A Date With the Other Side (29 page)

It helped for an hour. He was so deep into problem solving on a new account out of Indianapolis that he didn’t hear his office door open.

“Boston.”

His head snapped up and he took in Amanda, heading right for his desk, waving something in her hand, sending her yellow tank top dangerously high on her midriff.

“Hello, Amanda. How are you?” His day had only lacked this. “When did you get back to Chicago?”

“Three days ago.” Her yellow plaid bag slid forward on her arm, and a white cotton ball popped up.

“What is that?”

“Huh?” Amanda looked at her bag. “Oh, this is Baby, my new dog. Isn’t she sweet?”

Baby’s head was about the size of a quarter. All Boston could see was floppy white fur and a black nose. He eyed it skeptically, wondering if the breeder had given her a hamster and tried to pass it off as a dog.

Amanda petted the head and dropped the papers in her hand on his desk. “Anyway, pack yourself a bag. We’re going back to Cuttersville.”

“Excuse me?” Boston picked up two airline tickets to Columbus, Ohio. “I’m not going back to Cuttersville. And didn’t you just leave there?”

“I came back to Chicago for a wardrobe exchange. I don’t want to waste the rent on the house in Cuttersville, so I’m going to hang there for the rest of the summer. And you’re going with me.”

He’d rather be sent through a paper shredder. “I don’t think so. Sorry you wasted money on a second ticket, but it’s not going to happen.”

“My dad paid for the tickets.” Amanda grinned. “And I think it’s going to be absolutely hysterical when my dad finds out I went back to Cuttersville. He totally won’t understand it, and that will drive him insane.”

“I’m sure it will. Have a nice flight.” Boston looked down at his computer.

Amanda snapped the lid closed, almost taking off his fingers. “Okay, here’s the thing. You’re coming with me whether you like it or not. Shelby’s moping around back there, and you’re doing the same thing here, and I won’t put up with it.”

Like she had any say in it. Contrary to what Amanda thought, the world wasn’t hers to order around. He had learned that himself very painfully. Yet instead of giving her a scathing set-down, he asked, “Shelby’s moping around?”

“She’s turned it into an art form. I’m actually jealous. I don’t think I could elevate heartbroken to that level of sincerity. People are
baking
for her, Boston, that’s how pitiful she looks.”

He was sorry to hear she was so upset. Yet at the same time, he thought,
Hah
. Now she knew what it felt like.

“You need to go down there, marry her, settle in, and have a couple of starched-up kids.”

“Excuse me? I can’t live in Cuttersville, Amanda. My life is here.” And some life that had turned out to be. Work, a lonely apartment, and acquaintances rather than true friends.

She rolled her eyes and set her bag down on the desk. “Wake up, Macnamara. If you want the prize, sometimes you have to sacrifice for it. You certainly wanted Shelby to sacrifice for you. You asked her to give up everything—her home, family, career, such as it is—and move to a strange place that you know she probably won’t like. And what were you willing to give up in that little scenario? Nothing, buddy, exactly nothing.”

His mouth opened to protest hotly, but he clamped it shut as Amanda pulled her minidog out of the bag. He couldn’t refute what she was saying, because she was right. A conversation with Mary, his supposedly dead housekeeper, popped into his head. She had told him Shelby was worth the sacrifice, and damn it, she was right.

Shelby was worth it. He wanted her, at any cost. Even if that meant putting his career on hold, settling for VP of operations in Cuttersville. His eyes fell on the picture of him and the other Samson guys at the Fourth of July picnic. He’d framed it and stuck it on his otherwise sterile desk, in a move that had startled his secretary almost as much as he’d startled himself. But those were real people in that snapshot with him, who cared about their neighbors and their community. They had welcomed him, accepted him.

He could be part of that. He could give Shelby the home and the family and the love she wanted. And he could have it for himself. He could be a husband and a father, and he could be good at it. That was much more important and satisfying than climbing to the top rung on the corporate ladder.

He would mourn the loss of good coffee and Thai food, but the city wasn’t that far off, and Shelby was worth the sacrifice. She really was.

Boston stood up and grabbed the ticket, earning a yip from the fluff resting in the palm of Amanda’s hand. He leaned over the desk and kissed her on the cheek with a loud smack that had her eyes widening.

