by June Shaw
She murmured with pleasure and looked forward to morning when could view the window even better with sunlight streaming through it. The room gave off the feel of a man. Strange, Erin thought, and shrugged off her foolish imaginings.
The cabinet built above the lavatory enticed her to open it.
She touched its round white knob. A tinge of guilt surfaced. She chose not to look within. Doing that would be like invading others’ privacy. Even though someone would eventually have to endure going through the former couple’s personal things, that person would probably be her aunt’s brother.
The sound of Dane’s shower stopped. Erin grabbed towels from a stack on a stand, washed up, and changed clothes. Then she headed for the bed that would surely keep her awake, reminding her too much of Aunt Tilly.
She slid onto the bed and laid her head on a down pillow. Her eyes adjusted to the dark and took in deep shadows. Massive posts on the bed. The mantle and bare pieces on it. As Erin’s eyelids fluttered and then clamped together, and she noticed—this room did not make her think at all of her aunt.
Chapter Three
Dane scrambled from bed at the usual hour, much too early for the little sleep he’d had. The woman in the next bedroom made him stay awake into the wee hours, punching his pillow and trying to get her presence out of his mind.
He’d been foolish to let her believe Tilly’s ridiculous words in that envelope. After Erin woke up this morning, he would tell her the absolute truth. Or even better, the page Tilly wrote for her to read today would disclose it. Probably Tilly, with her great sense of humor, would have said the whole idea was only a little joke. It would be like Tilly to try to play a prank even after her death.
Dane looked forward to learning what Tilly had to say on that next page. In the meantime, he needed to get dressed. And his clothes were all in that room, his bedroom where Erin lay asleep in his bed.
He wrapped a bath towel around his waist. Creeping to the door between them, he avoided any boards that squeaked. Annoyance built inside him. How ridiculous for him to skulk around his own house and try to open the door to his bedroom without making noise.
He grabbed the doorknob, a grin sneaking to his face when he recalled the click of that door last night. Right after he’d closed it, Erin had shoved it even tighter, just to make sure. Had she thought he might sneak in after she undressed?
A frown replaced Dane’s smirk. Why did he want her to stay in his bed? He should instead, shake her out of it.
He yanked the door open. A long squeak sounded.
He peered through the space he created, making sure she hadn’t jump up, ready to scream for help.
Erin formed a small mound on his bed. She faced away from him, her breaths barely audible as though calling him closer.
He stepped toward her. Then stopped. No—this woman wasn’t the one he wanted. He wanted Anna returned to him. This woman with her breaths against his sheets wouldn’t soothe him. They only brought back memories he refused to have.
He yanked his clothes out of the closet and did not worry about shutting the door all the way when he went out.
“I can’t believe it,” Erin said as she rose from the bed with the firm mattress. She had slept an entire night. She never slept through a night without waking many times, hearing horns blare as cars raced past each other near her apartment or thinking of all the things she needed to get done and trying to hurry back to sleep but unable to.
Now the sun was high, she could tell by the bright rays streaming through tilted slats on the floor-to-ceiling green shutters. For a change, Erin woke up fully rested.
She wanted to look around her aunt’s wonderful house, but that would have to wait. First, she had to see about that man who said he also lived in this house. She glanced at the door between their bedrooms.
It was open half an inch.
Her back stiffened. Had he come into this bedroom last night? Or just now?
“Hello,” Erin called out through the open doorway. “Hello. I’m up.”
She listened. Heard nothing different. The momentary tingle of excitement she’d experienced dissipated, replaced by a trace of fear. Dane Cancienne looked fantastic, but she didn’t know the man at all. Possibly she should fear him.
She hurried to get dressed in the bathroom, slightly disappointed to find shadows of trees blocking the morning sunshine from streaming in through the lovely stained-glass window over the tub.
Erin retraced her steps through the rooms she’d walked through the night before.
