“I even got a job out of it, I think. Wynn asked if I would sign on to coordinate the town’s Spring Fling.” Her tone was buoyant.
“That’s fantastic. I bet that’s a weight off your shoulders.” Garrett’s eyes were on Tanner’s hand, where his fingers rubbed Eve’s shoulder.
“It is. But right now, I’m just so happy this party is over and it was a success.”
“It was a huge success,” Lacey said. “The kids were so cute. Even the teenagers had fun.”
“I’ve never been so tired in my life,” Devin said.
“Really?” Eve laughed. “Not me. I love kids.”
Tanner’s fingers went still. Did Eve want more children? He’d seen her at the park with Jules’s baby, and she’d seemed so at ease. A complete natural.
With his thoughts spinning, he almost missed Garrett saying, “If I ever start talking about having more kids, remind me that I’m perfectly fine with Charlotte being an only child.”
Abby swung her head around toward Garrett, both eyebrows raised. “Well, then, I guess this is a bad time for me to tell you we’re expecting?”
The blood drained from Garrett’s face.
Devin started laughing. “You should see your expression.”
“I don’t know what you’re laughing at. You’re well on your way to a dozen kids already.” Garrett grabbed his wife’s hands and pulled her into his lap, his expression goofy with love. “We’re having a baby?”
She nodded, and Garrett whooped. “We’re having a baby!”
“When are you due?” Lacey asked.
“The same week you are.”
“Our babies are going to be best friends.” Lacey started crying, which made Abby cry.
Tanner was happy. Of course he was. For them. But being happy for them wasn’t the same as being ready, prepared, to have his heart walking around outside his body again. He’d taken a huge risk opening himself up to care about Eve and Alice.
He was still feeling his way there. Loving more. Risking more. If something happened, he wouldn’t survive it.
“We have to celebrate! I’m going to throw you two the best baby shower ever.” Eve was laughing, clearly delighted with the whole thing. “It will be so amazing for Charlotte to have a brother or sister.”
“It will.” Abby leaned in to Garrett as he kissed her on the head. “I was an only child, and I always wanted a sibling.”
“Me, too.” Eve’s face melted into a nostalgic smile. “If things had been different, I’d have loved for Alice to have a sibling. Maybe one day.”
Tanner tensed at her words, his sense of panic building to a tight knot in his chest.
“I’m not gonna lie, guys, pregnancy is not always a walk in the park,” Lacey chimed in. “But when you feel that baby move, you’ll be in love, and it’ll all be worth it.”
“You haven’t slept in the nine months Charlotte’s been here. What’s another year or two with no sleep?” Devin said.
Tanner had to get out of here. He handed Eve the pig and pushed to his feet, hoping they’d just see his departure as shying away from all the baby talk. He forced a smile. “Congratulations, guys. Proud to have another Cole joining the crew.”
Without saying another word, he jogged down the steps and started down the lane, the voices on the porch fading as he got farther away, the voices in his head just growing louder.
How could you let yourself get in this position?
So what if you love her?
And perhaps the most devastating of all:
You couldn’t protect the family you had.
What makes you think you deserve another one?
Chapter Sixteen
Eve stared after Tanner as he strode down the gravel road leading to the back of the property. Behind her, the rest of the family had gone quiet. She turned toward them. “What just happened?”
“No clue.” Garrett had his arm wrapped around Abby, one hand on her still-flat stomach. “Maybe the pregnancy talk? I don’t know—I thought he was getting better with stuff like this.”
“I’ll go talk to him if someone will watch the kids.” Devin stood.
“No, I’ll go, if you don’t mind.” Eve looked from one to the others of Tanner’s family and started down the steps. “Any idea where he’s gone?”
Devin held his hands out, and she handed him the pig as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “My best guess is the spring. If you take the trail to the pond and go around it, there’s a path through the woods to where the head of the spring is. Our mom used to go there sometimes.”
“Thanks.” Eve tapped Alice on the shoulder. “Stick close to the house, okay? And listen to the grown-ups. I’ll be back soon.”
“Can I come?” Alice had somehow found Sadie’s nasty tennis ball and was bouncing it to the patient dog.
“Not this time. I’ll be back soon.” She dropped a kiss on her baby’s head and started down the gravel drive.
Following Devin’s instructions, she rounded the corner by the pasture and took the trail around the pond. As she walked, she replayed the conversation in her mind. He had tensed when they started talking about babies and pregnancy.
But why?
Her footsteps slowed as she reached the far side of the pond until, finally, she spotted a faint trail leading into the woods.
She took a few careful steps through the trees and saw him sitting in a faded and peeling wooden Adirondack chair, gazing at a stream that bubbled and whispered across a sandy floor.
He spoke without greeting her. “This was my mom’s favorite spot to escape. I wish I could talk to her right now. Sometimes, when I come around that corner, I imagine she’ll be sitting in this chair with an open book in her lap. I miss her. I miss them.”
Eve’s annoyance eased. She put her hand on his shoulder and he looked up. “How do you do it, Eve?”
“Do what?”
