Your Dream and Mine (21 page)

“You can’t repay people for loving you.”

“I know that now. But I got off track, trying to do something grandiose. Something God hadn’t asked,” she said. “Not from me, anyway. I dragged you in the sinking boat with me and it isn’t fair and I’m sorry and I’m trying my best to make it right.”

“The boat isn’t sinking, Tommy.”

“It will though, if it’s left to me. Don’t you see?” she pleaded. “I’m out of my element. I could
work
at a camp. But I can’t create one out of nothing. I’m not Deidre.”

“Deidre didn’t do it alone, either. And neither will you,” Trace said. “I’m going to help you. That’s the deal, remember?”

She averted her face, wishing he wouldn’t make it any more difficult than it had to be. Friendship was what they now had. And a farm. It linked them. But not in the enduring way it had bound Milt and Mary. It was the string to which she had attached herself to him. In time he would realize that, as had she, and resent her for it. Tears gathered in her throat. She swallowed them and said with simple honesty, “I love you, Trace, and I want you to be happy.”

The rope was between them. It blurred before her eyes as did his face. She took the rope, ready now to be on the ground and on with her life, releasing Trace to his.

He just stood there.

Flushing, she saw her error and turned so she was facing out of the tree, her back to him. She took the damp rope again. Gripped high, just inches from his hands. And still he didn’t move.

“When are you going to stop running and trust me?” he said finally.

“I do.” Tears broke loose and mixed with the rain on her cheeks. She said, without turning, “It was my heart that blinked and blurred the lines and spoiled everything.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” he said, his voice growing husky. “I’ve been waiting for you to figure it out.”

Hope stirred, so deep and distant, she scarcely recognized it. “You mean you’re not…”

“Turn around here,” he growled.

She turned, a knot rising in her throat.

“Tommy Rose, I’ve been waiting seven months for you to kiss me again,” he said. “I’m done waiting. You can either swing out of this tree by yourself, and keep running, or you can quit talking gibberish and…”

She leaned in and silenced him with a salty kiss. He tunneled one hand in her hair and met her mouth again.

“You don’t put your hand to the plow, and turn back,” he said between kisses. “Did I get that one right?”

“Yes. But when it’s the wrong plow…”

“It isn’t! I didn’t sign those papers on impulse, Tommy. Do you think you’re the only one who ever spends time on your knees?”

“You mean you…”

“Of course I did!” he said. “About the camp and about loving you. I didn’t want to, you know. Or to need you. But God knows I do. He brought us together for a reason, and the camp is part of it. Don’t you see that?”

“What do you mean you don’t want to…”

He silenced her with another kiss that seemed to have no end. Just when she thought her lungs would explode, he said, “Three!”

Thomasina came up for air, and squealed as he toppled her from the tree. She grabbed, clinging to the rope and to him. They swung the full arc, and came back toward the trunk, pendulum-style, and then out again before she lost her grip.

Trace let go, too, and broke the fall. He pulled her up with him, wet, smelling of rain and green grass and that intoxicating Tommy Rose scent. He rocked her in his arms, kissing her fragrant hair.

“See what happens when you climb out on my tree, and try to tell me…”

“
Your
tree?”

“Our tree.” He kissed her again and would not have stopped, but for the twin headlights winking over the bumps and around the curves. The lights followed the contour of the creek, then shot across the field toward the house.

“The kids are coming,” said Thomasina quickly.

“Yep.” Reluctantly, Trace let her quit his arms.

She tugged at her wet shirt and moved toward the garden wall as if to distance herself from the heat of their kisses.
The rain gentled. She stooped beside the low wall to pick a lush spray of petals. Trace overtook her there. He watched as she shaded her eyes against the headlights of his truck, as she had nearly a year ago when he had come to cut down the very tree that had now brought them back together.

Deidre and the kids spilled out of the truck, all talking at once. But Trace couldn’t stop looking at Tommy with her flowers and her wet hair and rain-fresh scent.

“So now what?” asked Deidre, arms full of gear. “Shall we drive them back to town?”

“Take a vote.” Trace put the question to the teens. “Do you want to go home, or finish out the night inside?” Inside, it was decided.

“Boys downstairs. Girls up,” Trace said, leading Deidre and the kids inside. “You have twenty minutes, then the lights are going out,” he added on his way out.

Leaving Thomasina behind, Trace went out to the shop and dug in the scrap barrel until he found what he was looking for. Leaving it at the table, he strode into the living room to count humps stretched out on the floor. Satisfied the boys were all accounted for, he changed his clothes, went back out to the kitchen, found some instant cocoa in the cupboard and put water on the stove.