“Amanda Delmar, you are brilliant. Let’s go to Cuttersville.”

Shelby was putting the last of her possessions in a brown box and taping it shut when Gran walked into her bedroom. “You look like you’re all set.”

“Almost.” Shelby took a deep breath, her stomach bungee jumping up into her throat. “Are you sure I should just show up at Boston’s? Shouldn’t I call first?”

Gran had Boston’s Chicago address from his lease agreement and that morning it had seemed like a great idea to surprise him, but now she was thinking all manner of awful things. Like maybe Boston would have a woman with him, or he’d be annoyed at reopening a discussion he’d assumed was closed. Both seemed ridiculous, but she wasn’t feeling rational at the moment.

“And have a heart-to-heart over the phone? I don’t think so.” Gran was firm, a stack of self-stick mailing labels in her hand. She started slapping them on each taped box.

Shelby’s anxiety increased when she saw they had her name on them, but Boston’s Chicago address. “Gran! Isn’t that a bit presumptuous?”

“What? You go up there, tell him you’re willing to give Chicago a chance, he scoops you into his arms, you call me the next morning after makeup sex, I mail the boxes with your stuff. I’ve got it all covered, honey, you just trust your gran.”

“Are you sure you’re not biased about this? You’ve had your eye on Boston for me since he got to Cuttersville back in June.”

Gran paused over the fourth box stacked lopsided on the bed. “I know this. That man loves you.”

Shelby’s heart did a cartwheel. She reached out and hugged her grandmother. “Oh, Gran, I want this to work out. And I love you.”

“I love you too, hon, and it will all work out, don’t worry.”

The doorbell rang downstairs.

“Who could that be?” Shelby pulled back and started for the door.

“It’s probably just Brady, though I didn’t think I locked the door.”

They had agreed to have Brady accompany Shelby to Chicago for a few days, so she didn’t panic in the airport or in the cab. Not that Brady was worldly, but he had the cocky arrogance of youth to see them through, and he was tall for his age. Shelby had also figured if Boston turned her out, she didn’t want to be alone in a strange place. A fifteen-year-old boy wasn’t her first choice of a shoulder to cry on, but she’d take what she could get.

“Brady, why didn’t you come around the back?” Shelby asked as she opened the front door.

Brady grinned at her. “Hey, Shel, look who I found pulling in the drive.”

Her mouth dropped. The room went hot. She had the sudden and embarrassing feeling that she was going to faint right there, with Brady, Amanda Delmar, and Boston staring at her on the front porch.

He’d come back.

And it seemed like whenever she planned something, thought it through to every angle, the actual occurrence was entirely different.

Boston reached out a hand out, alarmed at the way the color drained from Shelby’s tan face.

She took a step back away from him, and his confidence wavered. Not that he’d had much to begin with. On the flight down from Chicago he’d been a mass of spineless nerves, sure Shelby was going to reject him all over again. He hoped to God he was wrong.

Her voice quivered. “Boston… what’re you doing here?”

Something shifted in him as he felt and saw and recognized the love she had for him shining in her eyes. Stepping into the hall, he turned back to Brady and Amanda. “Stay outside,” he told them, and shut the door in their faces.

Shelby’s lips fell apart.

Boston allowed himself a second to sweep his gaze over her. Shelby looked different, and he realized what it was immediately. He touched the strands of her hair brushing over her shoulders. Her hair wasn’t as long as it had been, or as thick, the rich waves having been tamed into straight stylish strands.

“You cut your hair.”

“I let Harriet at it finally. She was so happy she gave me the cut half price.”

Boston remembered all that glorious hair pouring over her bare breasts in the moonlight. “I liked it the way it was.”

Her nose wrinkled up. “Did I ask you?”

He realized he’d sounded rude. “It looks pretty now, I just liked it down over here”—he brushed the tips of her nipples— “when I was making love to you.”

Her breath caught as she grabbed his wrists and held him still. She licked her lips, studied the wall behind him. “Why are you here?”

The feel of her tight nipples, the scent of her warm skin, nearly made him forget his own name. He focused on her again. Then he did what he had never in a million years expected to do with any woman.

He dropped to his knee in front of her.

