Here in My Heart: A Novella (Echoes of the Heart) (14 page)

Something made everyone look to the front of the restaurant, to the registers where people ordered food and got the flags that told servers where to drop meals off once they were ready.

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Dixon said.

Dru and Officer Douglas were arguing like before, quiet but still mad, this time in front of everybody. Dru took another order while she looked almost like she was going to cry or scream or something else Lisa had never seen her do before.

“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” Travis, one of the Dixon’s grown-up foster kids, said.

“Not like this.” Mrs. Dixon sounded worried, like she’d sounded a couple of times when Lisa had messed up big-time at school. “Not in public.”

“Maybe this is what our girl needed,” Mr. Dixon said, “to convince Dru that this thing with Brad isn’t all about Vivian.”

“She has to figure things out her own way.” Mrs. Dixon swatted Mr. Dixon’s shoulder. “You know that. She’s come this far, doing it at her own pace. Look how great that’s turned out.”

Mr. Dixon looked around the Dream Whip, and then at all the people looking at Dru, while Dru kept taking orders and Officer Douglas kept arguing with her about something, and she looked like she wasn’t listening to anything he said.

“Yeah,” Mr. Dixon said. “Great.”

“Dru?” Brad asked.

Again.

Dru ignored him again.

She was working the registers, needing the distraction. He’d positioned himself beside her, expediting the orders being readied for the runners who took food out to tables and booths. Using expediters on busy nights was another of Brad’s genius ideas. The change had cut order wait time in half during dinner rush. They would have been sunk tonight without the extra hands.

Brad was a natural at instinctively knowing what would help. The business would be even more successful going forward, even with him supervising things from Savannah. And Dru was pleased, for Vivian. She really was.

If only she could say the same for herself. Having him be part of her life again, wanting more every day for him to be an even bigger part of it, was too confusing. Too . . . dangerous.

“Please look at me,” he said, loud enough this time to be heard over the din of voices rolling around them. “Stop running from this. Stop running from me.”

Dru handed over Walter Davis’s change. Walter ran the family-owned bowling center on the other side of town. He had the decency that others around them didn’t to at least look as if he weren’t listening to everything Brad said.

“Congrats on the great turnout,” Walter said, which was just like him.

Technically, the Whip was his direct competition. But he was too nice a guy to let that get in the way of supporting Dru and Brad and Vivian. When Walter and his wife, Julia, made business decisions, they put helping the community before profit. He’d even hung flyers in the Pockets snack bar, advertising tonight’s promotion.

“Vi was right,” he said. “You two are incredible together.”

He winked at Dru. His grin to Brad was as good as a high five. He left for the booth Julia and one of his grown sons had snagged when the Lombard family—Pete and Mallory and Polly and baby Ben—headed out.

Okay.

So Walter wasn’t
that
nice a guy after all.

Dru rolled her eyes and jabbed an elbow into Brad’s ribs.

“Ouch!”

He grabbed for her arm when she turned back toward the kitchen. He missed. But she didn’t give him the slip fast enough. He caught her by her shoulders.

“Will you wait just a damn minute?” he said.

“So we can make even more of a spectacle of ourselves?”

People were betting on when they’d kiss. Vivian had set them up, again, and the entire restaurant was in on it.
And
Dru had invited half of Chandlerville to the Whip tonight for a front-row seat at the show.

“Was this your grandmother’s plan from the start?” she demanded. What did it matter who heard at this point? “Has Vivian been on some kind of demented matchmaking bender all this time—throwing us together not because of the business, but because she was expecting something like this to happen?”

Brad wasn’t letting her go. Struggling pressed her body more tightly against his, so she stopped. She glanced around at the dining room filled to brimming with eavesdropping friends and neighbors.

“What?” Brad asked. “What exactly do you think is happening? No matter what I’ve done to help around here, no matter how happy you seemed just now, you’re as pissed at me again as you have been for four weeks. Well, seven years and four weeks.”

“I . . .”

What
was
happening to her?

How had she not guessed what Vivian was up to? Had Dru wanted that badly not to deal with what was happening between her and Brad?

And why did she care so much what Willie or Walter or anyone thought about any of it? Pretty much all of Chandlerville had been having a field day gossiping about them the entire holiday season. Rustic Thanksgiving decorations had come down; sparkly Christmas ones had taken their place. The window dressing was different on her and Brad’s pact to keep the peace and ignore the homespun fallout in their community. Not much else had changed.

Except that the more successful she and Brad had become at the Dream Whip, the more Dru realized how good a fit he was for the restaurant and Chandlerville and . . . her. And the less it felt as if she’d welcomed him home only because Vivian asked her to.

Be sure of what you want
, Joe had said,
before you throw away something you’ll never get back.

“What’s changed?” Brad held her close. The welcome shock of it set off bells and whistles and long-ago desires that didn’t feel so long ago. “What’s bothering you the most, Dru? That people are rooting for us to be together? Or that some part of you is afraid you want this, too?”