“Love so fiercely, without fear suffocating you.” He paused, his eyes returning to the crystal clear water where it bubbled up out of the ground. “Sometimes I feel like the whole world is moving forward at this superfast pace, and I’m standing still while it goes on without me.”
“Because your brothers are married and having babies?”
“Maybe.” He looked down. “I want to be happy for them. I am happy for them, but I’m also scared for them.”
Her eyebrows drawing together, she opened her mouth to ask why he was afraid, but then he spoke again, his words slow and measured, almost hesitant. “Did you really mean it when you said you wanted more kids someday?”
“Is my off-the-cuff comment about that what’s really bothering you?”
“Maybe. Yes? Do you?”
She needed to handle this carefully. Tanner’s body was coiled, like a spring about to explode into motion, every muscle tight and tense. “If it works out for me, I want more someday, yes. I love being a mom. Talk to me, Tanner. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
He didn’t move. His voice, when it came, was low but shaking with the effort to keep it steady. “I care about you and Alice, more than I ever thought I could or would. But I don’t want any more children. I just...can’t imagine being okay with all those pieces of my heart running around. It might sound stupid, but I—I don’t know if I can handle loving more.”
He looked and sounded miserable.
“I understand where you’re coming from. There was a time when I thought I’d never fall in love again because what came later was just too painful.” She froze. She hadn’t meant to say that, but he either didn’t hear her or chose to ignore her.
She knelt in front of him, putting her hands on his knees. “Listen to me. What you’re feeling isn’t weird. It’s not even conscious thought. Your brain is just trying to protect you.”
Tanner looked skeptical. His eyes were dark with pain, but he kept them train
ed on hers, like a lifeline.
Eve searched her memory for what she’d learned about PTSD during her counseling sessions after Brent died. “It’s a fight-or-flight response, a reflex. Tanner, you experienced a horrible tragedy. People call what happens a broken heart, and maybe it is, but there are also pathways in the brain that are changed forever. When you feel protective of something, your brain says, wait a minute, remember what happened last time? Run.”
He looked down with a chuckle, but it was a forced, mirthless sound.
“The important thing to remember is that pathways can be rerouted. You are not broken.” She turned her hands up on his knees, willing him to hear her, willing him to reach out and grab her hands.
“I’m not sure that’s true.” He snapped his head up, his gaze suddenly intense on hers. “I couldn’t protect them, and I don’t know what to do with that.”
“That’s not how the universe works, Tanner. Love or no love, sometimes things just happen. What matters is that your wife and your baby knew they were loved. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.”
He pushed to his feet and paced away from her, wiping his face with his hands before turning around. “We have to stop this—whatever this is between us—before it’s too late. I don’t want you to get hurt.” Her bottom lip trembled, and his eyes softened. He reached for her, and she took a step back, out of his reach. “Eve—”
“Wow, you have some really spectacular timing.” She took a ragged breath and looked down with a smile, gathering her thoughts before she met his eyes again. “A week ago, I might’ve agreed with you that we should stop this...whatever it is...before anyone gets hurt. Now?”
He was shaking his head slowly, as if he didn’t want to hear her words, but tears brimmed in his eyes again.
What matters is they knew they were loved. As she’d said the words, she’d known they were true. As people, humans, they could only do so much, only influence so much. The rest was out of their control.
But this? This she could control. He would know he was loved.
She took a deep breath. “I love you, Tanner Cole. And you can turn away from that if you like, but do it because you don’t feel the same way, not because you’re too afraid to love again. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to know love.”
He blanched. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Forcing a shaky smile, Eve held her palms up, hands wide. “I don’t want you to say anything.”
What she wanted was for him to hold her, to wrap her in his familiar, steady embrace. She wanted him to tell her not to worry, to say that everything would be okay.
And she wanted, more than anything, for her heart—for Alice’s heart—to be safe with him.
But he couldn’t ensure that, not now. So she turned and walked away, not because she was angry, but because there was nothing more she could do.
* * *
Two hours later, after the evening chores were finished, Tanner walked slowly back to the farmhouse. Garrett’s SUV was gone, and the front porch was empty. Through the bare winter trees, he could see the lights on at the cottage, but for the first time, they didn’t feel welcoming to him.
He opened the door and stepped inside.
Devin looked up from a bent-over position where he was tossing toys into a basket with Eli, wearing a zip-up sleeper, on the floor nearby. “You back?”
Tanner thought for a minute. “Cows are fed. Horses, too. Goats. Pigs. So...yeah.”
His brother picked Eli up from the floor and followed him into the kitchen, watching as Tanner washed his hands and dried them. “You okay?”
“Not so much.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Good. Lacey was exhausted and went to bed early, and I need to get Phoebe ready for bed.” Devin handed Tanner the baby and disappeared down the hall.
Tanner sighed.
He looked down at Eli, who stared at him solemnly, his thumb in his mouth. Tanner patted the little back, grabbed an apple off the table and walked back through the living room and outside. In his experience, little people preferred the outdoors to being inside, no matter how many toys there were to play with.
