cream in the kitchen without having to share, or cry without having to explain. Or wander around without a bathrobe, or hear about Ginny’s day at school without at least a couple of other people commenting, too, or contradicting me if I’m trying to be stern.” She let out a gusty sigh. “And, oh, I feel so petty and ungrateful even saying that!”

Alec found there was so much he wanted to know about her, he ate without tasting his dinner, and didn’t notice when the waitress cleared their table. The one subject he avoided was her marriage and her husband’s death. He wanted to hear about her husband—eventually. But not tonight.

And he didn’t want to talk about Linda yet, either.

So he heard about Helen’s parents, her dad a mechanic, her mother a nurse, devoted to their only child, and told her in turn about his own upbringing with well-educated, financially successful parents who didn’t have much time for their two offspring.

They each talked a little about their children, and about grandparents and pets and co-workers. Two, then three hours flowed by. Entranced by her every expression, the purse of her lips or brief thoughtful frown or amusement that quivered at the corners of her mouth, he scarcely took his eyes from Helen’s face the entire evening.

He was startled when she suddenly gave a cry and said, “Oh, it’s ten o’clock! How did it get to be so late?”

“That’s not exactly the wee hours,” he teased.

She made a face at him. “No, but I have to work in the morning, believe it or not. Some of us don’t rest on Sundays.”

Alec was surprised himself to realize how reluctant he was for the evening to end. They’d hardly scratched the surface of each other’s lives!

Glancing at the check, he tossed bills on the table and stood. “Then we’d better get you home.”

Night had fallen now. The walk back to the car felt curiously intimate, only the two of them on the dark sidewalk. In the car he was even more conscious of being alone with her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so eager and awkward and nervous.

How would she feel about him kissing her? He hadn’t dated much; she hadn’t at all, apparently. Maybe she’d thought this was just a friendly dinner. Had he imagined the sparkle in her eyes or the warmth of her smile or the way she’d looked at him when she said, “I can’t believe you were ever a geek.” Maybe her apparent fascination with his life had been mere politeness.

She was quiet during the drive, responding with only a few words to his comments or questions. In the light of a streetlamp he saw that her fingers were knotted on her lap and she sat with her knees primly together and her back very straight.

Was she nervous, too?

Scowling ahead, he couldn’t decide if he was glad or sorry. He hated the idea that he scared her. But if she wasn’t nervous at all, then that would mean she didn’t feel the anticipation he did.

He pulled in right in front of her driveway, then turned off the engine. In the sudden silence, Helen gave him the look of a wild creature, cornered.

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