Speak Now (17 page)

“Yes, the right setting can increase the value of raw stones, and Hadley’s designs are highly sought after.”

“But you are essentially spending thirteen thousand, minus taxes, for twenty-two thousand.”

“You’re right, it’s not doubling in actual value, but because of the collectability of Hadley’s work, I know I can easily get four to six thousand more for it than
Hadley’s appraisal. He considers it unethical to add in the increase his following would bring since it directly affects him.”

“So, you just spent thirteen thousand dollars, but if you go to sell it next year, you’d have a clear profit of another thirteen thousand?”

“At least, yes.”

She had to ask. “And will you sell it?”

“If I get the right offer, definitely. Jewelry has little sentimental value for me. It’s an investment, like art or horses.”

“I’ve never heard of that. How interesting.” She wanted to ask. Oh, how she wanted to ask just how much jewelry he owned, but she didn’t.

Jonathan saw her hesitation and added, “I have an extensive collection. I try to keep one third of my salary for investments, and one third of my investments are in jewelry.”

“Wow.”

“What should I wear? Casual, dressy, somewhere in between?” Cara called down the hallway as she hurried to change for their date. She coughed and went for a drink of water. The rasp in her throat had been gone all day, but calli
ng out seemed to aggravate it again.

“Maybe middle. Not RMC worthy but not grungy jeans.”

She skittled back down the hall, hurried upstairs, and closed her door behind her. Jonathan sank into the corner of her couch, his hand thrown back over his eyes and his body completely relaxed. Minutes later, as he felt the couch sink in beside him; he opened them in eager anticipation of what she’d be wearing this time.

Cara grinned. “Baseball t-shirt and cut off sweats maybe?”

“Um…” He wasn’t sure what to say. She looked adorable, but it wasn’t exactly appropriate for the restaurant he’d chosen.

“I don’t want to go out.”

“You don’t?” Jonathan’s eyes roamed her features, trying to see if she didn’t want to go out as in leave or if she didn’t want to go out
with him
.

“We’ve been all over the place this week and it’s been great, but…”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize but, of course, you’ve had to get up and go to work, and I get to sleep in and play with kids in between our dates—”

“As I was saying,” she winked, “I want to find the
cheesiest movie on TV, order pizza and carbsticks, and just veg and be with you.”

“You don’t want me to go?”

“Nope. You do have to take off your shoes though. You can’t veg with shoes on.” Cara reached for the phone. “What do you like on your pizza?”

“Everything but pineapple and anchovies, but—”

She waved her hand at him and punched the number from her speed dial. “I’d like to make an order for delivery, please. Yes.” He listened as she gave her address, telephone number, and then his eyes widened as she ordered the pizza. “I’d like a pizza with pineapple and Canadian bacon…” she winked at him, “on one half and the works on the other. No anchovies or pineapple with the works. Right. One order of double cheesy breadsticks and a two liter bottle of root beer.”

As she pocketed her phone, Cara laughed. “You really didn’t think I’d order what you expressly said
you didn’t want, did you?”

“Well…”

She grabbed the remote, flipped the channel to the guide, and scrolled through the options until she froze the screen. “Look!
Better Off Dead
is on in twelve minutes! That’s a perfect stupid movie. I was hoping for
Ferris Bueller
but—”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Don’t you love to veg to a really stupid movie where if you don’t follow it, who cares?”

“I’ve never done it.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to do it either.
It sounded tedious at best, but she’d been a sport about his side trip to Hadley’s, and he could endure an hour and a half of idiocy as a thank-you.

Tossing him a pillow, Cara curled up on her end of the overstuffed floral couch and rested her head against the arm. “Wake me up when it starts. Don’t let me miss the opening. It’s my favorite.”

When would he stop being surprised by her absolute ease with him? He knew she had chameleon properties, but he wondered if she was as thoroughly adaptable to all circumstances or if somehow she felt the odd connection too. The saleswoman at The Vault had prompted the only true display of discomfort that he’d seen from her—aside from comparing herself with Lily. Why would Cara care about what a ridiculously insecure woman did to prove her superiority? It didn’t make sense.

“I was caught off guard, and I refuse to do business with places that employ people who are so rude and thoughtless.”

“How—”

“I’ve been waiting to answer the question I knew you’d have. I just didn’t feel it until now.” She laughed at the incredulous look on his face. “Okay, so I took a gamble. I knew you’d be confused about me being bothered by something so trivial, but you hadn’t had a chance for it to hit you yet. I just realized you finally could think about it so…”

“That’s even more amazing than sensing it.”

“I’m good.”

All around them, Cara’s clocks ticked the last few minutes until the hour. Second hands made their steady rhythmic clicks as they circled the face of the clock while minute hands slid slowly, minute after minute, toward the top, until familiar Westminster chimes heralded the hour. All the way down the hall, he could hear the cuckoo of Cara’s favorite little clock

Cara didn’t move. He watched for a moment and then nudged her knee with his toe. “It’s six o’clock.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“You said to wake you up. The movie is about to start.” He clicked the remote and waited for sound to attack them from the speakers, but silence reigned.

“I keep it on mute. Hit the button. I hate having the sound blast you.”

“I didn’t think you were awake. I was hoping for the alarm clock effect.”

She grinned and twisted to get more comfortable as the opening music began. “No way. I was just waiting to see if you’d wake me up or not.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Some guys wouldn’t. Especially if the movie didn’t interest them and they could get away without turning it on.”