This
.

Her heart pounded away against his. She shook her head. Where were her excuses and rationalizations and hard-earned resentments? Where was the woman who’d been so furious when she’d learned he’d been involving himself in her life for years?

Vivian’s hospice team was upping her meds daily. She was lucid much less frequently, for shorter periods of time. Her coordinator had warned them that tonight, tomorrow, maybe the next day, Dru and Brad and Horace would talk with Vivian for the last time. They’d assure her that everything she cared about would be in good hands. And they’d tell her good-bye.

Then Dru and Brad would be where, exactly? The only thing she could see clearly anymore was how much losing him again would hurt.

“I . . .” She what?

Love is a risk you shouldn’t protect yourself from.

“I . . .” She slid her hands up his chest, just like she had at sixteen.

He smiled slowly, dangerously—shocked, but not that shocked.

This had been coming. He had to have felt it, while they both tried to ignore the temptation of brushing past each other at work, sharing a tiny kitchen at home and the even tinier bathroom upstairs, visiting with Vivian together whenever they could make the time, a united front filling Vi in on everything that was happening.

“This is trouble,” he whispered. “No kissing. Remember?”

“Please, Brad, let me . . .”

And then Dru
was
kissing him, for all the memories she didn’t know how to forget, the questions she didn’t know how to ask, the tomorrows with this man she couldn’t let herself dream of again, not yet, maybe not ever. But she suddenly couldn’t go another minute without having at least this to remember once Brad was gone.

It was crazy.

It was careless.

But she ignored the cheers and clapping around them. Someone who sounded like Travis said, “It’s about time!” She ignored that, too, and threw her arms around Brad’s neck, squealing when he hauled her closer, up onto her toes. She kissed him for everything she was worth, just as she had years ago.

How could she have forgotten how good this felt?

His kiss shattered her, and then he deepened it. She felt the wall she’d built between them in her heart crack open, setting free every soul-deep thing she’d ever felt for Brad. A boy she’d idolized, who’d wanted her even as he’d turned her away. A man who’d proven he was committed to keeping his word to her and his grandmother. A hardworking friend who was someone Dru and the Dream Whip staff could count on. He’d been kind and funny and considerate, selflessly flying under the radar, never once taking credit for all he’d done to make things better.

While he’d been away from Chandlerville, she’d lost herself in her work with her kids and her family and community. She’d been happy with her life here. Now, somewhere between fighting with him the last few weeks and learning to like working with him, she’d gone and let herself grow even happier.

Which really sucked.

Because he’d said nothing to make her think he wasn’t headed right back out of her life soon.

I’m not afraid
, she’d told her foster father when all of this had started. Weeks later, it was still true.

She was absolutely terrified—of loving and losing Brad all over again.

Chapter Nine

“I hear you two had a very big evening,” Vivian said just after midnight.

Brad and Dru had driven separate cars to Harmony Grove. He’d endured her silence as they’d walked together to his grandmother’s room. Dru hadn’t said a word since she’d kissed him senseless behind the counter at the Whip, even though she was clearly having second thoughts about it. After disengaging herself from him behind the registers, for the rest of the night she’d thrown herself into taming the mess in the kitchen and dining room. She hadn’t given him another chance to ask what the hell was going on.

“I’m surprised you made it by so early,” Vi said, “what with the restaurant having its biggest sales night ever.”

Brad squeezed his grandmother’s hand. He sat in one of the chairs beside her hospital bed, trying not to let his shock show.

She looked even more pale and fragile than she had that morning, when he’d stopped by to go over tonight’s promotion. She’d heard it all already, from him and Dru and countless friends—so many people making a point to stop by for a minute or two, whatever Vivian could handle, to share the latest news. But his grandmother never tired of hearing it.

She was wearing her
WHIP IT
T-shirt under the robe she never went without. She was cold all the time now. But she seemed more awake than earlier. More herself.

Dru took the chair beside him, sadness dimming her forced smile.

“Willie’s closing the place up for us,” Brad explained. “He said he didn’t have any other plans.”

“Except for bringing over my winnings from the pool?” Vivian chuckled at Dru, who was shaking her head.

“You’re incorrigible,” Dru said. “You know that?”

She flashed an indulgent smile about Vivian’s unapologetically inciting drama from her hospice bed. Brad gave Dru credit for not letting on how pissed she’d been earlier.

“My husband always said I should have been a professional gambler,” Vivian replied. “‘Never bet against Vi,’ he’d say. ‘Just hand her your wallet instead, and tell her to go buy herself another cuckoo clock.’ Every time a bill came for a new one, he’d ask me why I was wasting my time with a small-town businessman, when what I needed was a high-rollin’ sugar daddy to support my clock habit. Then he’d make sure all my beauties were wound before we went to bed at night.”