Yours to Keep (21 page)

“This time tomorrow, you’ll be back in Florida,” he said, and it was just a statement. No hint of how he felt about it or whether he was getting around to saying something else.

“Come to Florida with me.”

Russell locked his knees and stopped the swing. “What?”

“Well, not tomorrow, of course.” Now that she’d made the leap, she wondered if she should have thought a little more about where she’d land. And how much the landing might hurt. “When the hardware store’s closed and you get the property sold, don’t move into senior housing. Pack up your car and come enjoy my company in the warm sun.”

He just kept looking at her, his expression not giving anything away. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to give him a smile. “It was just a thought.”

“When I was a boy, I read a book about the building of the Hoover Dam. I was obsessed with it, really, and if not for the store I might have thought about an engineering degree. I always wanted to see it for myself, but I gave up on that dream a long time ago. Recently, though, I’ve had a snapshot in my head of you, standing in front of Lake Mead, smiling at me. You’re making me dream again, Catherine.”

Russell blurred as tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away. “Then, when you’re ready, you come on down to Florida. We’ll relax on the beach for a little while and then we’ll borrow Martha’s RV and go see the Hoover Dam.”

He leaned forward and kissed her. “I won’t be far behind you.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

“For the gazillionth time, Gram, I’m going to be fine.”

And for the gazillionth time, her grandmother gave Emma a very skeptical look. “You just don’t seem like yourself.”

Emma summoned every bit of acting ability she could muster and smiled. “I’m going to miss you, that’s all.”

“It probably won’t be very long until you see me again. Russell thinks it’ll take two or three months to wrap things up. I might fly up and then drive down with him when he’s ready.”

“Maybe you can stop and see a few sights on the way down,” she said, careful to keep the smile bright.

The fact was it hurt a little that Gram had the guts to put her heart and her pride on the line and invite Russell Walker to be a part of her life and Emma didn’t. She’d let Sean walk away without even taking a shot. Probably for the best, though. Judging by the way he’d shut her out at the barbecue, she would have gotten nothing by confessing her feelings except adding humiliation to her pain.

Gram looked at her watch. “I’m going to have to go through security in a few minutes. I hate leaving you alone.”

“I have so much work lined up, I won’t have time to be lonely.”

“You can always call me. And make sure you visit Mary. I know she’d like to see you. And feed you.”

Somehow she doubted that. “I will. And you call me when you get home.”

“I won’t forget. Are you sure you don’t want me to stay longer?”

“And miss the big bingo tournament? You promised Martha you’d be there.”

Gram rested her palm against Emma’s cheek. “You’re more important to me than Martha.”

“And I’m fine.” She covered Gram’s hand with her own. “You’re worrying already and you’re not even on the plane yet.”

“Maybe you should get a fake dog.”

Emma laughed and wrapped her arms around Gram. The laughter turned to a few tears, but everybody cried saying goodbye to loved ones in an airport, so she didn’t feel out of place.

Gram kissed her cheek and gave her one last squeeze before picking up her carry-on bag. “I love you, Emma.”

“I love you, too.” She stood there until she couldn’t see her anymore and then she made the long walk back to her truck.

She took the back roads home instead of the highway since she wasn’t in a rush to get home to her empty house. Nothing waiting for her there but paperwork to catch up on and the echo of her own voice.

Her phone rang as she was unlocking her front door and her thumbs hovered over the buttons as she tried to gauge whether or not she was in the mood to talk to Lisa. She wasn’t, but she hit the talk button anyway just because it was her best friend.

“Did you get Cat off to Florida okay?” Lisa asked.

“She should be in the air right now.”

“Then you should come over tonight for dinner. After the little ones go to bed we can crack open a bottle of wine. Or two.”

It was tempting, if only for the company, but there were enough similarities between Mike and Sean in both looks and mannerisms, that she wasn’t sure she’d make it through the evening. “I think I’m going to throw on some raggedy old sweats and plop myself in front of the TV.”

“Uh-oh. A pity party. Do you want me to come over there?”

“It’s not a pity party. I’m fine. I swear.” Even though she really wasn’t, she was afraid if she fell apart over Sean, Lisa might let it slip to Mike and then it would eventually make the rounds and get back to Sean.

A self-pity party was one thing. His pity would be too much.

“Call me if you change your mind,” Lisa said.

“Okay. And, hey, see if you can sneak something good out of Mrs. K’s cookie jar for me.”

Lisa laughed. “I will. Call me tomorrow.”

