“I try not to,” she said, grateful when he laughed.
“There’s just something so wonderfully definitive about mathematics,” he continued. “It’s so clear. So true. What was it Keats said? Truth is beauty. Beauty truth. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.” He shrugged self-consciously. “Something like that anyway.”
“A banking consultant who quotes the Romantic poets,” Caroline said. “Interesting.”
“My wife was an English major.”
Caroline lowered her cup of coffee to the small round table between them. “You’re married?”
He hesitated. “Widower.” He cleared his throat. “Five years and I still have difficulty saying that word.”
“I’m sorry. Had she been sick?”
“Not a day in her life. Healthy as a horse until the moment some drunken asshole plowed into her when she was walking our six-year-old daughter to school.”
“Your daughter…”
“Killed instantly.”
“My God. How awful.”
“Eight o’clock in the morning and the guy’s already drunk out of his mind. Didn’t even realize he’d hit anyone until the police showed up to arrest him. God, I hate alcoholics. Anyway,” he said, snapping back to the present, “this isn’t exactly the kind of first date repartee I had in mind.”
“Is this a first date?”
“I was kind of hoping.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a date,” Caroline conceded, returning her coffee cup to her lips. “I’m divorced,” she offered. “About eight years now.”
“Kids?”
“A daughter. Michelle. She’s a teenager. Not a particularly easy one.” Caroline felt a twang of guilt. Arthur’s daughter was dead, mowed down by a drunk driver on her way to grade school, along with his wife. Who was she to complain about a difficult teenager? She fought the urge to tell him about Samantha.
“You and your ex get along?” he asked, stopping her just in time.
“Not really. Well, sort of, I guess,” she amended. “We’re not enemies or anything like that.”
“That’s good.”
“Not really friends either.”
“Guess you wouldn’t be divorced if you got along great.”
“He’s getting married again in June,” Caroline confided. “Big wedding. All the trimmings.”
Arthur lowered his chin and raised his eyes, clearly relieved he was no longer the center of the conversation. “And how do you feel about that?”
“I don’t really have feelings about it, one way or the other. No, that’s not true,” she said in the same breath. “To be honest, I’m a little pissed.”
“Because you still love him?”
“Because his fiancée is considerably younger than I am.”
He laughed.
“Still think I have deep thoughts?”
“I think your ex is a jackass for letting you go.”
Caroline shook her head. “Yeah, well, you don’t know me very well.”
“I’d like to.”
She leaned forward, rested her elbows on the table. “Why?”
“Why?” he repeated. “Well, for starters, you’re beautiful, smart, and more than a little mysterious. Always an intriguing combination.”
“You think I’m mysterious?”
“Lady, I think there’s all sorts of stuff going on inside that lovely head.”
Her turn to laugh. “What if it turns out to be empty?”
“Not a chance,” he said.
“You’re not from California, are you?” she asked, feeling slightly flushed and taking refuge in the traces of an East Coast accent she heard lurking inside his vowels.
“Utica, New York,” he said. “I moved here after…Been here four years now.”
“I take it you like it here.”
“What’s not to like? Sunshine almost every day, a temperature that rarely strays more than ten degrees from moderate, the Pacific Ocean, Mexico on my doorstep.”
Caroline felt the coffee cup slip between her fingers at the mention of Mexico. Arthur’s hand shot out to catch it before it fell to the floor.
“Well, that was close,” he said, wiping the sudden spray of dark liquid from his muscular forearm.
“Sorry about that.”
“Something I said?”
“No. Although you do have quite a way with words.”
“I do?”
“A temperature that rarely strays more than ten degrees from moderate; Mexico on my doorstep,” she quoted, forcing the word “Mexico” from her mouth, feeling it wobble as it left her tongue.
“I said that?”
“You did.”
“Well, it’s the truth. In my humble opinion, Southern California is as close to paradise as anywhere on earth.”
“I guess.”
“So, tell me more about Caroline Tillman,” he said. “Does she like sports, movies, traveling?”
“She likes baseball. I know a lot of people think it’s kind of boring, and I guess it can be. But I love it—all the statistics and stuff. Keeping track of the hits and runs and errors, how many strikeouts, all that. It’s kind of…I don’t know…”
“Poetic in a mathematical kind of way?” he offered.
Caroline laughed again, finding Arthur Wainwright more appealing by the minute.