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More Than This: Contemporary Christian Romance Novel

Page 20

by Stallings, Staci


  “What does that mean?”

  He looked over at her, not really aware he’d meant anything by it. “Oh, you know, just that the quiet can get to you sometimes. I hate being alone.” It was then that he picked up on the fact that she was surveying him as if she could dig into his head and dissect him. “What?”

  Her gaze fell into even more seriousness. “You hate being alone, and yet, I have yet to meet even one friend. You want this whole traditional Thanksgiving thing, but you’re not going home for Thanksgiving. You don’t like the quiet, but it took forever for me to get you to say two words.” She shook her head. “You’re such a dichotomy Jake McCoy.”

  “Can’t figure me out, huh?”

  She stood there, leaning against the counter, still trying to drill into him. “No. I can’t.”

  He smiled a soft smirk, and then his gaze dropped from hers.

  “What was that look for?”

  Shaking his head, he leaned against the other counter, all of the groceries either away or ready. “It’s just weird, that’s all.” He crossed his feet and his arms, taking in the feel of simply being with her.

  “What’s that?”

  His gaze came up to hers. “You. Me. This. When did this happen anyway?”

  “Good question. I’ve been asking myself that for a while now. I mean, I was just serving my little coffee, minding my own business, and all of a sudden, there’s this handsome, mysterious guy who won’t leave me alone.”

  “Won’t leave you alone?” He raised an eyebrow. “Did you want to be left alone?” And there was soft worry in his deep ocean-like eyes.

  She let out a long, slow breath. “I thought I did.”

  He didn’t want to ask, but he needed to know. “And now?”

  A sad, languid smile drifted to her lips. “Now?” Her shrug almost wasn’t. “I’m kind of liking this.”

  Happiness split through him, and he smiled all the way to his toes. “Me, too.” Drawn to her in a way that scared him, he heaved a sigh and clapped his hands. “Okay. I think we need to do that pie tonight.”

  That made her move. “Tonight? Now?”

  “Well,” he said, turning back for the counter as feelings and desires threatened to overcome his good sense, “Mom always did her pies the night before. That way the oven was free on Thursday for the turkey.”

  Somehow Liz hadn’t thought of that. Probably because she’d never actually made turkey or pumpkin pie.

  He picked up the can. “Here.” Handing it over to her, he made himself busy. “Read it.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She started at the top with the part about the crust. “Have you ever made crust?” Worry encapsulated the question.

  “Once.” Jake worked through the memory. “I don’t think it’s too hard.” He picked up the flour from the counter. “Do you have a big mixing bowl or something?”

  Together, him directing and her reading when necessary, they dug into the task. The crust quickly became more of a problem than he had anticipated, however. In no time they had a blob of dough, but it was crumbly and wouldn’t stick together at all.

  Liz looked at it skeptically. “I don’t know a lot about crust, but that doesn’t look right.”

  He had to agree considering it was falling apart in his hands. “I think we need more water.”

  “More water, coming up.” She got a cup and was back beside him in seconds.

  “Just dump some on.”

  “Okay.” With that she dumped half of it before he had the chance to stop her.

  “Oh! Whoa! Hold up there, Water-girl!”

  “Oops. Too much?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” He dug into the dough, working the water through it. In no time it was squishy and back to not sticking. “Well, hmm.” Putting his hand to his forehead, he rubbed it with the back of his wrist. “I think we’re going to need more flour now.”

  “I told you we should get a recipe for this from the ‘net.”

  He kept working his fingers through the mixture. “Just get the flour.”

  “Yes, sir.” She saluted him and got out the flour. Tipping it up, she angled it at the now soupy dough. “Tell me when.” She dumped a very tiny amount.

  “More,” he said. Timidly she added more. “A little more.”

  More landed in the center of his masterpiece complete with a lovely little cloud of the stuff that did a great job of covering him. “That’s enough.”

  Liz pulled the bag up and looked inside. “We don’t have much left.”