Once the conversation was over, Emma stood in her hallway and listened. The house was so quiet. And it was different, too. In the two years before Gram and Sean had descended upon her, the house was always quiet. But now the quiet wasn’t the same, as if a joyful song had suddenly been cut off in the middle of the chorus.

Rather than stand around listening to her own thoughts, she grabbed her iPod and—after making sure the playlist she was looking for didn’t have a single sad song on it—she stuck her earbuds in her ears and grabbed the cleanser from under the sink. Maybe cleaning the bathrooms would wear her out enough to sleep.

Sean put fifty miles on his truck cruising around town, waiting for his aunt and uncle’s driveway to be free of miscellaneous vehicles, before he finally pulled in and killed the engine.

He had soft and hazy memories of feeling sick or scared or tired and crawling into his mother’s lap. She’d hold him and rub his back until all was well in his world again. He needed that now. But he wasn’t a little boy anymore and his mom was gone. He had his aunt, though and, maybe if he looked pathetic enough, she’d wrap her arms around him and give him a good hug.

His uncle opened the door. “You look like hell, boy.”

“Thanks, Uncle Leo. That helps.”

“Guess you’re looking to go mooching around in the Cookie Monster.” Back when Danny was little, he’d pleaded with Lisa to buy a Cookie Monster cookie jar for his Grammy for her birthday. On any given day, the blue monster was full of delicious, melt-in-the-mouth baked goodies.

“Is Aunt Mary in the kitchen?”

“Have you ever known her to be somewhere else? I’ll be out in the shed if you want to talk after.”

“Thanks.”

His aunt was at the counter, hulling strawberries, when he walked into the kitchen. She gave him a good looking over. “Blonde brownies.”

One of his favorites. He grabbed two from the Cookie Monster and pulled out a chair at the table. She washed her hands and then poured him a glass of milk to go with them.

“What’s got you looking like something a dog dug up in a backyard?”

Since she was wearing her apron with the ever-present wooden mixing spoon in the pocket, he swallowed the smart-ass retort that came to mind. “Not sleeping, I guess. After being in the middle of nowhere for the last month, being over the bar in the middle of the city’s taking some getting used to.”

She whacked him in the back of the head with that damn wooden spoon and he rubbed the spot. That might actually leave a knot. “Ow!”

“You look at me, Sean Michael Kowalski.” He looked in the general vicinity of her face and she took his chin in her hand and jerked his head up. “You look me in the eye, young man, and don’t you dare lie to me. Do you love Emma?”

“Yes,” he said through gritted teeth.

She released his face and he rubbed his jaw. “Well, that’s a start. And I’m going to guess you didn’t tell her that before you packed your stuff and moved out.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing. Other than not getting any sympathy.”

“If you’re looking for sympathy—”

“I know. It’s between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.” So they’d all heard. Many times. “The brownies are good, though.”

She pulled out a chair across from him and sat down. “What makes you happy, Sean?”

Emma. Emma made him happy. “I didn’t even get a change to figure out what would make me happy. I was going to go do…something. Travel, maybe. Find a place I wanted to call home. And yes, I love Emma, but she’s so…rooted. She has that house and her business and that’s
her
life. I want to live
my
life.”

“You’ve been sharing a life for a month now. And you were happy. Don’t deny it or I’ll whack you again. And now you’re not sharing a life and you’re unhappy.”

“She didn’t ask me to stay.” There. He’d said it.

“Had you given her any reason to believe you would?”

He felt himself clenching his jaw and forced himself to relax. “How could she not know?”

She leaned forward and covered his hands with hers. “And how could you not see the way she looks at you? How could you look at her at the goodbye party and not see her heart breaking?”

“I…she was sad her grandmother was leaving.”

“You two are so busy trying to hide your own feelings because of your stupid arrangement, you’re not seeing each other.” She got up and pulled out the barstool she used to sit at the counter when her feet got tired. “I’m too old to bend over and you boys are all too tall, so come here and sit.”

He did as he was told and was surprised to find, when she stepped in between his knees, he was at the perfect height for her to wrap her arms around him. Sighing, he locked his arms around her waist and rested his head on her shoulder.

She kissed the top of his head and stroked his back. “If, a year from now, you were stuck on the tracks and a train was coming, what would you regret? Not taking a road trip to the Grand Canyon? Or not spending that year with Emma?”

He gave a short laugh. “Trust me, Emma
is
the train.”

“That’s love, honey.” She squeezed a little harder and he felt some of the crappiness he’d been feeling slip away. “Think about it.”

