Dating A Silver Fox (Never Too Late) (2 page)

Not that being gray had obviously brought any true maturity to them, Lydia decided, watching the one couple being embarrassingly demonstrative with each other. They were holding hands like teenagers as they ate. The man had even leaned over and kissed the woman several times, once after he’d fed her a bite of something from his plate. The next time he leaned into her, he kissed her neck and the woman giggled.

Disgusting, Lydia thought. How could they act like that in public? People their age ought to have more of a sense of decorum.

She sipped her wine and tackled her dinner with gusto when it arrived hot and steaming perfect. But the laughter, the giggling, and the loud, bragging conversation were just too much to ignore long enough to enjoy her food. What was it going to take for her to finish her dinner in peace?

Finally, Lydia stood and laid her napkin beside her plate. Hoping a trip to the ladies’ room would erase her unease and perhaps prevent her the unpleasant necessity of asking them to keep the noise level down at their table, she gestured to Andrea and held up two fingers. Her server nodded at the familiar signal indicating how long she’d be away and Lydia quickly walked to the bathroom with her purse tucked under her arm.

Lydia had just chosen the last and cleanest stall of three when the two noisy women from the table next to hers came into the room. They were sighing and laughing as they filled the other two stalls. Lydia sat in the stall, staring at the ceiling, and wondering why she was being punished this evening.

“Lana, you’re not going to let that woman ruin your anniversary are you?” one asked. “She kept glaring at you and George all through dinner.”

“Ruin it? Are you kidding?” the other answered. “I felt sorry for her. She was eating her dinner all alone, pretending like it didn’t matter. Seeing her only makes me more grateful for my marriage. God, sixty-two is old, but most of the time I don’t care about time passing. I’ve been with George half my lifetime and still think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

“I know. I admit I’m jealous. You two are so great. Have George talk to Len for me, will you? I think Len has forgotten what romance is,” non-Lana said. “I can’t remember the last time he kissed my neck and made me giggle. Maybe if I held the TV remote for ransom, he might get motivated.”

There was more laughter, the sound of the stall doors opening and water running, and finally hands being washed. The rustle of paper towels filled a momentary silence without further chatter. Lydia sighed with frustration when they started talking again.

“I don’t get it. I bet she’s not even our age. Why would someone as good-looking as that woman not have a man in her life?” Lana pondered.

“Lord—that’s an easy answer, which you would have figured out yourself if George hadn’t scrambled your brain kissing you on the neck,” non-Lana answered. “She’s obviously a total bitch to live with. Did you hear the way she talked to her server? Who would want to put up with that bitchy criticism all the time? No one looks that good. Her last man is probably even now in bed with an ugly woman who talks all sweetie, baby to him.”

“You don’t even know her story. That’s an awful thing to say,” Lana said, laughing at her slightly drunk friend’s joke.

“Yes—awful to say, but also probably true,” non-Lana said with a snide self-confidence, bumping open the door. “Come on, I’m ready to go dancing. The guys are waiting. It feels like prom all over again.”

Their laughter faded as they walked out the door and away.

Inside her hiding place, Lydia stared at the back of the stall door and breathed through the discomfort of what she had heard. The pain was familiar, but it had been a while since she’d overheard such a sharp critique of herself. Normally, criticism like that only came from her daughter. But even Lauren cloaked her displeasure in innuendo instead of cold words.

As she tidied her clothes, Lydia ordered herself to shake it off. What did it matter if strangers thought she was a bitch? It wasn’t the first time she’d accidentally heard bad news in a bathroom. Gossiping women was how she had discovered William had taken his first mistress. Hearing bad news had hurt then too, but the pain had dulled by the time the other two long-term mistresses had come along. William had told her about them himself.

It had been many years since she’d found herself thinking about William’s indiscretions. After the first one, talk among their social group and friends had spread so badly that divorce had seemed the only dignified option at one point. Her mother’s stinging reprimands about the social scandal had doused the flames of the personal anger that had flared inside her at living with a man who showed little remorse for replacing his wife with multiple bed partners. Lydia decided her sense of fairness had been beaten back only by her parents focusing on what everyone else thought about her circumstances. It was the only time in her life she could remember her mother had ever pleaded with her not to do something. It had been one more convincing reason to try to salvage her relationship, but it had cost her to win her mother’s approval.

Choosing not to divorce a man she hadn’t wanted in the first place had required she and William come to a civilized agreement about their relationship—or rather lack of one. He had told her that he intended to have his needs met and she could either deal with it or divorce him. If she had loved him, things might have turned out very differently, but she’d never really felt that about any male—or at least not that she could recall.

Now she was certain that she had done the right thing socially by staying, ironically becoming a more virtuous woman for her own lack of looking outside her marriage. But how could she with her husband’s insistence that she was frigid and needed help echoing in her mind? His sexual criticism lingered still today, refusing to be banished even by his death and the passage of more years of widowhood than she could bear thinking about at times.

Maybe she should have sought another relationship, but she had never come across a man that had seemed worth the effort. Or the risk of failing again, and maybe with someone who would have told everyone she knew about it.

Not that she considered her efforts to be a good wife a failure.

Hadn’t she always submitted to William’s occasional attempts to be intimate, regardless of how they made her feel? Hadn’t she done everything her husband had asked? It hadn’t been enough, had never in all their years together been enough.

Nothing she had done had made him any happier with her. In the end, there had only been more and more women. By the time he had his first heart attack, all compassion for him had fled in the face of how miserable she was to be his wife. Though she’d kept him in the house for many months of his sickness, Lauren had visited him more than she had in the hospital during those last days. His death had been a sad liberation for her. She had not had in her to grieve him.