  “Then this had better work.” He kneaded and kneaded, pushing into the dough until his hands were covered with dough well beyond his wrists. “Okay. This is better. I need just a little bit of sugar.”

  “Sugar.” She went to work searching for it and came back with a little jar. “How much?”

  “Teaspoon.”

  “Teaspoon.” She went back to search for that. “Okay. Got it.” Digging out some sugar, she held it over his workstation. “Now?”

  “Yeah.” He reached up to scratch his temple with his forearm and then went back to work. “Do you have a rolling pin?” Okay, he should have thought to ask that before they’d made it this far.

  “A rolling pin?” She looked around the kitchen but didn’t move. “Uh, no. I don’t think so.”

  “Well, we’re going to have to get this flat. What do you have?”

  A moment of thought and she went over to the little drawer and started pulling stuff out. “Can opener. Spatula.” Holding that up, she looked at him expectantly.

  “No.”

  “Um. How about a serving spoon?”

  “That all you got?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Then I guess it’s going to have to work. Bring it here.” He worked the dough onto the cabinet and got it as flat as he could with his hands. “Okay. Spoon time.” He took it from her, looked at the project, and shook his head. “Here goes nothing.”

  With a nice whack, the dough spread just slightly. This was going to take forever. He whacked again and again.

  “Nice technique,” Liz half-yelled to him.

  “Thanks.” A whack and another.

  “I want to try.”

  He turned surprised eyes on her. “Go for it.”

  She took the spoon from him and stepped between him and the cabinet. Yes, this was much better. She took three hard whacks at the large semi-circular ameba that was flattening out. “Hey, this is fun.”

  “I can tell you’re enjoying it,” he said, leaning back against the cabinet and enjoying watching her.

  “You can really get some frustration out like this.” She pounded several times as if beating her worst enemy. “Take that!” Whack. “And that!” Whack. Whack.

  “Hey, you’re pretty good at this.”

  “Who knew, right?”

  “Never would have guessed.”

  Liz was kind of sad to see that the crust was flat enough. She really liked having him stand right there watching as she beat the thing into submission. When she finished, she stepped back, realizing the crust was hardly shaped like crust. It snaked across the cabinet in an amorphous, chaotic form. “Lovely. Now what?”

  “We finish the filling and bake it.”

  “Cool.” She grabbed the pumpkin can and started reading. This cooking thing was the best idea anyone had ever come up with.

  Thirty minutes later, the crust was in the pie pan. Well, most of it was anyway. The rest was on a cookie sheet doing an experiment a la Jake. Butter, sugar, and a little cinnamon mixed with pie smells filled the whole place.

  With the oven set to ding in ten minutes, they went to the living room. On the couch Liz took one side, he took the other as she clicked on the little lamp.

  “So, how’s writing going?” she asked, curling up on her side with one knee and a mug of hot apple cider.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. I’ve been a little busy making pie.”

  She smiled despite the understanding he was trying to throw her off. “Have
you worked anymore on that one?”

  “Which one?”

  “Either one.”

  He let out a long sigh as his gaze fell into the semi-darkness between them. “Some. I guess. A little. It’s just…” He shook his head as his repentant gaze came up to hers. “It’s so clear in my head, you know? And then I start trying to put it on paper, and it gets so hard to make everything line up right.”

  “I can’t even imagine trying to get all of that to line up. I mean first you’re in France and then back in America and then France again. I’d be completely lost. I don’t know how you do it.” She took a small sip, really liking how it felt to just sit and talk.

  His smile was languid and barely there. “I don’t either. If I ever question it or start trying to do it, it just… leaves.” He knotted his long fingers in front of him. “It’s really frustrating sometimes because it’s like if I ever put my hands on the wheel, the whole thing just stops cold.”

  “And it’s done that before? Stopped cold?”

  “Yeah. For months at a time. Years even.”

  “Years?” she asked with skepticism behind it. “You’re not that old.”

