“I don’t have any cousins. My mother is an only child and so is my father. I don’t know if I have cousins from my biological father.”
She felt Tyler move next to her and set the glass on the table. “Your biological father?”
It was at that moment she realized she was more than a little comfortable around him. Never had she mentioned her biological father to anyone except when she was fighting with her mother earlier.
“Yeah. My mother was only sixteen when she had me. All I know about the man whose hair color I share is that he was military, too. I suppose her age and his might have been why he disappeared forever.” She shrugged. “That’s about all I know.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No. It’s just something I can throw into an argument when I’m fighting with my mother.”
“Do you fight a lot?”
She shrugged and felt for her glass. “I have a feeling we will for a bit.” She took a sip. “Usually we have an okay relationship. We do get along. But the past year or two with me having more independence, well, I think that bothers her.”
“So she’ll get over it?”
She laughed. “I hope so. I plan to have a career, a husband, children—a life. She needs someone to take care of.”
“Maybe she needs a career.”
“She had one. When I lost my sight she gave it up.”
“And what did she do?”
Courtney sipped her wine again. “Financial planning.”
“Fitzpatrick Financial?”
“Yes. She’s the heir to the franchise. And beyond that—now I’m the heir.”
She could hear Tyler move through the kitchen. He moved past her and set something in front of her. “Bowl in front of you. Head of lettuce to the side of you. Tear it up,” he said with a laugh.
He moved back to the counter and she could hear him working on something else. Courtney situated the bowl and went to work on the head of lettuce.
“So, what about you? What kind of financial planner are you?”
“My checkbook is in balance,” she nearly snorted out a laugh. “I don’t care anything about financial.”
“You want to be a writer.”
She tore a piece of lettuce and let it fall into the bowl. “Right.”
Tyler began pounding something. It sounded as if he were fixing the kitchen.
“What are you doing?”
Tyler stopped. “Pounding chicken.”
“What are you making?”
“Lemon garlic chicken. Sorry. I could have warned you.”
“Never be sorry. I try not to let everything freak me out.”
“I can see that.” He went back to pounding the chicken. “So you’ll be fine on Sunday, right?”
“Sunday?”
“Dinner, remember?”
“You’re going to introduce me to your perfect family.”
“Right.”
“You think they’ll freak me out?”
He walked back and set down something on the table. “Oh, no. I think you’re going to fall in love.”
She continued to rip the lettuce and toss it into the bowl. With everything she had, she tried to keep her face calm and placid. She didn’t want to think about falling in love with his whole family. That would certainly seal the deal—after all, every moment she spent with Tyler she knew she was falling in love him.
Dinner had been delightful. Tyler had surprised himself with garlic lemon chicken. He hoped he’d impressed her too, because he wasn’t a chef.
They’d cleaned up after dinner and now sat on the front porch and listened to the kids play down the street.
“I think that is one of the happiest sounds,” she said as she took a sip of her wine. “Fitz would always play in the street with his friends. You could hear him for miles.”
“Spencer and I didn’t get to do that. Of course the road up to our house is two miles long. So I suppose we had our own street to play on.”
“I’ll bet you had many things you did on that road that other kids couldn’t do.”
Tyler gave it some thought. “We had little go karts that we could drive and I suppose we wore out a few sets of tires on that road.”
“See, Fitz couldn’t have done that.”
Tyler laughed. “It seems to me, he was the kind of kid who would have loved that.”
She nodded. “He would have. My father was so serious with him always that Fitz really appreciated the moments when he could just be a kid.”
“That would have been hard.” In fact, Tyler couldn’t even imagine. Even when telling his father that he didn’t want to work for his company, his father understood. “What about you? What did the young Courtney do?”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I have boxes of pages that I wrote in braille.” She opened her eyes and smiled. “That way my mother couldn’t read it.”
“Not all of us get to do things openly and yet secretly.”
“I suppose. I won a poetry contest once. I wrote about Fitz.”
“What did you write?”
Her smile widened. “I wrote about what a smelly boy he was.”
Tyler burst out in laughter. “I’m sure he appreciated that.”
“He did. I let him wear my medal around his neck.” She let out a sigh. “He certainly kept things normal for me.”
“And yet he blamed himself?”
She shrugged, the moment now growing dark. “It was always there. I don’t blame him. How could I? But for as much joy as he always gave me, he wasn’t so joyous.”
“What do you mean?”
Courtney sipped her wine again. “My father is very strict. My mother, well, she’s a bit needy in her own way. And Fitz had a lot of both of them. Add in a lifetime of guilt over my condition and you end up with a very depressed young man. Oh, he didn’t mope around or anything. In fact, if you met him you’d never know. But if you lived with him—well you get it.”
“It’s almost as if there is a glow to you when you speak of him.”
“I loved him.”
“You always will.”
She turned her head toward him and held her hand out for him to take. “I really like you, Tyler Benson.”
He swallowed hard. “I really like you too, Courtney Field.”