When Dane returned from inspecting the fields, she was standing on his porch at the section where people seldom came, right outside the door to what used to be the dining room.
“Hi,” Erin called, waving when he drove up.
He nodded in greeting and left his truck in the driveway instead of parking in the garage. “’Morning,” he said, trotting up the stairs, expecting her to say she’d read Tilly’s next note, and it explained that her first instructions had only been a joke.
Erin was wearing shorts. She looked great.
And he didn’t need to be thinking about such things.
She rose to her tip-toes and stretched, shoving her arms high. “I can’t wake up,” she said in a husky tone.
Dane stood a distance away, holding the porch rail. Why wasn’t she being an annoying chatterbox? She’d talked almost constantly last night, reminding him of the incessant chatter of crickets and bullfrogs in the woods right after a thunderstorm. But now as she’d shed heavier clothes, had she also gotten rid of excess talking?
“It’s time to get moving,” he said. He didn’t want to sound blunt, but she needed to go.
“I know. I will in a moment.” She stretched again, this time also from side to side. “I don’t know why I’m such a slug bug today. I slept so well. Maybe that’s the reason.”
The smile she gave him, her lips wide, her moss-gray eyes sparkling, commanded him to pay attention. For the funeral services, she’d probably worn a little makeup. Now, her bare skin and lips looked natural. She was a bother, yet he wasn’t in such a hurry to send her away this morning. But he had to.
“Did you read Tilly’s second page?” he asked.
Erin’s eyes saddened. “Actually I just got up and made breakfast. Come on in. I kept you some.”
He followed her through the room with a dusty dining table and into the kitchen. “You cooked something?” he asked, aware that his stomach grumbled from not having its usual grits or biscuits this morning. But he’d left fast, feeling a need to go before she woke up.
Erin took butter and blackberry jam out of the refrigerator. She placed them at the end of the table, where a clean plate, knife, and glass had been laid out. “I found a small can of biscuits in the fridge and baked them,” she said, “and saved most of them for you.”
“I appreciate that.” The biscuits she took from the oven were still warm. Dane slathered jam on the ones she served on his plate.
“You’ll probably want coffee with them.” She ruined the moment by turning on the fire underneath the drip pot. “I already made it, so I’ll just heat this.”
“Turn that off. I don’t need coffee.” But he did want some. His whole system had felt out of sync without its usual caffeine.
Her eyes appeared doe-like. “Are you sure? I know demitasse cups weren’t made for the microwave, but I could heat a mug for you in the microwave.”
She had already done the damage and used Anna’s drip pot.
“All right, I’ll have a mug.”
Erin flitted to the cabinets and located one. She poured coffee and heated the mug in the microwave. Seconds later, the microwave binged. “Hope you like it.” She gave him the mug and sat beside him, her tight smile uncertain.
Dane’s stomach quietly gurgled while he got ready to eat and drink the dark aromatic brew. He would satisfy his hunger and then explain to Erin that the kitchen she sat in belonged to him.
Chapter Four
“I�
��ll hurry and do these dishes,” Erin said after Dane finished his last bite of breakfast.
“They can wait.” He rose, automatically lifting his used dishes, ready to carry them to the sink.
She took them from him. “I’ll just be a minute. I do everything fast, remember?” Plunging her hands into soapy water, she glanced at him with a grin.
He couldn’t help but smile back. “I remember.” He kicked back in his chair, gaining pleasure from watching the speed of her hands as they washed and rinsed the few items while she kept the water running. “But you seemed so slow moving today that I thought you might be a different person,” he said teasing.
“No way. I’m quick Erin. There, finished.” She turned off the faucet and yanked up a dry towel. “Now I’ll just dry these things and put them away.”
“We don’t dry here.”
She raised a shapely eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“We take things real casual. Our dishes can dry themselves.” Erin tossed the dry towel over the dishes. “Well, when in Texas…”
He smiled. “That’s one state over.”
