by Liz Isaacson
“Yours too, correct?” Tate asked.
“My great-great-grandfather came with the original scouting party from Vernal.”
“Why’d they choose to settle here?”
“The river.” Collin dragged his tongs along a row of hot dogs, making them roll onto a new part to continue cooking. “And the beauty of the land. They nestled right up against the hills here, and there was shelter from the wind and the worst of the snow.” He flashed Tate a smile. “Wren seems to really like you.”
“I like her too, sir.”
“You don’t need to call me sir.” Collin laughed. “I’m not one who deserves that.”
Tate nodded, though he disagreed. The man had raised nine children while maintaining a family business and an immaculate yard the size of the park Tate patrolled on a regular basis.
The doors opened again, and Collin’s wife said, “How close are we you guys?”
“A few minutes,” Collin said over his shoulder.
“I’m sending everyone out.” And sure enough, only a few seconds later, the patio began to fill with people. Wren came out near the end, her arm securely holding onto her great-grandfather’s. She helped him up the steps to the grass and over to the covered pavement where the two long picnic tables waited.
Once she had her great-grandfather settled, she returned to the house, sliding her eyes along Tate’s as she passed, and then came back out with her potato salad.
Tate soon learned that all the food went on one table, and that the Fullers could be quiet while a blessing on the food was made. Then the noise started again in earnest. He met Milton and his wife when they arrived, and he tried to situate himself on the end of the table, but was drawn by Wren’s mother, Quincee, toward the center.
With a plate loaded with a hamburger and a hot dog and as much of Wren’s potato salad as he could fit alongside them, he slung his legs over the bench and sat next to her mother.
“Tell us about your family,” Quincee said.
Before Tate could say a word, Wren jumped in with, “Mom, it’s sensitive.”
Tate looked at her, appreciating the worry in her eyes, but he turned to Quincee and said, “My family is about the opposite of yours, ma’am. Just me and my dad.”
“Oh, that’s right. Your mother passed.” She put her hand on his. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” Tate said. “I barely remember her.”
“How old were you?”
“Six.” He stuffed his mouth full of food so he could have a moment of peace, and thankfully, Wren engaged her mother in a conversation about the shopping weekend they’d been planning. Tate only listened with one ear, and he enjoyed the food as much as he could with seventeen other people at the table with him.
Eventually, people finished eating and moved into the yard with the intention of playing badminton or volleyball. Tate hadn’t even noticed the net that had been set up, probably because it was around the corner from the outdoor kitchen and not easily visible from where he’d been grilling hamburgers.
Wren took his hand and said, “Let’s go for a walk,” and Tate readily went with her, done talking for the day and they’d only been at the party for an hour.
She put quite a bit of distance between them and her family before saying, “So? What do you think?”
“They’re great,” he said sincerely.
“They are,” she agreed, looking over her shoulder. “There’s just so many of them.”
Tate looked at her for a breath before breaking into laughter. He released her hand and slung his arm around her waist, tucking her right against his side. “There are a lot of them.”
That seemed to be the Fuller motto. Lots of children. Lots of land. Lots of money. Lots of love for each other. And Tate didn’t know how to deal with any of it.
By sheer will, Tate went to work each day. He didn’t particularly enjoy being a police officer, but he got paid to work out and a few of the guys were starting to realize Tate was just like them. Wanting to fit in more than he wanted to train police dogs, he’d held onto the request he’d thought of, deciding to get a few months of employment under his belt before he started to rock the boat.
And so another week passed, and then another, and he entered the hottest part of the summer in Utah: August. He’d leveled his yard, had the concrete set to mark the flowerbeds, planted several trees, and now all he needed to do was get the sod down.
He’d ordered it weeks ago, and it was finally set to arrive today. He was awake before dawn, so he took Sully for a run down the river walk, going all the way up and around the strawberry fields, arriving back home about the same time Wren stepped out of her house onto the back deck.
“Tate?” She shielded her eyes though the sun had just come up.
He went through her gate and dropped Sully’s leash. The dog had taken quite a liking to Wren, and she laughed as he hurried toward her, that huge tongue hanging out of his mouth. “Hey, there, Sulls. What are you guys doing, huh? Running already?” She looked up at him from where she’d crouched and was scrubbing Sully’s neck.
Tate wiped the sweat from his forehead and smiled. “Couldn’t sleep. We went all the way around the strawberry fields.”
“I’ll get you both a drink.” She straightened, her flirtatious smile sending more heat through him. Tate, at least, drank his water quieter than Sully, who lapped and slopped water all over the deck.
“So, you’re going to come watch me work this morning, right?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
So Tate took his dog home and he ate a breakfast of last night’s chips and queso and didn’t bother showering. He’d only get sweaty again as soon as the sod arrived, and if the loud beeping coming from the front yard meant anything, it just had.
