Page 54 of The Playboy and the Widow
Cliff pulled a pen from inside his suit pocket and knelt in front of Katie.
“What took you so long?” Katie demanded as Cliff started penning his message on her cast.
“I don’t know, buttercup,” he answered, looking up to Diana and smiling.
“I can’t get over how much the girls have grown,” Joyce Shaffer, Diana’s mother, said with an expressive sigh, alternately glancing between Joan and Katie.
“It’s been a year, Mom.” The long flight from Seattle to Wichita had left the girls and Diana exhausted. Joan and Katie had fallen asleep ten minutes after they arrived at Diana’s family home. Diana longed to join her daughters, but her parents were understandably excited and wanted to chat. Diana and her mother gathered around the kitchen table, nibbling on chocolate chip cookies, drinking tall glasses of milk and talking.
“Poor Katie,” her mother went on to say sympathetically. “Is her arm still hurting?”
“It itches more than anything.”
Burt Shaffer pulled up a chair and joined the two women. “Who’s this Cliff fellow the girls were telling me about?”
Diana hesitated, not exactly sure how to explain her relationship with Cliff. She didn’t want to lead her family into thinking she was about to remarry, nor did she wish to explain that she and Cliff had reached a still untested understanding.
“Cliff and I have dated a few times.” That was the best explanation she could come up with on such short notice. She should have been prepared for this. The minute the girls had stepped off the plane, Katie had shown her grandparents where Cliff had signed her cast and told the detailed story of how he’d let her ride in his car on the way home from the hospital. First Katie, then Joan, had spoken nonstop for a full five minutes, extolling his myriad virtues, until Diana had thought she’d scream at them both to cut it out.
“So you’ve only dated him a few times.” Her father nodded once, giving away none of his feelings. “The girls certainly seem to have taken a liking to him. What about you, rosebud? Do you think as highly of this Cliff fellow as Joan and Katie seem to?”
“Now really, Burt,” her mother cut in. “Don’t go quizzing poor Diana about the men in her life the minute she walks in the door. Diana, dear, did I tell you Danny Helleberg recently moved back to town?”
Diana and Danny had gone to high school together a million years ago. Although they’d been in the same class, Diana had barely known him. “No...”
“I talked to his mother the other day in the grocery store and I told her you were flying out for a visit. She says Danny would love to see you again.”
“That would be nice.” Not really, but Diana didn’t want to disappoint her mother.
“I’m glad you think so, honey, because he phoned and I told him to call again in the morning.”
“That’d be great.” Her smile was weak at best. She had hardly said more than a handful of words to Danny Helleberg the entire time they were in school together. Recounting the memory of their high-school days should take all of five minutes. It was the only thing they had in common.
“His wife left him for another man. I did tell you that, didn’t I? The poor boy was beside himself.”
“Yes, Mom, I think you did mention Danny’s marital problems.” She tried unsuccessfully to swallow a yawn, gave up the effort and planted her hand over her mouth, hoping her parents got the hint.
They didn’t.
“Danny and his wife are divorced now.”
Diana did her best to try to look interested. It was the same way every visit—her parents seemed to think it was their duty to supply her with another husband. Every summer a variety of men were paraded before her while Diana struggled to appear grateful.
“Tell us about Cliff,” her dad prompted.
Diana’s fingers tightened around her milk glass. “There really isn’t much to tell. We’ve only gone out a few times.”
“What’s his family like?” her mother wanted to know, looking as though she already disapproved. If Diana was going to remarry, it was her mother’s opinion that the man should be from Wichita. Then Diana wouldn’t have any more excuses to remain in Seattle.
“Really, Mom, I don’t have any idea—I haven’t met his parents.”
“I see.” Her mother exchanged a look with her father that Diana recognized all too well.
“Cliff’s an attorney,” she added hurriedly, hoping that would impress her parents.
“That’s nice, dear.” But her mother didn’t seem overly swayed by the information. “We just hope you aren’t serious about this young man.”
“Why?” Diana asked, surprised.