There truly was little else that Jonathan could think about that interested him less at that particular moment than watching a stupid teen movie from the eighties. However, he hadn’t banked on the difference between simply watching a movie, and watching a movie with Cara. She laughed, mocked, threw imaginary popcorn, and swooned over John Cusack as her idea of the perfect teen heartthrob. Jonathan didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned, but he soon decided that she’d given him one of the most relaxing and enjoyable evenings of his life. By the time Lane had his first race against the Asians, Jonathan had become engrossed.

Their pizza preferences couldn’t have been more opposite. Cara piled the pineapple from half of ‘her’ slices onto the slices she ate and relished the combination of flavors while Jonathan looked on utterly disgusted—almost shuddering at the sight of fruit on pizza. Cara stared at his plate and asked, “How can you taste anything? It’s just a bundle of homogenous flavors.”

The movie ended, the guy got the girl, but Jonathan’s and Cara’s ninety-seven minute escape from the reality of his rapidly approaching departure disappeared with the credits. Smiling weakly, Cara whispered the classic line, “I want my two dollars” as if it made any sense.

~*~*~*~

All around him, clocks ticked like little bombs waiting to explode. He thought if he heard another second hand shift, he’d lose what little sanity he’d clung to for the past hour. He didn’t want to leave, he couldn’t stay, and Cara maddeningly seemed oblivious.

“Can I ask an irrelevant, premature, and very rude question?”

After an hour of silence, Jonathan’s question
seemed to startle her. “Well, um—of course.”

“Could you ever choose a man over your clocks?”

She started to laugh but a glance at Jonathan choked it. “Are you serious?”

“I don’t think I could sit in my living room night after night and hear the crazy ticks of clocks without losing my mind.”

“Because we’re sitting here now going insane with repressed chemistry or because you truly hate clocks?”

Jonathan groaned. “Because I had this picture of cuddling with my wife in our living room while talking about our days and I couldn’t hear what she said because clocks were counting down until they all exploded in unison in my brain.”

“Oh, good.” She wiped her brow in dramatic exaggeration. “For a minute, I thought you were serious but then I heard you say talking about your day.”

He didn’t laugh. He watched as she looked for the familiar twinkle in his eye, a twitch of the lip, or the inability to meet her gaze, but he returned her gaze without flinching. He didn’t communicate via thought, expression, or word. He simply looked.

“Are you serious? My clocks bother you that much?”

“They do right now.” Misery flooded him. “It’s rude and insensitive of me but—”

Cara sighed. “But they bother you.”

He nodded. “A lot more than I realized.”

“Are you saying I have to choose you or my clocks?” Her expression told him she considered the notion absurd.

“Not exactly. I mean, they’re just clocks. I—I don’t know what I was asking. Maybe I should go.”

Cara stared at him in abject shock. “You’re kidding me. I’ve spent a week investing in getting to know you because I knew we had something going between us, and you’re ‘dumping’ me over my clocks. This is ridiculous!” She jumped to her feet, ranting about the ludicrosity, which Jonathan was fairly certain wasn’t a word, of falling in love with a man who lives hundreds of miles away in a sterile environment. “Me! I can’t believe I did this,” she shouted to no one in particular and then reached for her water bottle as her voice cracked on the last word.

“Cara mia…” the earnestness, the blatant affection in Jonathan’s voice might normally have melted some important organ or another, but in the midst of Cara’s raving, it vanished.

“Don’t you Cara mia or youa or any otheruh me. I’m mad.”

She stalked into one of the bedrooms down the hall and returned with a box. All around the room, she gathered clocks. The mantle clock she
said she’d found at a little antique store in Fairbury, the mini clocks made from pewter and studded with marcasite, and the porcelain beauties that, according to her raving commentary, she’d found on every one of her childhood vacations all piled in the box willy-nilly. Jonathan watched in horror for a minute before he rushed to stop her.

“No, Cara. Don’t. You’re going to break something precious to you
—”

“Apparently, I have to choose preciousnesses. I chose you. Aren’t you proud?”

“Stop.”

She ranted for a dozen or two more seconds before she whirled and glared at him. “Did you just order me to stop?”

“I just gave you the equivalent of a verbal slap. I don’t strike women, but you are hysterical, and I had to do the next best thing.”

“Hysterical! I’ll show you hysterical! It’s
hysterical
that I spent a week falling for a guy that is obviously not who I thought he was. Hysterical!”

With that, she collapsed into her favorite chair, clutching an embroidered pillow and nearly tearing it with frustration. Before he could move toward her, she threw the pillow at his legs, laughing sheepishly. “Sorry. I think I’m a bit
out of it today. Mom would say, ‘high strung.’”

“I think we both are.”

He knelt beside her, hesitated, took her hand in his, covered it with his other hand, and just held it. For several minutes, they didn’t move, didn’t speak, breathing only when their lungs demanded it. At last, Jonathan’s voice rasped, “I don’t want to go, Cara.”

“I don’t want you to go either.”

“There’s tomorrow…”

She groaned. “I forgot. Mom wants me to bring you, and if you can, your children, to church with me and then to their house for Sunday dinner.”

Jonathan sighed. “I want to meet them—well your father—and see your mother again, I do. I just hoped to spend some time with you tomorrow…” He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to find words that wouldn’t offend. “We have so little time on Monday—just the trip to the station.”

“We’ll have most of the afternoon and all evening. It’s not the same as all day, but it’s more than we’ve had each day this week…”

“But you said Sunday dinner… we can’t just eat and run…”

Laughing, Cara shook her head. “Sorry, you don’t know my mom. Southern thing. Dinner is lunch. Supper is dinner. Monday through Saturday, we eat dinner last meal of the day, but on Sunday, it’s the meal after church.”
She stared at him. “You live in Atlanta. You should know this.”

“Will they be offended if I don’t bring the children?”