With Eli on his arm, he walked across the driveway to the pasture where Toby and Reggie were grazing. “See that big brown horse, Eli? That one’s Toby. He’s a worker. Never gets tired. He does get annoyed with the calves sometimes, though. The other horse, that’s Reggie, but you know him. He’s your dad’s horse. Best cow horse I’ve ever seen. Don’t tell your dad I said this, but Reggie is the real reason your dad won all those titles.”
With a small smile, he glanced down at Eli, who blinked at him with big brown eyes. “Don’t tell him this, either, but I’ve never seen anyone as natural with horses as your dad is. He’s pretty special.”
With the rodeo genes Eli and Phoebe had gotten from their parents, it seemed likely that the twins would be on horseback before long. It made him want to wrap them in cotton and duct tape and follow them around with a pillow.
Even as he thought it, he realized how ridiculous it sounded, but still, his arms closed tightly around the baby. His wife and son had flown safely on an airplane across the country to visit her grandmother, and then they’d been killed in a car accident five miles from home.
It was senseless.
Toby ambled over to the fence, and Tanner held the small apple out for him. When Toby took the apple with his gigantic teeth, Eli’s thumb came unglued from his mouth, his rapt attention on the horse. “Toby likes apples and carrots, just like you, buddy.”
The sound of little footsteps pounding his way caught his ear. He glanced around in time to see Alice running down the road, her princess dress—pink this time—floating along behind her.
“Mr. Tanner, Mr. Tanner!”
“Alice?” He looked behind her but saw no sign of Eve. “Does your mom know you’re here?”
She shook her head, her blond curls bouncing. “I made you a picture.”
“You did?” He crouched down so that he was almost eye level with her as she handed it to him. “Is this a rainbow? It’s beautiful.”
“Rainbows make me happy when I’m sad.” Her expression was earnest.
“You think I’m sad?”
She nodded her head vehemently. “Mama said.”
Eli kicked his feet, not sure he liked their current position. Tanner stood and settled Eli back on his arm. “Thank you very much for this picture. I am a little sad, but your drawing makes me feel better. It’s really special.”
He looked up as he heard Eve calling for Alice. “Your mom is looking for you. You better run home now before you get too cold.”
Alice flashed a grin and ran back toward the cottage, giving a little skip once in a while. He looked down at the picture in his hand. Underneath the rainbow, she’d drawn three figures—a very small one, a medium-size one and a very tall one in an unmistakable cowboy hat.
Tanner cleared his throat. How in the world did he handle that?
He followed along behind her, not so close that she would know, until he turned the corner toward the cottage and his footsteps slowed. Eve was standing on the porch, hands on her hips, as Alice ran toward her. She listened for a minute, and then she lifted her head, her eyes seeking his out.
With a pitiful excuse for a smile, he lifted a hand. She gave a half-hearted wave in return.
It was almost more than he could do to turn away from them and walk back to the farmhouse, but he couldn’t lead her on. He wanted to believe what she said today. Wanted so badly to believe that he could change the way he thought about love. Risk. Heartbreak.
Eli laid his head on Tanner’s shoulder, his little body growing heavy on Tanner’s arm. He looked down at the picture that Alice had drawn, though it had grown too dark to see the details. These children were so precious.
They enriched his life in ways he couldn’t even describe. Would he really wish he hadn’t known them even if the worst happened?
Of course he wouldn’t. As he turned back toward home, his footsteps were heavy with sadness. He’d been frozen in self-protection mode for so long and the thaw had happened so slowly that he’d barely noticed until it was too late.
So now he faced a choice. He could continue on the way he had been, shore up the walls, shut people out of his life. Or he could take a chance. And...spend his life living on the edge of terror.
He closed his eyes and swayed for a moment, with the baby in his arms, and prayed. Please, Lord. Please help me be strong enough to make the right decision.
Because he was pretty sure that either way, it was going to hurt.
* * *
“Alice Catherine, time for bed.” Eve stood in the door to the tiny second bedroom and waited, her knee jiggling. “Now.”
Alice came down the hall, her feet dragging, face scowling. “I don’t want to go to bed.”
“Hop in. It’s cold in here. I’ll cover you up and say your prayers with you.” As Alice begrudgingly got into the single bed, Eve pulled the heavy covers over her. “It’s been such a busy day. Did you have a fun time with Gramma and Grampa this morning?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Alice reached under her pillow and pulled out the baby Jesus figurine, cradling it in her pudgy little hand. “Mama, can I get a daddy for Christmas?”
Eve sat back on her heels, tears springing to her eyes. “Oh, Ali-Cat, that’s not really how it works. Baby Jesus didn’t come to grant wishes. He came so that everyone who knows Him could be close to God, no matter what.”
Alice narrowed her eyes. “Like even when that baby pulled my hair today?”
Eve smothered a laugh and managed to keep her smile under wraps. “Yep. No matter what you’ve done or where you’ve been, or whose hair you’ve pulled, you’re always welcome in God’s family.”
Alice tapped her chin, thinking. “I like God’s family. And I like my family. I like you and Gramma and Grampa and Sadie and Mr. Tanner. And I like the babies, even when they pull my...”
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