Cattleman's Courtship (13 page)

“Do you need help with these?” the clerk asked as he handed over her change.

“I’ll help her.” Nicholas now stood beside her, his presence filling the room.

She glanced up at him, disconcerted to see him looking down at her. A slow smile teased the mouth that had kissed her yesterday and as their eyes met, a shiver spiraled up her back.

“How’s the injury?” he asked, a callused finger lightly touching the bruise on her forehead.

“The doctor said everything was fine.” She forced her gaze away, forced her emotions under control.

“Do all of these need to come out?” Nicholas asked, gesturing at the plants.

“Every single one,” she said.

Nicholas grabbed the handles of four plants and headed out the door, Cara holding only two plants, right behind him. Thankfully he had parked his truck right out the door.

“Why don’t you stay here,” he said, placing his plants on the truck bed, “and I’ll bring the plants up to you.”

“Sounds like a good idea.” She was about to put her foot on the tire and climb up, when he grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her up.

She caught her balance, then turned away from him, busying herself with arranging the plants on the truck bed. This was ridiculous, she told herself.
Get a grip, woman.

When he came out again, her control had returned and a few minutes later, all the plants were set out on the truck, ready to be moved.

“I’m glad I came,” Nicholas said, glancing over the assortment of greenery and flowers. “It would have taken you forever to move these on your own.”

“I could have managed,” Cara said, trying mightily to create some emotional distance from the man looking up at her. “But, yeah, it’s nice to have the help.”

She made her way through the plants to the back of the truck determined, this time, to get down on her own.

“So do you want to follow me?” Nicholas asked when she was on the ground again.

Cara wanted to say no. She wanted to tell Nicholas to unload the plants himself and leave her alone. She didn’t want to fall into the feelings swirling around her. Feelings that had the potential to overwhelm her and make her lose her footing once again.

And yet…

She looked up into his gray eyes and, for a moment, felt peace.

“I’ll follow you,” she said.

While she drove behind Nicholas’s truck she phoned Aunt Lori to tell her she wasn’t coming home for dinner. She assured her aunt that she would grab a bite to eat in town.

Twenty minutes later she pulled up behind Nicholas’s truck. He was already taking the plants off the bed.

“I thought we could put them here,” he said, pointing with his chin to the porch. He hung up one pot, the pink petunias and blue trailing lobelia creating a bright spot of color and friendly welcome.

Her heart did a slow flip as he hung the second pot on another old hook beside the first one. The house now looked like a home.

She shook aside the feeling. She was here to work, not daydream.

In no time, plants hung from every available hook and were placed along the foundation of the house, brightening the drab wood siding and filling the empty flower beds.

“Hey, that looks great,” Nicholas said, brushing the dirt off his hands, grinning at the brightly colored plants. “I might have to get into gardening next year. Spruce the place up.”

“You’ll have to water them regularly,” Cara reminded him.

He shot her a quick smile. “I irrigate one hundred and sixty acres of hay. I think I can remember to do a few plants.”

“Just saying, is all,” Cara said, sharing his smile.

He stood, his hands on his hips, glancing from the plants to her as if not sure what to say next. “Trista asked if we could make a bit of a plan—figure out what you wanted where.”

Cara glanced over toward the site. From here she could see the arbor already in place and a sense of sorrowful déjà vu drifted over her. This was exactly how she had imagined her own wedding site.

“Did Mr. Elderveld put hooks in the top bar of the arbor?” Cara asked as they walked toward the site. “We’ll need them to hang plants.” Cara did a slow turn, thinking out loud. “I’d like to create some groupings of flowers of different heights, but I’m not sure what we can use.”

“I have an old cream separator and a couple of cream cans we could put plants in,” Nicholas suggested.

“Sounds great. Why don’t you get them and we can figure out where to put them.”

While he was gone, Cara put stakes in the ground where she wanted plant pots situated.

She heard the putt-putt of a small engine and turned, wondering what was going on.

Nicholas pulled up beside her, astride a green ATV, pulling a trailer. “I found two old wagon wheels, as well,” he said, looking very proud of himself. “Thought we could use them somewhere.”

Cara walked over to the trailer, her mind spinning with the possibilities. “Where did this come from?” she asked, running her hand over the antique machine. She didn’t know how a cream separator worked. She did know that the large metal bowl on the top of the column would be a perfect holder for another plant. She bent over and read the plate. “Renfrew Machinery Company. 1924.”

“My grandfather and great-grandfather milked cows.” Nicholas gestured toward the red hip-roof barn. “My first memory of my grandmother was watching her clipping a cheesecloth on the basin and pouring milk from the cows into the separator. The skim milk would come out here, and the cream out here,” Nicholas said, pointing to two spouts offset from each other. “Then she’d haul two five-gallon pails of milk off to the pigs.” Nicholas smiled as he ran his hands over the machine. “She was a pretty tough woman, my grandmother.”

“And your grandparents live in an old-age home now? In Calgary?”

“You remember?” Nicholas shot her a puzzled frown.

“I remember you talking about visiting them, yes.” It hurt that he thought she had brushed away every conversation they’d ever had.

“I still go see them whenever I can.”

“But no milk cows now?” Cara asked, trying to imagine Nicholas as a young boy watching his grandmother working on the same place he still lived. Cara had met her grandmother only once as she and her mother crisscrossed the continent. Her grandfather had died before Cara was born and Cara’s grandmother passed away fifteen years ago, but Cara hadn’t grieved the death of a woman she barely knew.