“Shelby Louise, I’m here to ask you to marry me.” He took her hand, which was shaking a little, and added, “I’m that man who loves you. I want to give you that home here in Cuttersville. I want to raise children with you in our white Victorian house in Ohio’s most haunted town.”

“Oh, Lord,” she said.

A plea to a deity wasn’t the answer he’d been hoping for. Boston’s palms were clammy and his heart sick with love and worry that she’d tell him to take his proposal and stick it, but he still managed to rummage around in his pocket and pull out the velvet box that had brought him equal anxiety.

Amanda had helped him pick the princess-cut ring out, assuring him Shelby would like it, and that the size would definitely fit on Shelby’s finger. He would hang Amanda by her handbag if she was wrong on either count.

He took the diamond ring out and stuck it on Shelby’s finger before she could say no. “I love you,” he said, and waited like a man sentenced to lethal injection.

“Yes, I will marry you,” she said, a smile starting to split across her face.

Relief had him hanging his head before he kissed her hand.

“Now stand up, you look foolish down there.”

That was the woman he loved.

Shelby watched Boston stand up and thought that she was the luckiest woman alive to have a man willing to sacrifice so much for her. But while she could and would marry him, she could also make it easier on him.

He was trying to kiss her, but she tugged his hand and started for the stairs. “Let me show you something.”

“Your bedroom?” he asked with a grin, grabbing her about the waist and managing to sneak in a kiss.

Shelby savored the taste of him for a split second before reason ruled. “It’s in my bedroom, but it’s not what you’re thinking. My grandmother is around the house somewhere, you know.”

“So?”

She laughed, running up the stairs while he followed. Shelby stood in the doorway of her bedroom and gestured for him to go on in. He stopped in the middle of the room, turning around. “You moving?”

“Yep. Check the label on the boxes.”

He shot her a look of amusement, before leaning over. He stiffened and the smile fell off his face. “Shel, this is my address in Chicago.”

“I know that, you goof. I have a plane ticket downstairs in the kitchen, all ready for me to fly to Chicago this afternoon.” Shelby came up behind him and slid her arms around his waist, resting her cheek on his solid back. She breathed in his clean T-shirt smell and sighed. “I was planning on begging you for another chance and telling you that I’d live in Chicago. That home is where my heart is, and my heart is with you.”

Boston turned around so fast, her nose got bumped. He cupped her cheeks. “Shel, you don’t have to do that. I love you for it, but I realized that there’s a lot to be said for living in Cuttersville. And it wasn’t fair of me to ask you to give everything up, when I don’t have any real attachments to Chicago. I don’t really have a family or a home and I never have. I can have that here with you.”

Shelby almost choked on the lump in her throat. “Yes, you most certainly can.” She reached up and kissed him. “You really want to stay here? And you don’t mind if I run a kooky ghost tour?”

“How could I mind? That’s what brought us together.” He kissed each of her eyelids in a gesture so tender, Shelby felt like someone had pumped helium into her insides.

“As long as we can work your tour around having a baby or two eventually. I’m getting kind of attached to the idea of raising a little Shelby.”

The idea of having his child, a little black-haired baby, thrilled her. “We should get in plenty of practice before we try and get pregnant, though,” she told him.

His eyebrow went up. “Practice sex? That’s a brilliant idea.”

She had meant babysitting, but now that he mentioned it…

“How about now? I’ve still got a key to the White House.”

Dang, the man was full of good ideas today. “Alright, but first you’ve got to say what you think of my outfit. I put this stupid dress on for you, so I would blend in with the city, and you haven’t even noticed.”

“You’re wearing a dress?” He held her back at arm’s length and Shelby squirmed.

She never should have borrowed the damn thing from her cousin Heather. She felt like Strawberry the cow in it, spotted and wide. It was a black sleeveless dress that Heather had said would show off her tan, but if he hadn’t liked her haircut, chances were good he wouldn’t like the dress either.

“You look hotter than hell, and I can’t wait to drag this dress off you,” he said, his hands starting to migrate south.

“Well, enjoy it, because you probably won’t see me in another dress until our wedding.”

But the weight of that gorgeous diamond rested on her finger pleasantly and she figured she was open to negotiations.