  He laughed with a hollow sound. “Oh, you’d be surprised.”

  But he had her hooked with the story and with him and with everything. “So, it really just stopped for whole years? Wasn’t that hard?”

  “Hard. Yeah. There’s a word.” He looked like he was sinking into the darkness and the cushions.

  The second before she asked more, the oven timer beeped. Liz sat up, ready to go get the things, but Jake was up first.

  “Stay right there.” His command was firm, and Liz sat back, afraid to question him.

  Sitting there on the couch, hearing and feeling him in her kitchen, she put her head down on the cushion and replayed him being right there, on the couch with her. It made her feel as warm as her apple cider which she took another small sip of.

  “Here we go,” he said, and she sat up again. “For you.” He handed her a little treat and then set the plate down between them on the couch.

  With one eye on him as he sat down, Liz took a small bite. It was sweet, buttery perfection. “Wow. That’s good.” She took another bite, fully aware that he was watching her with hopeful amusement. Snuggling into the feeling of simply being here with him, she turned and wove her legs together. “So, seriously. You bake, you cook, you write, and yet there aren’t a million girls beating down your door. Why is that?”

  Jake ducked his gaze and reached for a pastry. “I don’t need a million girls.” He looked over at her, and a shadow crossed over his face.

  “What was that look for?” She took another bite, really liking everything about this.

  He shook his head as the pastry in his hand dropped to his knee. “I don’t know. I’m kind of surprised there might be one girl.”

  “Might be?” Liz took a very small bite, hoping he was going the direction she thought he was. “Do I know her?”

  This breath was long and slow. “I think so.” His eyes asked questions his lips didn’t say. “Be straight with me, okay? You don’t mind this whole Thanksgiving thing, do you?”

  The question and the tenor of it threw her. “Mind? Oh, yes. Of course I mind. I wanted to spend five whole days here by myself looking at these lovely walls.”

  “Yeah, but you could have done something, found something else to do.”

  Sad knowing slipped into her as she took one more bite. “But I wouldn’t have.”

  It was his turn to look confused. “Why not?”

  For a long moment she didn’t answer. Finally, she took a sip and then shrugged, laying her head over onto the cushion. “I don’t know. Because somehow I always end up talking myself out of things. Like the theatre that night. I’d always wanted to go there, I bet I’d walked by that thing a hundred times, and I always wondered what it was like to go in, but I never had until we went there together that night.”

  “And the museum?”

  She shrank over her cup. “Guilty as charged.” This breath was soft and sad. “I think about doing cool stuff, you know? Like going to the library or the museum, but then when I get the chance, like I have a couple hours to kill, it’s just easier to find reasons not to. Like I’ve always wanted to go out to Ellis Island and Liberty Island— to see where the immigrants came in. When I first moved here, I thought I would get that done. Now it’s been nearly five years, and here I am, still stuck in my own little corner in my own little chair.”

  “But you’re not sweeping cinders.” He smiled, and she caught the reference.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I’m not sure that what I do is a whole lot more exciting. I mean there’s this whole city out there, just waiting to be explored, and yet, I’ve seen what? Half of a percent of it?”

  “Well, I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve seen more of New York on my television than I’ve ever seen in person.” He leaned his head onto the cushion where he sat. “That’s sad, huh?”

  She let out a sigh. “Yeah.” After taking the last drink, she set the cup on her lap. “But I guess I’m doing a little better now.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, I’ve now been to the theatre and the museum, so things are looking up.” She smiled in genuine happiness.

  “And Ellis Island?”

  The happiness flittered away. “Yeah, well, that’s a bus ride and a subway ride and a ferry ride.”

  Jake’s gaze lit with excitement and challenge mixing in his eyes. “What? Are you, afraid of a little water?”

  She knitted her eyebrows. “A little? There’s like the whole Atlantic out there.”

  “So? Those people crossed the whole thing. This would only be a little piece of it— half of a percent at most.”