He took a few minutes to compose himself with the help of another blonde brownie, then kissed his aunt goodbye. “Tell Uncle Leo I’ll join him in the shed another time, okay?”

It was quiet at Jasper’s when he walked in and Kevin was nowhere in sight, so he sat at the bar and asked Paulie for a beer.

He stared down into the gold liquid, even swirled it in the glass, but no Magic 8-Ball answer popped up.

Shit. He knew the answer. If he was about to become a bug splattered on the windshield of a runaway freight train, his last thought would be of Emma.

So what if she couldn’t cook and couldn’t drive worth a damn? And she came with a house he didn’t help pick out and a business he didn’t help her build. He could live with that. The family they’d make together would be
theirs.

If she even wanted him.

There was a pad of sticky notes in his back pocket, but he had nothing to write with. He checked all his pockets, but the Sharpie was gone. Hopefully that wasn’t some kind of omen.

“You gotta pen I could use?” he asked Paulie as she walked by.

She tossed him a ballpoint and he peeled off the first sticky note. Without letting himself think too much, he started to write.

The sight of Sean’s truck pulling up her driveway hit Emma like an emotional wrecking ball and she backed away from the window, trying to will her heart into submission.

He’d probably forgotten something, she told herself, even though he’d been pretty thorough in removing all traces of himself from her life and her home. Except for the stupid army mug she couldn’t stop herself from using, but she doubted he’d make the drive for an old, secondhand coffee cup.

He rang the doorbell and she stopped in front of the hall mirror to see if she looked as much like a train wreck as she felt. She did, but there was nothing she could do about the puffy eyes and pale cheeks. At least she’d thrown her hair into a ponytail, so there was only so bad that could look.

Emma pulled open the door with what was probably a sorry excuse for a smile on her face and froze.

Sean stood on the porch, his face set in the expression she recognized as the one he used to mask uncertainty. But her gaze only settled on his face for a few seconds before being drawn to his chest.

He was wearing a button-up dress shirt and it was pink. And not a tint of pale blush, either. It was
pink.

“Hey,” he said, handing her a small bouquet of pink-and-white gladioli, the stems tied together with a length of pink ribbon.

Her breath caught in her throat as she took them, her mind racing to make sense of what she was seeing. What did it mean? Why was he here, dressed like the man of her ten-year-old self’s dreams?

“I, uh…made some revisions to your owner’s manual.” She hadn’t even noticed the journal in his other hand, but when he held it out, she took it.

“Okay.” Her voice was as shaky as her hands.

She opened the cover and found a bright pink sticky note stuck to the first page.
I miss you.

“I miss you, too,” she whispered, and slowly turned the pages.

You don’t take any crap from me.

You make me laugh.

Missionary is my favorite position now because I can see your face.
That made her laugh, even as the sweetness of the sentiment warmed her heart.

I’ll let you drive.
She gave him a doubtful look and then turned the page.
Sometimes.

Yeah, there was the Sean she knew and loved.

When he pulled a small velvet box out of his pocket, one of the tears blurring her vision broke free and rolled down her cheek. And when he got down on one knee, a few more followed. He lifted the lid and nestled in the box she saw a shimmering ring with a central diamond nestled down between two bands set with smaller stones. It was gorgeous.

“I know I already bought you one of these, but that one was always hanging up in your work gloves. This won’t catch on the leather or twist around too much.” He tilted his head up to look at her. “This whole month was crazy, with all the pretending, but somewhere along the way it stopped being a lie.”

“Did you go getting ideas about me, Sean Kowalski?”

“I did, and it was one hell of an idea, too. I love you, Emma. I think, deep down, that’s what I wanted to write on that blank sticky note I left on the mirror, but I wasn’t ready yet. I’m ready now. I love you and I want you to marry me. For real.”

Words were flying around in her head, but she couldn’t seem to get them into any kind of coherent thought. “I don’t…I…are you sure?”

“I’m wearing a pink shirt.”

“I love you, too,” she said, because that seemed like the most important thing to get out there. “And I want to marry you. For real.”

He slid the ring on to her finger and then stood up so he could kiss her breathless. As a little girl she’d imagined she would shed pretty, feminine tears during this moment, but she was too damn happy to cry.

“I was thinking,” he said when he was through kissing her, “that if I do some odd-job carpentry, like that deck remodel, and you do your landscaping, maybe we could coordinate our work so we wouldn’t have to wait too long to have kids. We could switch off days, maybe.”