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  He thought maybe she did know, and for some reason it helped. He leaned over and brushed her lips with his, something softening in his chest when she reached up in response to stroke the back of his neck with her fingers.

  The opera began and any more conversation became impossible. Baron listened to the music with half his mind while the other half whirled over a million plans, possibilities, and outcomes.

  Both he and Leila were quiet on the way home. He got out of the car to walk her up to her house, and they both paused outside the door.

  “Thank you, Baron,” she said, smiling, although she appeared faintly uncertain. “I really enjoyed it.”

  “Me too.” He had enjoyed it. Most of it. And the confrontation with Steven didn’t count. He glanced at the closed door. He knew he couldn’t come in, although obviously he’d love to spend the night with her. He also kind of wanted to see the girls—make sure they weren’t disappointed with him, that they still liked him after the earlier episode. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Leila’s face visibly brightened at his words, and Baron wondered if she thought this was the only date they were going to have.

  “If you’re free next weekend, maybe we can go out again. And I need to come by sometime to help the girls with the castle.”

  “Right,” she said, an irresistible glow on her face. “I’m free next weekend, and the girls will be thrilled if you can come by sometime to help them with the castle.” She reached up and closed her fingers around the lapels of his jacket. “Thank you.”

  He shook his head. “Thank you.”

  He leaned down to kiss her then, telling himself not to get carried away. Her lips and body were responsive, and for a minute Baron felt like he would drown in her softness, the sweet, fresh scent of her, the obvious eagerness in her touch.

  But he pulled away when his body started to react. With a last stroke of her flushed cheek, he said, “Have a good night.”

  “You too.” She opened the door and, with one last, lingering look at him, she went inside, shutting it quietly behind her.

  Baron stood and stared at the closed door for a minute, wishing his life were different, that he wasn’t burdened by so much work and conflict, that it was easy for him to enter and share in Leila’s life.

  It wasn’t going to be easy or simple, but maybe it wasn’t impossible.

  His brother had shown up tonight—the clean boundaries of his compartmentalized life had been blown wide open—but this new, tenuous thing with Leila hadn’t totally fallen apart.

  Nothing had fallen apart.

  Since he was teenager, it had felt like he and his brother were trapped in an endless battle. Even Steven’s retreat had been a parry and not a surrender. Nothing had changed, really, but for the first time Baron felt like the warfare could eventually end.

  There might be some way for him to walk unwounded away from the battle.

  Maybe it was a childish delusion, but he wasn’t yet ready to let it go.

  ***

  “But how will the drawbridge go up?” Jane asked, soberly studying the cardboard structure they’d spent the last hour building in a corner of the girls’ bedroom. “It has to go up and down over the moat.”

  The moat was a long strip of white craft paper Baron had brought over earlier that week that the girls had dutifully colored blue, the water filled with assorted fish, turtles, one enormous purple whale, and a fire-breathing sea monster with triangular fins all down his back and tail.

  He returned to his supply box and pulled out a light rope and pulley. He’d spent a ridiculous amount of time figuring out the best plan for the drawbridge, and he was pleased that he’d predicted that the twins wouldn’t be impressed by manually lifting up the cardboard bridge. “You need a pulley system for a good drawbridge,” he said, getting back down on his knees in front of the castle gate.

  “Yeah,” Charlotte echoed, her green eyes wide and round. “A pulley system.”

  “How does a pulley system work?” Jane asked, looking dubiously from the rope and pulley to the drawbridge.

  Baron started to explain the mechanics in terms as simple as he could manage, but then he noticed that Leila was smiling from the other side of the room. Something about her smile made him self-conscious. It wasn’t a mocking or a derisive smile, but she appeared to be having too much fun watching him navigate the difficult waters of castle construction with two six-year-old girls.

  When Leila noticed his gaze, she raised her eyebrows and widened her smile, as if daring him to do something.

  Baron couldn’t help but smile back. If he lost track of his explanation of the pulley system for a moment, the girls didn’t seem to notice.

  “So the rope goes over the round thing?” Jane asked at last. “And it pulls up the bridge?”

  “Exactly.” Baron scooted closer to the castle wall, wishing he didn’t look quite so undignified. There was absolutely no way to appear dignified if you were trying to walk on your knees. “See—we’ll attach it here, and then this end of the rope will connect to the bridge.”

  Charlotte clapped her hands in delight and declared, “And we’ll pull up the bridge!”

  “Yes. We’ll pull up the bridge.”

  The three of them worked in silence for a few minute, and Baron had the uneasy feeling that Leila might be quietly laughing behind his back. While her clear enjoyment wasn’t mean-spirited, he would have preferred to impress her or seduce her rather than amuse her.

  “I want to pull it up first,” Charlotte said, when Baron had attached the pulley in place.

  Jane’s excited face fell. “I want to pull it!”

  “Why don’t you both pull it together?” Leila suggested mildly.

  To Baron’s relief, this plan was immediately accepted, and Jane and Charlotte both got a hand on the rope and triumphantly pulled up the bridge.

  The successful implementation of this maneuver resulted in great cheering from Leila and the girls and considerable dancing around the room from the girls.

