Meeting Miss Mystic (36 page)

She nodded at him wordlessly.

“What I needed…” he finished, feeling the relief of knowing his search was over and Zoë belonged to him as surely as he belonged to her. “…was you.”

She pushed him onto his back, lying across his body, holding his face between her hands and lowering her lips to his. “Dinner later.”

Chapter 20

They never made it to the dance. They barely made it to the kitchen.

“Hey!” said Zoë, peeking in his refrigerator, his light blue button-down shirt rolled up to her elbows, and hanging down just above her knees. “We never had dessert on Monday night. Do you still have everything I brought over?”

He came up behind her, wearing flannel pants and a smile. He put his arms around her, burrowing his face in her hair. “Yes.”

“Want me to make you something?” Her stomach grumbled again. Loudly.

“For God sakes, yes, before that small child summons legions.”

She smiled, turning back to the fridge, taking out the eggs, dark chocolate and butter.

“Hey,” he said, as he hefted himself onto the counter opposite her. “The tattoos on your shoulders. I got to study them, um, during round two.”

She glanced up at him through lowered lashes, too gorgeous perched on the kitchen counter with his beautiful bare chest. The space between her thighs ached, but she wanted him again
. God, he made her hot.

“And?” She turned to face him, her arms full of ingredients.

“What do they mean?”

She swallowed, holding an egg suspended in mid-air. “The accident. One when it happened because we survived. The other in honor of Brandon, my little lamb.”

He jumped down off the counter and took the egg from her, placing it on the counter beside her, pulling her into his arms. “You’re going to make it right with Thea, sweetheart. I know it.”

She took a ragged breath then nodded at him. “I will. And fast. I won’t come back until I make peace with her, and I can’t stay away from you for long.”

He dropped his lips to hers, kissing her longingly, rubbing her back through the cotton of his shirt.

“Let me make cookies,” she murmured as he kissed her throat, and he released her regretfully, resuming his perch on the counter.

“Nils has a tattoo,” she said softly, then added, “I think something terrible may have happened to him.” She looked up. “Do you have a mixing bowl?”

Paul’s eyes were concerned as he pulled one down from a high shelf, handing it to her. “What do you mean?”

“What happened to him in 2001?”

Paul shrugged, his face surprised, but void of information. “Beats me. He would’ve been…eighteen. That’s years before I got here.”

Zoë measured flour and sugar from canisters on Paul’s counter and found her baking soda sitting on top of the microwave.

“Something happened,” she sighed.

She cracked the eggs into the bowl and added butter melted from the microwave, careful to separate the two with the flour and sugar mountain in the middle so the eggs wouldn’t scramble. She handed him the three bars of dark chocolate. “Break these up into chunks, okay?”

She stood across from him, against the kitchen sink, stirring the cookie dough as he broke the bars into uneven pieces.

“What makes you so sure?”

“He has two small crosses tattooed over his heart and the date, 2001. When did his mother pass away?”

“Umm, just a few years ago.”

“Then it’s not about her.” She paused then looked up at him. “You asked about my tattoos. You know, I wasn’t the sort of girl to get a tattoo before the accident. But it changed me, and marking my body was a way to keep it close. Terrible things can become so much a part of you, it feels almost wrong not to
wear
them. And somehow—at least for me—by wearing them you acknowledge them as a part of you forever, and there’s a peace that comes from that.”

Paul nodded, pouring handfuls of chocolate chunks into the bowl as she stirred to blend them into the batter.

“Here’s where I’m going with this…Nils has a tattoo over his heart of two small crosses and a date. It means something to him. Something big. Something important. And I think whatever it is, it keeps him from being free.” She shrugged. “I just wondered if you knew anything.”

“I don’t,” he said. “But it’s interesting what you said about him not being free, because he’s loved Maggie forever but they’ve had an awfully hard time finding their way.”

Zoë nodded. “I know. And I think that tattoo has answers.”

The kitchen was quiet for a bit before Paul broke the silence. “Hey, um, I want to be sensitive here and I care about Nils, but…should it bother me that you saw his naked chest?”