“My dad got rid of the cows as soon as he took over the place. Gramps wasn’t fond of them so he didn’t mind. He just kept them around for Gramma’s sake. They never made a lot of money off them. The real money was in cattle and grain.” Nicholas brushed some dust off the large silver bowl mounted on the top, a melancholy smile edging his mouth.

“And working away from the farm.” No sooner had the words slipped out than Cara felt like smacking her head.

Silence followed that and Cara turned her attention back to the job at hand.

“So, let’s decide what we should put where,” she said. “I think we could put the cream separator by the guestbook table and put one of the plants with the trailing lobelia in it.”

“And the guest table is where?”

Cara walked to the spot and pushed a stake in the ground. Nicholas followed her with the ATV and hauled the separator out of the trailer.

“Next, we’ll figure out where we want the chairs.”

As they paced out, measured and planned, Cara drew on the plans she had made for herself for the brief months of her own engagement to Nicholas. She’d had it all figured out, down to where the guest book would be located and what would have been on the table.

“This is going to look great,” Nicholas said, looking over the site.

“So, do you think this will all go through?” Cara asked, thinking of the dozens of cupcakes in her aunt’s freezer. She and Trista had decided to forego the usual wedding cake in favor of a cupcake tower.

“Yeah. I really do.”

Cara shot a quick glance Nicholas’s way. “Did you talk to Lorne?”

“He’s committed to her and to being married. I think his biggest problem was the hoopla surrounding the ceremony.”

“I can understand. Most guys don’t like the planning part of weddings.” But even as she spoke, she thought of all the work Nicholas put into this wedding.

He was meticulous and he liked things done in good order. All part of his personality and one of the reasons they were standing here, planning someone else’s wedding instead of their own.

Don’t go there. Don’t go there.

“I feel like things are coming together,” Nicholas said, slapping some dirt off his blue jeans. “You seem to know exactly what to do. How did you figure it all out?”

Cara crossed her arms, looking around the still-empty yard, seeing it the way she thought it would look when done. “I used the plans that I…” Her voice faded on the summer breeze sifting over the yard.

“Plans that you what?”

She shrugged, then figured she had nothing to lose and completed her sentence. “That I had in mind for…our wedding.”

He said nothing and she didn’t want to turn to catch his reaction. She didn’t want to know if she’d see relief on his face because her plans never reached fruition, or if she’d see regret.

“You had actually thought that far?”

“I’m like any other girl,” she said. “I made plans. Even bought a bride magazine.”

She thought of their shared kiss, the tender way he had held her, and her heart stuttered with a mixture of pain and regret.

Should she have been so insistent on his staying away from his work?

But now, after seeing his love for the ranch, she knew more than before he would never put her needs before the needs of the place he loved so much.

“At least I get to use the plans now,” she added, fighting a surprising wave of sorrow.

Then, to her alarm, Nicholas came to stand in front of her and his finger brushed over the bruise on her forehead.

“So how come we didn’t get that far?” he asked.

Cara avoided his gaze. If she let herself be beguiled by him, she’d be headed down the same path they’d traveled before and she knew where that would end.

Nicholas would leave and she’d be left behind, afraid and worried.

So her and Nicholas? Dead end.

“Maybe we weren’t meant for each other,” she said quietly. “Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.”

“That sounds pretty vague to me.”

Cara shrugged. “Maybe vague is all I can give you.” She looked up at him then, taking a chance. “Maybe I can’t give you any more than I already did.”

Nicholas’s eyes narrowed and for a moment she wondered if he understood what she meant.

“You left,” he said, anger threading his voice. “You took off without a word. I thought you didn’t want to marry me and now I find out that you were actually planning our wedding. So it wasn’t the proposal that sent you scurrying away?”

Cara hardly dared to look at him, not sure he would fully understand. “No. It was your work. Your job.”

Nicholas took a step back. “So we’re still back to that?” He released a humorless laugh. “Back to where we started.”

“Has anything changed?” she asked.

He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but she didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear him say that yes, he had to leave. Had to go work his dangerous job. Had to put the ranch ahead of everything.

“We’re done here,” Cara said, managing to keep her voice even as it broke into the awkward stillness drifting into the moment. Then she walked toward her car, quickening her pace, before the tears filling her eyes spilled over.

Chapter Ten

C
ara sat cross-legged on her bed, her Bible on her lap flipping idly through it when she heard a knock on the door.

“Come in,” she said, looking up from the book, but not closing it.

Her uncle put his head in the room. “I saw your light on. Everything okay?”

“Yeah. I’m okay.” She gestured for him to come in and he grabbed a chair, carried it closer to her bed, sat down and caught his breath.

Though he claimed he was fine, Cara knew his recuperation was taking longer than he hoped.

“How was your day?” he asked. “I was napping when you got home.”

“Long. Tiring.” But not all her exhaustion had to do with the vet work she’d done today. Her thoughts kept edging toward the conversation she and Nicholas had on Tuesday then circling back to their time together on Sunday.

And every time she had to pull herself back to the present she felt a tiny sense of loss.

“I spent an hour with Anderson’s mare, trying to deliver a colt and then spent three hours taking it apart so I could remove the body.”

Uncle Alan patted her hand in commiseration. “Surgeries like that are disheartening and draining.”

“I know. And that poor mare kept straining.” Cara’s voice hitched.

“At least you won’t be doing that kind of work in Montreal,” Uncle Alan said.