  Baron had never experienced anything like it. While one would think he was too experienced and jaded to feel any sort of thrill over such a trivial achievement, he couldn’t help but find their exuberance contagious.

  Not that he would be cheering and dancing any time soon, but he realized he was smiling more than expected.

  “Thank you for our castle, Mr. Baron!” Charlotte exclaimed, as dramatic in her gratitude as she was in everything else. Out of an abundance of joie de vivre, she hurled herself at Baron's back and hugged him hard around his neck.

  He froze for a moment. There wasn’t any way he could respond, fortunately, since she was hugging him from behind. So he simply didn’t pull away.

  He wasn’t used to being hugged. Certainly not by children. In fact, he realized, as the girl’s little arms squeezed him so hard she might have cut off his air, he wasn’t used to being touched in any way that wasn’t professional—like a handshake—or sexual.

  Baron managed not to pull away in discomfort. Then Jane, seeing it was acceptable, gave him a hug too—hers from the side.

  He felt better once he was able to get up off the floor, and they all stood up to admire their handiwork.

  The castle was really impressive. It boasted two towers, a turret, crenellation on the top of the walls, and a gatehouse. Most of it was made of heavy-duty cardboard with gray paper stones pasted on, but the girls could enter at the gate and duck behind the wall or stand up behind the towers.

  “I think we need a horsey in front of the wall,” Jane said.

  Baron nodded. “Why don’t you draw one, cut it out, and then you can put it on the wall near the ground there?”

  “Should there be some cats?” Charlotte asked, pulling on one of her ponytails.

  Baron would have preferred that his castle not be marred with an excessive number of cats milling around. But, in the interest of historical accuracy, he admitted, “There might be a cat in a castle. There definitely would have been so
me dogs, though. The knights went hunting with dogs.”

  “Big dogs?”

  “All sizes.”

  As the girls mulled over the possibilities, there was a knock on the front door of the house.

  “That’s probably your Grandpa,” Leila said, standing up from the bed where she’d been sitting. “He’ll definitely want to see your castle.”

  The girls scampered off in excitement over this, and Leila walked out of the room with Baron more slowly. She put a hand on his back as she went, smiling at him in a way that made his heart beat a little faster.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve such a smile from her, but he wasn’t going to complain.

  * * *

  A few hours later, Baron and Leila left a quiet French restaurant downtown, after they’d gone through a new Greek pottery exhibit she was interested in.

  Thankfully, their departure didn’t provoke any tantrums or crying from the girls this time.

  The exhibit was good, and dinner was good. Their conversation wasn’t awkward or stilted, and Leila was gorgeous in dark jeans and a green sweater that accentuated her breasts and deepened the color of her eyes.

  But something felt off.

  He wasn’t sure what it was. Leila wasn’t acting wrong in any way, but she felt withdrawn somehow, the shift happening sometime after they'd left her house.

  Baron couldn’t figure how or why it had happened.

  The afternoon had gone well. The girls had behaved nicely, and Leila had evidently appreciated his efforts with them. Joe had chatted with him in a friendly, laidback way, and Baron couldn’t think of a thing he’d said or done that would have prompted this sudden shift.

  He’d even turned off his phone, so their date wouldn’t be interrupted by a constant stream of work calls and messages.

  In the lulls of conversation, he racked his mind for an explanation.

  A couple of months ago, he never would have imagined that he might have something like Leila and her family in his world, but he was starting to realize he wanted that part of life—he’d always wanted it. And it had looked for a while like it could be a possibility.

  To have it taken away so suddenly—with no clear explanation—would be hard.

  “It’s not even nine,” Baron said, as they left the restaurant. “Is there something else you’d like to do?”

  While what he wanted to do was get a room at the hotel across the street, he was pretty sure that wasn’t on the agenda for the evening.

  “We can get some dessert or coffee,” he suggested.

  “Yeah, that would be good.” Leila looked up at him and smiled, but there was something wistful, rather than intimate, in her eyes. “Ice cream?”

  He smiled, although he could feel a weight of dread deepening in his gut. “Ice cream it is. There’s a place just down the block, if you don’t mind walking.”

  “That’s great. It’s a beautiful evening.”

  It was beautiful. Clear and crisp and perfectly autumn. But Baron didn’t admire the weather, the evening sky, or the city lights.

  He had an internal battle with himself over what he should do about the change he felt in Leila.

  Finally, the desperate part of himself won out over his pride and sense of self-preservation. “Is something wrong?” he asked, trying to keep his voice mild as it broke the silence between them.

  “No,” she said, emotion twisting on her face as she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “I mean... No. I mean...” She gave a little laugh at her own inarticulateness.

  Whatever the problem was, she was really nervous about saying it.

  Baron started to move into crisis-mode, his heartbeat accelerating and his mind focusing acutely on every detail of the scene around him. He’d jumped out of enough planes in his life to recognize the surge of adrenalin.

  “I guess I’m starting to get a little worried,” Leila blurted out at last.

  “About us?”

  There was any number of reasons why Leila might decide that a relationship with Baron wasn’t worth pursuing. He’d never been the most obvious choice for her.

