Recipe for Romance by Olivia Miles Read Free Book Online Page A

tomorrow.”
    Scott nodded. Topic closed, the room fell silent again. He released a heavy sigh. “Where’s...”
    “Dad?” Lucy lifted an eyebrow. Tight-lipped, she returned her attention to the salad. “He’s upstairs.”
    His mother appeared in the arched doorway that led to the dining room. “He’s so pleased to know you’re here,” she added.
    That makes one of us.
    Scott rolled his shoulders, pushing back the resentment. He was angry at his parents—angry to the bone—but damn it if a part of him didn’t ache when he thought of them. It was easier, with time and distance, to just focus on the bad—on the event that had severed his ties with them for good. But all it took was one hint of his mother’s smile, the lull of her voice, to make him wish with all his might that things could have been different, that he could have just loved his parents and let them love him. That he didn’t have to look at them and be reminded of everything that had been lost instead.
    He set his jaw and turned to the window, looking out over the backyard that stretched to the wood. Tulips had sprung up around the edges of the house providing a cheerful contrast to the situation within.
    “Your father won’t be able to come down for dinner,” his mother was saying as she pulled three place mats from the basket on the baker’s rack. “We’ll take some soup up to him after he rests.”
    They wandered silently into the dining room, his mother taking her usual place at the head of the table closest to the kitchen, he and Lucy sliding into their childhood seats on autopilot. Scott unfolded the thick cloth napkin and placed it in his lap. “Looks delicious, Lucy,” he said as she handed him a plate with a large steaming square of lasagna.
    “Lucy’s been keeping us well fed,” his mother said through a tight smile. “More food than one person can eat, really,” she continued, her voice growing sad. “Have you been over to the office yet?” his mother continued.
    It both amazed and saddened Scott that his relationship with his mother had come to this: polite, stilted conversation. As though there was never a bond between them—not a shared love, not a shared life, not a shared secret.
    He took a bite of the lasagna. “Not yet.” He forced his tone not to turn bitter when he said, “Given Dad’s commitment to the company, I think it’s safe to assume everything is in place for the library project and I can just take over where he left off.” A heavy silence fell over the room.
    Lucy bit on her lip and then asked tentatively, “Why don’t you go upstairs and see him after we’re finished with dinner?”
    His stomach twisted, but he nodded. Wordlessly, he finished his meal, slowly pushed back his chair and followed his mother up the stairs, his pulse taking speed with each step. He kept his gaze low, noticing how the floorboards creaked under the weight of each step. Lucy stayed downstairs, under the guise of cleaning up the kitchen, but he knew better. She was down there wringing her hands, saying a hundred desperate prayers that progress would be made, and that all would be forgotten.
    Oh, Lucy.
    “He might be sleeping,” his mother whispered as they approached the master bedroom. She stopped, her hand clutching the brass knob. “Let me just go in and tell him you’re here.”
    Scott stepped back and his mother slipped through the door, leaving it open an inch. Through the crack he could hear her soothing voice telling his father that “Scottie” was home and wanted to see him. If his father said anything in return, it wasn’t audible from this distance.
    His mother tipped her head around the door frame and nodded. With one last sharp breath, Scott entered the room, his blood stilling at what he saw. His father, once a strapping, robust man with a handsome face and personality that could intimidate even the strongest of men on a construction crew, had withered into a frail wisp of his former self. His skin,