He watched as four pallets of sod were unloaded, and he handed the delivery driver a check, which represented the last of his savings and most of what he had until payday. But this was the last thing he had to finish to make this house and land into something he felt comfortable living in and on for a good long while, and he couldn’t wait to send his father some pictures.
As soon as the truck left, Wren came over and took her favored spot in the chair on the porch. He’d wanted to throw it away, but then she wouldn’t have anywhere to sit when she came over.
He pulled the sod pieces off and started laying them in straight rows. The work made his breathing labored and his muscles strain, leaving little room for his brain to think about anything of importance.
“Tate?” Wren said as he started working right along the front sidewalk.
“Hmm?”
“How do you feel about having kids?”
He dropped the length of sod and whipped his attention to Wren. “What?”
“I’ve been thinking…and maybe you don’t want children. I mean, you were married for nine years and didn’t have kids.”
He blinked at her, wondering when their relationship had accelerated to this type of serious conversation. Sure, they saw each other every day, went to church together, held hands, kissed…but it had only been five weeks since he’d met her.
“I’m not opposed to children,” he finally managed to say. “I mean, maybe not nine of them or anything.”
Wren laughed and shook her head. “Definitely not nine of them.” She beamed at him like she was pleased with his answer, and Tate turned away so he wouldn’t give away too much of how he felt.
He honestly hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on his deepening feelings for Wren. He didn’t want to acknowledge them, because he had a feeling he couldn’t keep her. He wasn’t even sure why he felt that way, only that he’d never felt quite as inferior anywhere as he did here in Utah, in every way. At work, around his grandfather’s home, and with Wren. Always with Wren.
Whether she knew it or not, she put off a polished and put together vibe, even in the character T-shirts and flip flops. Even with the messy house.
Tate didn’t want to feel sup
erior to her, as he admittedly did while he was serving as a commanding officer. No, he just wanted to be on level ground, and he clearly wasn’t. But he didn’t know what to do about it.
Maybe talk to her, a voice whispered in his head. After all, she was asking him about having children, and he was sure that wouldn’t be the last serious thing she wanted to talk about.
So he shifted and pushed the sod strip where it needed to go, seizing ahold of his courage before he turned back to Wren. He slowly climbed the steps, drawing her attention away from her phone.
He paused at the post and leaned against it. “Wren, what do you, I mean, where do you see us…?” He sighed. “This is serious between us, right?”
She stood, the flirty glint in her eyes going out, replaced by concern. “Yes.” She drew the word out. “I think it’s serious.” She stopped a healthy distance from him, for which Tate was grateful. He needed room to think, to articulate what he wanted to say.
“You think your family approves?”
“Tate.” She chuckled, but it wasn’t happy. “Of course they do. My mom and dad like you just fine.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean then?”
“I’m a police officer.”
“So what?”
“So I just spent the last of my savings on that sod, and I don’t make very much.”
Her face bunched into a frown. “I don’t—they don’t—”
“They do, Wren.”
“Have they said something to you?”
“No.” He sighed and sagged his weight into the post. “Have you seen your parents’ house? That yard? They have a lot of money, and so do you. I’m…nothing.” He turned away from her, taking his frustration with him. “Forget about it.”
She didn’t say anything, didn’t call him back, but he felt her eyes watching him as he finished the front yard and continued around the back with the sod. And no matter how hard Tate worked, he couldn’t outrun the thoughts that not only was he nothing, he had also nothing to offer her. And the reason she hadn’t called him back to keep talking was because she knew it too.
Chapter 11
Wren stayed on Tate’s front porch as he moved around the back, a second away from crying. Just when she thought she had her emotions under enough control to go talk to him, she’d be unable to breathe without a hitch.
He worked like a dog, never stopping, never taking a break, though it had to be hovering close to one hundred degrees today. She was hot sitting in the shade and Sully panted at her side like he’d just run another five miles.
Finally Tate came around the front and said, “Help me with the sprinklers, would you?”
She nodded and got up, her legs feeling stiff and gelatinous at the same time. Was he going to break up with her? Who would she sit by at church tomorrow?
She shook the stupid thought out of her head. Tate had become a lot more than a pew partner, and she knew it. Her heart ricocheted around inside her chest at what might happen next. She found him around the back corner of the house, peering into a small green box attached to the siding there.
“So this is the front.” He pointed to a button labeled with a simple number one. “And the side, all the way to the fence.” The number two. “And the back yard.” Number three. “I’m going to go to that corner and have you push the buttons to see what happens. Okay?”
The nearness of him made Wren soft in the bone marrow, but she managed to nod. He walked away, single in his purpose to get his yard up and running. She wished she had his drive, his hardworking spirit, and she wished she knew exactly what he was thinking so she could right it.
“All right,” he called, barely glancing at her. “Just the front yard.”
She pushed the button, expecting a beep, a hiss, something. Nothing happened. “Did it go?” she asked.
“Did you push it?” he called.
“Yes!”