  “Yeah.” She looked away from him. “I know it’s too early for us to...for us to define anything about this. I know it’s too early. We just started going out. But...but I’m worried. For the girls.”

  Baron drew his eyebrows together. This wasn’t at all what he’d expected, but he was starting to see where it was going. The impending dread in his gut transformed into nervousness.

  “I know we’ve only gone out a couple of times, but the girls have seen you fairly regularly for a couple of months. That seems like a long time to them. If you haven’t noticed, they’re getting rather attached to you.”

  “Yes,” he agreed slowly.

  “I know there are no guarantees in relationships—particularly this early—and I’m trying to help the girls see that there are grown-up things involved in how much time you spend with them. But...but...if you know that nothing is going to come of this... I mean, if you’re pretty sure that this is just something for...for fun...or something different for you to try for a little while...if you already know that, it will probably be better if we don’t go any further. I mean, the girls are going to be crushed even now if...if we end things. But they’ll be heartbroken if this goes on much longer and ends later on.”

  Baron knew that hadn’t been easy for Leila to say, and as soon as she’d mentioned the girls, he was pretty sure what to expect.

  But it didn’t make it any easier for him. It put him on the spot. Made him say things—commit to things—that were so unfamiliar, so new, so risky.

  The price for not doing so would be losing Leila, the girls, any possibility of getting something more from his life.

  Leila had paled a little under the shadowed light of the streets, and her eyes looked enormous as she gazed up at him. “I’m so sorry to do this. I know it’s too early. And if you just can’t...can’t... I would understand.” She quirked up the corner of her lips. “I would be sorry, but I’d understand.”

  For some reason, her expression as she said the last words—half earnest, half ironic, completely vulnerable—gave Baron the push to say what he needed to say.

  “I don’t know for sure what can come of this,” he said, his voice thicker than it should have been but otherwise normal. “But I’m not just having fun. I know there’s no reason for you believe it—based on my history—but I’m not assuming this is only temporary.”

  It was as much as he could say, as much as he could admit.

  Evidently it was enough. Leila’s face transformed, and her smile when she lifted her head was almost blinding.

  He felt a matching rush of joy and excitement, although he could never express it as openly as Leila.

  “So,” he said, wanting to make sure the withdrawal he’d felt in her earlier was completely done away with. “So we’re okay? For now, at least?”

  “Yeah. We’re good. Thank you.” Leila reached up and eased her arms around his neck, pulling him into a hug. Instinctively, he wrapped his arms around her too, forgetting they were still in the middle of the sidewalk.

  He almost wanted to laugh that, after years without any hugs at all, he’d somehow earned three in one day.

  He wanted to touch Leila, wanted to be close to her in other ways too. The feel of her soft body against his, the scent of her every time he inhaled, began to arouse him almost immediately.

  She pulled away slightly—not withdrawing her arms but creating enough space for her to look up into his face. She appeared to want to say something, but she didn’t.

  Baron wasn’t sure what to say either, so he did what he wanted to do. He kissed her.

  Leila responded immediately, soft and eager in his arms, and soon Baron began to regret embracing her in the middle of the sidewalk.

  Not that he didn’t enjoy it, but there were some physical consequences to being this close to her that were better dealt with in private.

  “Baro
n,” she said eventually, pulling out of the kiss flushed and breathless. She slid her hands from the back of his neck to fist in his shirt.

  “Hmm,” he murmured, trying to keep from rubbing his groin against her middle or something else inappropriate on a city street.

  “Maybe we don’t need the ice cream.”

  His lips parted, unable to believe that she might be suggesting what had seemed so impossible only a few minutes ago.

  “We can’t go back to my place, of course,” she said, appearing as reluctant to pull away from him as he was her. “But...but if there’s somewhere else.”

  He nodded over her shoulder. “There’s a good hotel—across the street. If that wouldn’t be too...” he trailed off, not sure how to articulate his concern.

  She laughed. “Too sleazy? It doesn’t look sleazy at all. And it’s in a very convenient location.”

  Baron had to use all of his control to not appear absurdly grateful for this turn of events.

  “So,” Leila finished, so beautiful, tender, and provocative he couldn’t believe she was the girl he’d known all those years ago, “why don’t we get a room?”

  ***

  Baron couldn’t focus much on details as they walked across the street to the hotel, checked into a room, and made their way up to the top floor. Leila was warmly funny—making the occasional ironic joke that Baron thought might be prompted by a little self-consciousness.

  She was definitely more relaxed than he was, though.

  Baron was excited—physically and emotionally. He tried to convince himself that there was no sense in inflating one sexual encounter way out of proportion. He’d never taken sex seriously before.

  But he couldn’t help but feel like this might mean something.

  And he really didn’t want to blow it.

  When they stopped in front of the door to the room, he looked at the key card to determine which way to slide it through the reader and told himself to pull it together.

  He was good at sex. He’d always been good at sex.

  His focus disintegrated completely when he felt one of Leila’s arms slide around his waist and then felt her lips at the base of his skull.

  His whole body tightened in response.