Conversations crisscrossed the table as Kate took a mouthful of mozzarella cheese salad and nodded at something Ryan had said.
She tried to pay attention to the conversations, but she was exhausted.
With one less team to work with, the projects that were handled by the original team ended up on her desk.
She hadn't worked this hard since she and Evelyn started out their company.
But no matter how busy she was at work, she always made it back home for dinner. That was the only part of the day she looked forward to.
Marianne's cooking was fantastic, but food wasn't the lure that made her pack up her work and leave her office on time.
Dinner was the only time she could talk to Tyler. And if she got home in time, she could sometimes spend an hour playing the piano with him.
Otherwise, they would drink their coffee and chat about work, or she would take out another photo album and make Tyler tell her the stories behind the photos.
She'd heard many of the stories before, but she loved seeing Tyler's smile whenever he spoke of them.
At times when he couldn't recall what happened, she would tell him what the late Mr. Hayes had told her instead.
The only downside to the conversations they had was Tyler's habit of making plans for them to head down to wherever the picture was taken.
She'd love to go to all those places with him. She'd love to see and do everything he said they could, but all they had was a year.
It started out exciting when he began planning their trip to the cabin. But as more places sprang up, the plans became reminders of how short a time she had with him.
There was no way they could do all the activities he'd planned in one year.
They would probably still be friends. They might still see each other once in a while, holidays perhaps. But things wouldn't be the same.
"Tired?"
She woke from her daze and turned to Tyler. "Yeah, I had to run around quite a bit today."
"Things will get better once the probation is over," he said with an encouraging smile.
She nodded.
"Tell you what. If you want, we'll make the trip to the cabin after the probation is over. I'll arrange everything."
There really wasn't a need for six whole months of probation, was there? She was sure the team had learned their lessons.
"If you want to go, that is."
"I'd love that."
"Great," he said with a grin. "And are you free this Friday night? It's the company's annual dinner, and I'm afraid that it may drag beyond midnight."
"I didn't think you'd bother to show up for these events."
"I have to show my face."
Chuckling, she nodded. "Yeah, I can go with you. Is it formal?"
"Is that all right?"
"Are you going to change the dress code for me if I say no?" she asked with a teasing grin.
"If that's what you want."
"And I bet you know that I won't. Anyway, Eve's been pestering me to go shopping with her; I can get a dress then."
She finished up her dinner, and for the first time since she'd been back from North Dakota with Tyler, she went straight to her room.
She wanted to spend some time with Tyler, but she couldn't keep her eyes open. Besides, shopping trips with Evelyn were always arduous events; she needed to recharge and prepare herself for it.
The next day, as she'd suspected, Evelyn was ecstatic that she wanted to go shopping.
They went from shop to shop, but even after Evelyn was carrying bags of new haul in both hands, Kate couldn't find any dress she truly liked.
Those that Evelyn chose were too revealing for her taste, and she couldn't find one that would make her look presentable enough for the dinner.
Stepping out of what was probably the fifteenth changing room, Kate brushed down the midnight-blue dress she had on and tilted to an angle to see how she looked in the mirror.
"You look great in the dress, and I'm not saying it because I'm getting tired. I'll tell you if they sucked, but you look great in so many of them," Evelyn said.
"I don't know ..."
"Why are you so nervous about the dinner?"
"I'm not nervous. I just want to be presentable."
"You look more than presentable. You're slim and tall; you look nice wearing anything."
Awkwardly, Kate pulled on the satin material around her chest. "It's sort of revealing."
"No, it's not. The back isn't cut that low, and it's not showing enough cleavage."
"We can make some alterations for you and pull the material closer around your chest," a sales assistant said from behind her.
"That would be great," she said before Evelyn could send the sales assistant away.
Evelyn watched her through the mirror as the sales assistant pulled the satin closer around her chest and pinned it up. "Are you guys getting serious? You've been spending a lot of time together."
Kate kept her eyes on the mirror, pretending to concentrate on what the sales assistant was doing, and avoided Evelyn's watchful eyes.
"I've been bugging you to come shopping with me, but you kept insisting on going back for dinner. Now you're getting yourself all flustered over a dinner."
"It's a company dinner. I don't want to disgrace him."
"He likes you. He treats you differently," Evelyn said as if she had known Tyler for years. "Dan says he's never seen him so happy. He says that Tyler speaks to you more in a week than to all of them combined throughout the years."
"You met Dan again?" she asked, surprised that Evelyn hadn't mentioned it to her.
"He asked me out for dinner, and I said yes." Evelyn shrugged and waved it off. "It's nothing."
When she changed out of the dress, the sales assistant took it to make the alterations that Kate wanted.
She moved to sit beside Evelyn. "He keeps making plans for us. I can't help but feel that once the year is up, once we go back to our individual lives, all the plans will fall to nothing."
"And you're afraid that they will?"
"No. I don't know."
"Oh, Kate. If you were in any other situation, I'd tell you to go ahead and have fun. But you guys are stuck together for a year. If things don't go well—"
"There's nothing between us, and there will be nothing between us. The house is way too important to him. I'm not going to mess it up." She wasn't interested in continuing the conversation, so she stood and went over to the counter to pay for her dress.
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