By the time the water boiled, the table was set and adorned. Tommy’s flowers glistened damp and dewy. Candlelight spilled onto a yellowed paperback book. Trace dialed his own number, and put his finger on the button. Thomasina picked it up on the first ring.

“Milkin’ time,” he said.

“I’m six girls from the door,” she whispered.

“I’ve got a present for you,” he coaxed.

“What kind of a present?” she asked.

“Come see.”

Intrigued, Thomasina said, “I’ll be right there.” She hung up the phone, and went downstairs to meet him.

* * *

Trace was pouring water at the table. The aroma of chocolate wafted on the steam rising from the cups. He had doughnuts on a plate. There were flowers in a milk bottle vase, and a book beside her plate.

Thomasina picked it up. “What’s this?”

“The best I could do on short notice,” Trace said, and held a chair for her. “I skimmed it briefly. Boy meets girl. Girl drives boy crazy and vice versa. They live happily ever after at Camp Wildwood.”

She smiled at his whimsy. “Where’d you get it?”

“The bookstore. Last summer. To go with the flowers and the box of candy on our first date.”

“A book? So
that
was it!” Her smile spread, her eyes shone. “What candy? You didn’t give me candy. I’d remember candy.”

“Drink your cocoa and let’s get back to the book,” said Trace, grinning. “It’s inscribed and everything. See?”

He opened the book. He’d drawn a rose. Above it, he had written “Tommy.” The stem curled into the shape of a heart with his initials inside. “When I bought it, I had some half-baked idea of reading a few passages aloud and setting the mood.”

Thomasina tipped the milk bottle toward her and hid her flushed smile in the flowers.

“It’s not too late,” he said. “Do you want to pick the passage, or shall I?”

Thomasina retrieved the book and hid it in her lap. “I don’t like being read to.”

“What do you like, Tommy? Besides chocolate and flowers and kids and camps.”

“You,” she said. “I like you.”

His gaze stirred over her, deepening her blush. “Well enough to keep this partnership of ours?”

Heart pounding, she said, “Yes. If it’s what you want.”

“It’s part of it, anyway,” Trace scraped back his chair, circled the table and coaxed Thomasina to her feet. “I love
you, Tommy. I have for the longest time. You’re my first thought every morning, and my last prayer every night.”

Thomasina tipped her face at his simple honesty.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered, tears brimming. “I’d see you pass on the road, just a glimpse, and you were all I could think about. I thought there was something wrong with me, that I couldn’t shake it off and get over you.”

“There’s nothing wrong we can’t put right.” His whispered words soothed the angst and loneliness of the months of separation. He brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. His touch ignited a sweet, pure current of joy. It traveled the waves of shared kisses.

“Will you marry me, Tommy?”

“Yes!”

Her answer was so unhesitating, Trace laughed. Thomasina covered his laughter in kisses. The cocoa grew cold and she grew certain the book on the table, however sweet a story, could not be half so beguiling as the future that stretched before them.

They sat a long while holding hands, hearts entwined, making wedding plans. Thomasina wanted to be married in Mary’s garden when the summer flowers were in full bloom.

“Just a small wedding, all right?” she entreated. “But nicely done.”

“How long does ‘nicely’ take?” asked Trace.

“Not long,” said Thomasina, smiling.

“Nicely, it is.” Trace kissed her, and walked her up the stairs.

They stopped side by side on the landing. The sconce on the wall threw pale light on rose wallpaper. It was faded with lighter spots where pictures had protected it from sunlight.

“We can hang our wedding picture here,” said Thomasina, touching the wall.

Trace smiled. “Leave some room for baby pictures.”

“I don’t have any of me,” said Thomasina with a pang.

“That’s all right. We’ll have some of our own.”

“Babies?” Thomasina’s mouth curved as she pictured rosy-cheeked babies. Blue-eyed ones with dimpled chins and Trace’s curls. Together, God willing, they could give their children all that her earliest years had lacked.

As if privy to her thoughts, Trace squeezed her hand. His chin came to rest in her dark satiny hair. “You’re beautiful inside and out, Tommy. I saw it the first day. I should have proposed to you then.”

“Then it would all be behind us.”

“It will never be behind us. Every day will be fresh. Trust me.”

“I do.”

He saw in her eyes that at long last she did, and canted his head. The brush of her lips answering his nurtured what had begun at the garden wall—a vine of life, vivid, vibrant, growing toward eternity.

ISBN: 978 1 472 06451 6

YOUR DREAM AND MINE

© 2013 Susan Kirby

First Published in Great Britain in 2013
Harlequin (UK) Limited
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

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