At William’s request, they had kept the truth from the child they had created. Lydia had done all she could over the years to confront the wagging tongues and hurtful stares with the appearance of normality, but Lauren had found out about it in college anyway. The daughter of a woman William had dated ended up telling Lauren the truth about her father’s philandering ways.

Lauren’s confrontation with her about her part in maintaining the illusion was still one of Lydia’s most painful memories.

And then history repeated itself. Everyone said so, and it certainly was the case with the women in her family, Lydia decided. When Lauren had married eventually, she had ended up with the same kind of bed-hopping husband. Like William, her son-in-law was not a bad man—just a weak one. Fortunately, Lauren had not had a child with Jared. If she had, she’d likely still be in that relationship and not have managed to find anything better.

Lydia frowned as she waited three more minutes, then walked out of the stall and to the sink, automatically running water and washing her hands—hands Lydia couldn’t help noticing were trembling. Thinking about why, she decided it was the bitch remark that had stung the most.

No one had ever said it to her face, though she imagined several had thought it, especially when she spoke up to defend something. But then any woman who spoke her mind eventually got tagged with that moniker. Gone were the days of polite filtering.

Look at the two women Lauren kept company with most. Their language was punctuated with swearing. It wouldn’t surprise her to learn Lauren adopted it herself when she was with them.

Really—when Lydia thought about it—what else but vitriolic words could be expected from the two laughing women at the next restaurant table? They had been drinking bottle after bottle of wine at dinner. They were probably just drunk and out of control.

Lydia studied her reflection, but saw only the same person she always did. Her carefully streaked hair was still in place and her lipstick fading appropriately with dinner. Her gray eyes held no more pain than she was accustomed to seeing in her gaze.

Ignoring the nagging voice inside her, shaking her head over the rationalization, Lydia was careful to avoid staring in the mirror as she finished up. As she left to return to the table though, she realized her appetite was completely gone. In its place was a knot in her stomach that felt like she’d swallowed a baseball.

“Everything alright?” Andrea asked, not meeting Mrs. McCarthy’s gaze in case her own was not properly sympathetic.

“The food is fine. I just got really tired suddenly. I’ll take the check and the rest to go,” Lydia said.

Andrea boxed her food in record time. Lydia signed the check for dinner with a frown, then dug a twenty out of her purse and placed it on the table too.

The exorbitant tip was not out of guilt, she assured herself. The girl had been exemplary this evening and deserved to be rewarded. It was certainly not to prove the laughing women had been wrong about her, though Lydia did briefly wish they were still there to see her being gracious so they could find it out for themselves. That might teach them not to gossip so much.

She nodded briefly at Andrea’s wide eyes landing on the cash and the softly spoken good-bye she received from the startled girl, not at all happy with the thoughts pushing forward in her mind.

Chapter 2

From her position under her desk, Jane Fox Waterfield glared up in disbelief at her sixty-two-year-old father, Morrison Eli Fox, wondering if she needed to have him tested for mental disorders. It was the only rational explanation for his latest obsession.

“Have you ever just looked at someone and been interested for no logical reason? There’s just something about the woman that intrigues me. I like the way she looks so prim and proper in her expensive clothes,” Morrie joked, laughing at his daughter’s pained expression. “What? Don’t you think I can charm her?”

“Right Dad. Don’t make me laugh,” Jane said, doing just that as she traced power cords and cables. She finally found one with a broken plastic connector that would have to be replaced before she could gain access to her back-up drive.

Jane crawled back out, straightening her slacks as she stood to face an unapologetically masculine male grin. She rolled her eyes, but knew the gesture was lost on her father.

“Dad, your charm is not the reason I’m cringing, though maybe it should be. I saw you chatting up Dorothy Henderson and where your hands were,” she declared.

Now it was her turn to smile when her father looked away, chagrined about being caught way more than he was embarrassed. While she never passed up a chance to tease him about it, her father’s flirting didn’t cause her any serious concerns. Her father had gone through a long dry spell of not being his normal outrageous self when her mother died. It had forced him into an early retirement and changed his life. Now he was finally more like he used to be when she was younger. How could that be bad?

Besides, how could someone thirty-eight, divorced, and who hadn’t had a real date for almost ten months judge anyone who was actually going out and taking chances. Truthfully, all Jane felt about her father’s love life at the moment was freaking envy. Hating her own singlehood, she hadn’t figured how her brother Elijah stood his self-imposed monastic existence. But even the “celibacy-is-righteous” Elijah hadn’t found fault with their father’s serial dating lifestyle.

Unlike the adult children of some of the residents of the luxurious North Winds Retirement Community for the elderly rich of Falls Church, the Fox siblings didn’t want their still-independent parent to resign himself to being lonely and alone without their mother. Jane would be the first to admit that when she had taken on rejuvenating North Winds, she had only been intending to flip the business and sell it, not provide her father with a whole new dating pool. Still, regardless of where Morrison Fox found his women, both Jane and Elijah definitely wanted their father to date.

Jane’s only problem was that she didn’t want her father to waste his time on a dried-up woman like Lydia McCarthy, who rarely had a kind word for anyone. Sure, the woman looked really good for her age, but that was about her only redeeming quality. Thinking of her father being on the receiving end of Lydia’s bitterness was enough to give Jane nightmares. It was already challenging enough to deal with Lydia herself when she showed up to volunteer—or as Jane had come to view it—showed up to insult the residents she tried to help.

“There are tons of nice women looking for a great guy like you, Dad. Go home and watch the movie
The Taming of a Shrew
. You can stream it from the video rental software we set up last weekend. It’s Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. I guarantee that movie will cure you of the urge to ask Lydia McCarthy out,” Jane said, grinning at her father.