  Liz smiled, liking his excitement but not sure she could rise to its challenge.

  Suddenly he vaulted off of the couch and launched toward her looking like a ten-year-old at Christmas. “Wait. We could go Friday.”

  “Friday?” Panic and surprise split through her. “This Friday?”

  “Sure. We can get up, get an early start, go down to the ferry, and see Ellis Island. It would be the perfect thing to do over Thanksgiving. Besides, I could stand to do a little research there for the new book anyway.”

  The new book. That wasn’t fair to throw that chip on the table. “You’re serious?”

  “Yes. Come on. What else do you have to do?”

  Three days? He was honestly sitting there proposing that they spend three whole days together? The most disturbing thing was she didn’t think it sounded so bad at all. It was just beyond her that he didn’t. Her eyes connected with his, and her heart said this was insane.

  “Come on. It’ll be great,” he said, suddenly looking like a ten-year-old again. “Come on, please say yes. Please.”

  “Okay.” She let out a breath. “Yes.”

  “Yay!”

  At this rate they were going to have New York explored in a week and a half.

  The pie was cooling in the refrigerator, and Jake knew it was time to take his leave from this heavenly evening. The only thing that made leaving okay was the fact that he would get to see her again tomorrow and the next day. Still, leaving was not easy. This place, being with her, felt more like home than any place had in maybe forever for him, and all he wanted to do was hang onto that. At the door, he pulled on his coat, hoping for a reason to delay the inevitable.

  A thought he’d had much earlier cracked through him, and though he didn’t know how to ask, he knew he needed to. “Oh, listen, I was wondering. I mean, this is kind of a dumb question, but do you… are you… I mean, I’m guessing you’re probably going to do the church thing tomorrow, right? I mean I’m not sure. I don’t know all of the rules about that stuff, but I figured with the whole praying thing and all…”

  Her gaze came up to meet his with concern written in it. “Church?”

  “Yeah.” Worry and embarrassment slithered over hi
m. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe that was getting too personal. Maybe he was just being an idiot for thinking he could navigate any of this. “I just figured, you know, with Thanksgiving and everything. I don’t want to show up and you’re, you know, gone.”

  “Oh.” She seemed to understand his pathetically bad attempt at communication although she looked a little taken aback by it. “Well, I was planning to go early tomorrow. That way it wouldn’t interfere with lunch.”

  “Early?” He fought to get his coat on and adjusted. “What’s that? Like eight? Seven?”

  Standing there, she dug her hands into the back pockets of her faded jeans. “Seven. It’s the first service.”

  Jake nodded, standing by the door now, coat on, but not leaving. His gaze fell from hers as he fought with himself to decide if he should ask, could ask, or would that just make him look pathetic and desperate? “Well. Hm.” He readjusted the collar on his jacket that was suddenly impossibly hot and uncomfortable. “Well, I usually get up around five, even on my days off. So…”

  When her gaze found his, there were only questions written there.

  Was it cool to ask? To invite himself along? He’d already talked her into Friday and Thursday, and if everything went as well as he felt it was, surely he could find some reason they needed to get together Saturday. “I mean, if you don’t mind, hm…”

  What he was actually not saying suddenly cracked over Liz’s consciousness. “You want to go to church with me?”

  He shrugged, looking like a small boy who was huddled in the corner, afraid to be noticed. “I mean, not if you mind. I just thought…”

  Disbelief rained through her for a moment, but then she shook it off hard. Here he was practically begging to go with her, and she was acting like an idiot. “Well, of course I don’t mind. Why would I mind? But, do you even know where the church is? I mean, my church?” The feeling that he might in fact be a stalker gripped her for one single second, and then she shook her head at herself. She was being ridiculous. “It’s St. Ann’s. Just down the street.”

  With that she gave him directions although her heart was hammering so hard, she couldn’t even hear them herself. “I usually go a little early. I sit on the right. Unless you want me to wait for you at the door.”

 

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