“I know. And I know some of your unique customs are charming.”
“Really?” he said, pleased with finding her amusing. “For example?”
She leaned back against the counter. “Your Mardi Gras celebrations must be lots of fun in these small towns. I thought everyone acted extra rowdy during parades, but Aunt Tilly once explained that usually only happens in the French Quarter. Otherwise, she said your parades give families a chance to get together for wholesome fun that costs them nothing, and a humble man and woman can become royalty. She’d hoped that one day, she might become a queen herself.” Erin’s lips trembled. She stopped talking.
“I’m sure she would have been chosen.” An uncomfortable pull tugged inside Dane’s chest.
He shoved up from the chair and faced Erin, keeping a few feet’s distance. “She told you about some other customs?”
Her pleasant smile was admirable. “Aunt Tilly said you have the Blessing of the Boats.”
“Blessing of the Fleet,” he corrected.
Erin nodded, and he couldn’t help but smile with her. “Yes,” she said, “when a priest blesses a whole procession of boats that get decorated for the occasion right before they go out into the gulf, not knowing what treacherous weather they might encounter during the season.”
Dane studied her. She might still talk a lot, but at least today, her body seemed to slow down. And that body needed more clothes covering it. The shorts and top weren’t smaller than women in the area wore, but on her, they looked almost obscene. Or maybe that was because he stood too close and felt tempted to wrap his arms around her.
Ridiculous. “Yes, I guess we do some things down here that y’all aren’t accustomed to up north,” he said, moving away. But not before he noticed the barely-visible freckles on her cheeks, making him want to feel them to see if they might dust off like powdered sugar falling from beignets.
She diverted her direct gaze. “Up north,” Erin said. “That’s where I need to call.” She stepped away. “I need to make a call to New York before I follow Aunt Tilly’s instructions for today. I have to get moving.”
As if she had ordered her body to regain its quick actions, she scuttled across the kitchen as fast as a fiddler crab crossed sand on a beach near the gulf.
“Before you make that call,” Dane said, going after her, “I want to talk to you.” No use letting her tell whoever she’d call that she was staying here. She wasn’t.
He’d get her to look at the next page Tilly wrote to see if she said this whole thing was a hoax. And if Tilly didn’t, he would have to tell her himself.
“Excuse me,” Erin said. Her wide eyes aimed at him looked almost fearful. She had reached the master bedroom—his bedroom—and sat on the edge of his bed, yanking a cell phone out of her purse. “Will you always follow me into the bedroom?”
I might if you were just another good-looking woman who wouldn’t look for attachments.
But Erin Westlake didn’t seem to be that kind of woman. “Probably not,” he told her.
“Well then.” Seeming to think she’d dismissed him, she opened her phone. Her expression angered. She glanced around the room. “My battery’s dead. And there’s no phone in here.”
Don’t need one. Not when I put my own cell phone down on that side table every night.
A moment of thought flickered in Erin’s eyes. “I’ll use the one out there. If you’ll excuse me.” She jumped down from his bed and stopped so close to him, he noted her jasmine smell.
Dane moved aside. She swept out the room past him before his thoughts could jell. What was it about this woman that was making him act as though he’d concede to her? His anger flared. Why should he care about her wishes? She was here for a day, and now she’d be gone.
He followed to where he heard her little sandals tapping across the floor. She held the receiver of the corded phone in the former dining room, her expression livid when she saw him.
“Yes, please charge the call to my home number,” she said into the receiver, while Dane shook his head to stop her from making this call. She did not need to tell whoever she was calling that she was staying here. It wasn’t going to happen.
Erin speared him with her eyes. “Do you plan to remain close and listen to every word I say to my friend?”
“What kind of friend? Boyfriend?” he asked, unable to believe that the unhappiness he felt seemed almost like jealousy. She might be calling a man, but if she was, so what? It was nothing to him.
“Surely you know people have private things to say to each other,” she said while waiting for the person she called to pick up.