Zoë rolled her eyes at him, holding the bowl against her chest as she mixed the ingredients. “I’m not even dignifying that with an answer. Cookie sheet?”

“So, it
shouldn’t
bother me?”

She put the bowl on the counter and stepped into him, flush against him, and looked up at his face. “You see me?”

“I see you.”

“I
only
see you, Paul. That’s how it is. That’s how it’s gonna be.”

He put his hands on her waist and lifted her on top of the counter so they were eye to eye. He braced his hands on the counter on either side of her, hanging his head, staring at his shirt covering the upper part of her thighs.

“Paul,” she whispered, without touching him. If she touched him, she’d have to have him. Right there on his kitchen counter. “There’s only you for me.”

He looked up, his face taut and intense, reflecting the full measure of his love for her.

“Then can you
please
finish these cookies? Fast?”

She grinned at him and he backed up, reaching down to open a cabinet and hand her a cookie sheet.

***

Thirty minutes later, they sat on the sofa in front of the fireplace in his back parlor, eating cookies and drinking cold milk with Cleo curled up happily on Zoë’s lap.

“These are good,” he said, biting into a third cookie, intending to eat his fill before carrying her back up to his bed. He needed his energy for rounds four, five and six. And maybe seven. And hell, while they were at it, maybe eight too.

“It’s the dark chocolate,” she said, grinning at him, a fleck of chocolate hanging on the edge of her lip. “My mom swore by it.”

He leaned forward to kiss the crumb then sat back, grabbing another cookie.

“She was a good cook? Your Mom?”

Zoë nodded. “She and my aunt owned a restaurant.”

“So, that was true.”

She raised her eyes to him, looking worried. “Paul, you have to know…almost everything was true. You just got some information out of the order it actually happened.”

“Was anything
not
true?”

She seemed to consider his question for a moment before he saw her lips tilt up in a little grin.

“What?” he asked.

“Well, really and truly,
almost
everything was true. Just out of order. I was a teacher before the accident. I had a great relationship with my sister and nephew before the accident. There was really only one bold-faced lie that I can think of.”

“Which was?”

She blushed. “I
never
wanted to be pen pals.”

He stared at her for a second before laughter, deep and pure, bubbled up from his chest, and he pulled her to him, disrupting poor Cleo, who leapt to the floor just in time before being squished between them. He held Zoë on his lap, in his arms, enchanted by her, beguiled by her, totally in love with her. How in the world was he going to make it two months without her?

“What’s wrong?” she asked, as his laughter subsided.

“I’m going to miss you a lot.”

“You’ll come see me in October. And hey, if Thea and I can work things out? I could be back by November first.”

“Will you come home with me for Christmas?” Paul asked.

“To your family? In Maine?” She bit her lip in thought. “You know, come to think of it, you weren’t one hundred percent honest with me either. I should probably be a little mad about that. You sure glossed over your relationship with them.”

“Yeah,” he exhaled. “It’s not good. I don’t love going back.”

“Well. Maybe just for this year, we could both stay here together. For our first Christmas we could just stay home.”

He looked into her blue eyes and just like that he knew: wherever she was, that would be home. And in an instant, his house wasn’t his anymore…it was
their
home,
their
bedroom,
their
kitchen,
their
dog. Everything he had was hers too. Just like that: Zoë Holly Flannigan was home.

Whether or not he would ever work things out with his family was ambiguous; who he wanted to be with for the rest of his life was not. He would have to figure out how to best go about making that happen. But not now. Not right now. Right now he was too happy thinking about his future to be distracted with heartache from his past.

She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it off his forehead, and he couldn’t bear it anymore. He had to have her. He stood up, holding her in his arms, heading for the stairs.

“Round four?” she asked, burrowing into his shoulder and sighing contently.

“Round four,” he confirmed, continuing up the stairs of their home to their bed, where he would memorize every inch of her body so that he could dream about her until she was home for good.

***

Because her flight left early on Saturday morning, she only had Friday while Paul was at school to say her good-byes to Maggie, Jane, Lars and Nils. As Zoë walked to the Prairie Dawn, she saw Gardiner through a new lens: she looked at her surroundings and assessed them as her future home.