He twisted toward her and back to the yard. “Oh, here it is.” A few moments later his laughter filled the summer sky, painting Wren’s life with gold warmth she wanted to hold onto forever.
“All right. Turn that one off.” He turned but stayed at the front corner. “Turn on the side here.”
She pushed the two and this time, she did hear a sputtering hiss before the sprinkler heads popped up out of the ground and started clickety-clacking around to water the lawn.
“And off.” Tate started walking toward her almost before she could switch off the sprinklers, and he pushed the number three when he arrived back at the meter.
He looked at her, pure joy radiating from his face. “They work.”
“Of course they do.” She tried a smile on her face, but it wobbled. She wrapped her arms around him as he chuckled, relishing the vibrations as they passed from his body and into hers. He stroked her hair, and whenever he did, it was the only time she liked her hair.
“Are we okay?” she asked him, still holding very tightly to him so she wouldn’t have to look him in the face.
“Yeah,” he said, but it wasn’t delivered with any sense of weight behind the word.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“I already told you what I’m thinking.” He stepped out of her embrace and ducked his chin toward the ground. “I need to get the sprinklers on for a while and take a shower. Then we can go grab something to eat.”
He pushed all the buttons, letting his gaze slide right past her, and then turned to go inside. “You can wait with Sully, if you want.”
She had before. Several times. But for some reason, now she felt a skin of strangeness tightening over her as she thought about stretching out on his couch, her phone in her face, while he showered.
“I’ll go…do something.” She headed down the paved path he’d done a couple of weeks ago and onto the riverwalk. When she looked back, she half expected to see him standing there, his hands tucked in his pockets, watching her.
He was gone.
Wren begged out of lunch that day, claiming the sun had given her a headache. She went to church with Tate, and that distance she’d noticed over the Fourth of July returned. Though neither of them acknowledged it or said anything, Wren had a hollow pit in her stomach for most of the day. By the time she showed up to work on Monday morning, she wasn’t sure she could go through another day without clearing the air between her and Tate.
But her day started out busy, with a customer calling in a new job that Wren had to pull Patrick over to, and another one calling with a complaint about one of Fabi’s jobs from over the weekend.
By lunchtime, Wren wanted to take the next month of Mondays off, so when someone pushed into the office, she had her angry gaze on—until she saw Tate in all his uniformed glory. She’d never seen him in his black police uniform, but she’d heard him complain about the fabric. She really liked it, and her heart kicked into a new gear when their eyes met.
Her anger melted into fear. She stood as he approached with a white bag from one of their favorite go-to places for the best fast casual Italian food in town, Italy Red.
“I brought you the fifty-fifty.” He set the bag on the counter and smiled at her. Maybe everything was fine. He wasn’t acting strange today, though the past two days had been filled with tension and the fear of the unknown.
“Thank you.” She smiled at him. “It’s good to see you. It’s been a crazy morning.”
“Well, hopefully this will make your day better.”
“You didn’t get anything for yourself.”
“They’re feeding us at the station today. I guess it’s Cory’s birthday.”
“Oh, right. Cory Patton. He’s Brennan’s age.”
A strange look crossed Tate’s face, but Wren saw it. She’d gotten good over the past several weeks at reading the minute clues he allowed through the mask he usually wore. And this one said he didn’t like that she knew Cory Patton and how old he was.
But she couldn’t change that. Just like she couldn’t change who
her family was, or where they lived, or how much money they had.
“Look, Wren.” His voice sounded like he’d gargled with glass.
“Don’t,” she said.
“I just don’t see how this is going to work out.” He looked at her fully now, all of his emotions streaming through the mask. “I laid awake for hours last night, trying to figure things out. And I can’t get past the fact that guys like me don’t end up with girls like you.”
The once tantalizing scent of the marinara with the Alfredo sauce made her nauseous. “Yes, they do.”
“No, Wren, we don’t.”
“I’m just a normal woman.”
He shook his head, a sadness entering his face she really disliked. “Wren, you’re anything but normal.” His hand flinched toward her, as if he’d cup her face and draw her in for a kiss like he’d done so many times before.
Instead, he fell back a step. “I can’t give you the kind of life you’re used to, and it’s not fair to either of us to expect me to.”
“I never said anything about the kind of life I’m used to.” She wasn’t even sure what that meant. Did she hurt for money? No. If something broke, her dad could fix it, or her dad knew someone who could. If she wanted a new couch or a new bed, again, her father knew someone who could help her, get her a deal, something.
“But you did, Wren.” He moved back another few steps. “You did.” And just like that, in only the moment it took her to inhale, he was gone.
Wren fell back into her ergonomic desk chair, unable to stay standing without him in her life.
“Did that really just happen?” She stared at the door as a chill descended on her skin, usually welcome this late in the summer but which now left her feeling clammy and cold inside as well as out.
Chapter 12
Tate shuffled through the rest of his day, and then the week. When the weekend came, he had nothing to do around the house as he’d finished the yard last weekend and all the major projects had been completed for a while now.