Private words, private touches. Moments of just being with each other, sharing coffee and a good breeze that made the moss shimmer on its branches on the big oaks.
Dane remembered. He walked away, leaving Erin alone. He could correct any misconceptions she had after her phone call. And then if this was a boyfriend, she could call him back and say she was flying home to him.
Annoyance building inside Dane made him give his head an angry shake. This whole thing was building into an unpleasant episode with that New Yorker, and he was ready to get it over with. The main feeling he’d experienced these last two years were the occasional bouts of anger, mainly when major problems developed in the fields. But he was accustomed to machines breaking down and knew they would start working again, or he would replace them. That woman using his telephone yielded a different problem, one he wasn’t comfortable handling.
Dane assured himself that the discomforting situation would soon end.
He shoved the dining room’s screen door out, leaving her to talk with her friend. He’d check vegetables in the garden and then come back to speak with her.
“But I can’t!” she said.
Dane stopped the door from slamming. He didn’t want to hear her conversation, but her voice had risen. He remained behind the wooden door that led outside, listening only a minute in case she had a problem and needed help. The person she spoke to certainly couldn’t be a man she cared about.
“I can’t do that,” she said and grew silent. “I’m sure they’ll understand. And I know you will.”
Quiet built in the room. Dane pushed out through the door, letting the woman speak in private.
“He doesn’t understand.” Erin stormed out to the porch behind him.
“Who doesn’t?” Dane stopped his hustle down the steps and turned.
Her face was red, the flush trickling down her neck to her shirt. Her chest heaved as she took deep breaths. “Trevor.”
Dane nodded. He didn’t want to get involved in this woman’s life but didn’t like the way her jaw tensed.
Before he could speak, she stared at him, folded hands on her hips. “If you cared about someone, wouldn’t you give her the courtesy of hearing her out? Of knowing she had to be someplace, even if she didn’t want to be?”
“I would.” He answered without any idea of what she was talking about. But whenever the woman he’d loved had requested anything, he had said yes. She hadn’t asked for much, but together, they’d had everything.
The sad expression left Erin’s face, replaced by firmness, her gray-green eyes fierce. “That’s what I’d think, too.” She planted her feet and stared off into the yard.
“Well then,” Dane said, deciding this wasn’t quite the time to have his talk with her. He would go pick the tomatoes he’d seen turning pink yesterday and give her a chance to calm down. Then he’d return for their chat.
He descended the stairs by twos.
“Oh, we have company,” Erin said.
She’d spied the truck turning in from the highway before Dane heard it coming. The familiar red truck hadn’t approached here much lately, and he had been grateful. You’ve gotten too glum, its driver kept telling him.
She parked and slid out of the truck.
“Mom,” Dane said in greeting.
“Mom?” Erin repeated, confused. This was the same person who had given her the envelope at the cemetery.
“Yes,” the woman said, her eyes seeming to flash inward with momentary thought. “Mom Bea. Everybody calls me that.” She glanced at Dane, whose jaw dropped a fraction of an inch. Her graying hair was again drawn into a ponytail. Her little legs took her squat body, which wore long loose shorts and a glowing pink T-shirt, to the base of the stairs. She stared up at Erin with periwinkle eyes. “Tilly told me lots about you. She said you were the perfect young lady. You’re someone that anybody would be proud to have in their family.”
Erin’s cheeks warmed. “Aunt Tilly was partial.”
“She told me so much about you,” Mom Bea said. “I’m so glad I got to meet you.” She held onto the banister to make her way up the stairs, while Dane, down on the shell driveway, kept staring as though in disbelief. Erin wondered what was wrong with him.
“I’m happy to meet you, too.” Erin put a hand out when Mom Bea reached the porch. Instead of shaking hands, the woman drew Erin into a hug. The embrace felt warm, genuine. Erin didn’t rush to escape her arms and soft body.