To finally let go of that fear and be free to love him was so incredible, it made everything look, feel, appear new. Blissfully, beautifully new. Almost as though she’d been given a new chance at life, Paul’s heart—his love for her—paving a new path, a whole new direction for her.

She hugged herself against the chill of the morning air, happiness bubbling up inside of her and telling her for the first time in two years that she was going to be all right. Life was going to be all right again. She had found love, and she was ready to open her arms to it, welcome it into her life and protect it with every bit of strength in her small body.

Having her future ripped away so shockingly would always be a touchstone in her life—a corner of intense wreckage and change—but without the accident, she never would have found the love of her life. She would spend the rest of her days in awe of the strange way that life can take away and give back at once, in unexpected, even bewildering, ways.

She swung open the door of the Prairie Dawn and found Maggie behind the bar.

“Well,” said Maggie, lips tilting up in a surprised, yet somehow knowing, smile. She snapped her laptop closed and put her hands on her hips. “Look what the cat dragged in. I’ve been wonderin’ which way it had gone. But, now, oh, look at you, Zoë! It’s all been managed, hasn’t it?”

Zoë scrambled toward Maggie just in time to wrap her arms around her new friend as she made her way out from behind the bar.

The women hugged each other and giggled and cried a little and when Maggie finally released Zoë to make her a cappuccino, she demanded to know the details of the big reveal.

“He offered me a job,” said Zoë, grinning from ear to ear as she sat down on one of the stools. “And a place to stay.”

Maggie nodded, pressing down on the steamer. “Of course he did. Doesn’t want you out of his sight. So, you’re stayin’?”

“Well, no. I mean, I’m not staying right now, but I’m coming back. By Thanksgiving at the latest.”

A momentary worry passed over Maggie’s face and Zoë knew it was a remnant of their distrust. She was anxious to reassure her friend, to win back her trust.

“I have one more surgery on my face two weeks from now. And then another three weeks to recover. And I need to try to make things right with my sister before I move here. I’m coming back, Maggie. Nothing—” Her voice broke a little with the intensity of her feelings. “Nothing could keep me away. Not for long anyway.”

Maggie slid a cappuccino to Zoë, and when she looked down, Maggie had shaped a heart in the foam. Zoë looked up at her with a smile then glanced over at the windows, where Graham stood, staring outside, distractedly wiping the same spot over and over again. Huh. She hadn’t noticed him there. He hadn’t come over yet with his usual smarmy charm and innuendo.

“How was the dance?”

“The dance? Oh, the dance! We never made it.”

Zoë gave Maggie an inquiring look and Maggie giggled, looking happier than happy.

“So all is well?”

“All is
very
well,” confirmed Maggie.

“Though not with everyone, perhaps.”

Zoë took another quick glance at Graham, who stared out the window, his hand making the same, slow circular pattern with a rag, a bottle of cleaner in his other hand, limp by his side.

“What’s up with Graham?”

Maggie looked over at her cousin and shrugged. “He’s been like that all mornin’.”

“Was
he
at the dance last night?”

Maggie nodded, still looking at Graham when the door swung open and Julie Sørensen walked into the café, standing on the welcome mat uncertainly as she scanned the room. Zoë watched as Graham’s whole body shifted toward the door, his hand holding the rag falling limply to his side. Julie must have seen him—Zoë could have sworn they stared at each other for a tight moment—but she huffed softly, turned away from him, heading quickly to the bar. She stood beside Zoë.

“Morning, Maggie,” she said in a clipped, polite voice.

“Heya, Julie. Coffees for your uncle and cousins?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she answered.

“I know their orders. But I don’t know yours.”

“Oh. Um, hot tea?” she asked, sighing softly.

Suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, Graham was sitting on the stool next to Zoë, on her other side. He nudged her gently.

“How’s the cutest lass in all o’Gardiner?” he asked, pushing his too-long, straight red bangs off his forehead and giving Zoë a flirtatious smile.