by Annie Jones
“You’re beautiful.”
She relaxed and let her gaze dip to the floor, shy but just a bit flirtatious. “Yes, I’ve heard the almost-forty, wet-haired, foot-in-cast look is all the rage on the Paris runways this year.”
“If it isn’t, it should be.” He extended his hand to lead her out of the room. “But I wasn’t talking about the way you look.”
“Oh?”
“I mean, you look good. You look—” he pulled her not just into the hallway but into his arms then gazed down into her eyes “—real good.”
“Thank you, Vince.”
“When I called you beautiful, I was trying to tell you that you…you’re…”
“Yes?”
He touched her cheek. “You’re beautiful.”
“So you said. Twice.” Not that she minded hearing it repeated. “And?”
Fabbie let out a low, drawn-out mewl.
Kate froze.
Vince made a move to go for the baby.
She nabbed his arm and held him in place.
When Fabbie cried out again, she tiptoed into Gentry’s old room and stole a peek into the crib.
“Shh.” She stroked back the baby’s dark, slightly damp hair. “Go to sleep, sweetie. You need to gather your strength to throw oatmeal at Grandpa in the morning.”
“Hey! Don’t give her ideas!”
More fussing.
Kate patted the baby’s back. “We beautiful girls have to stick together.”
As if agreeing with Kate’s assessment, Fabbie let out a hearty burp.
Vince let out a laugh.
“Hey, beauty is as beauty burps.” She dropped a kiss on the drowsy baby’s head then made her way back to the hallway.
He followed her with his eyes, making her feel self-conscious.
“Anyway, I’m not beautiful. That’s Jo. I’m more the clean-cut wholesome girl-next-door type of attractive.”
“You were always pretty, Kate.” His hand fit around the nape of her neck. He tipped his head to one side, his eyes dark. “But now, knowing what you’ve done with your life, seeing how you take care of people, the way you care about me? Pretty just doesn’t do you justice.”
“I’m not doing anything special,” she whispered.
“But what you are doing looks good on you,” he murmured. “You look good with a baby, Kate.”
His words virtually stole her breath away. Still, she managed to get out a very soft, “Do I?”
“Yeah. Very good.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear then let his fingertips trace the path from her earlobe down her jaw. “Makes a guy wonder.”
She stiffened. “Makes a guy wonder what?”
He crooked his finger beneath her chin and tipped it so that she could only gaze up into his sincere, searching eyes as he said, “Not ‘what’ but ‘what if.’”
“Hold it right there.” Her stiffness turned to downright rigidity. She pulled away from his touch and held her hand up between them. “I just made a promise not to surrender to the temptation of the words if only.”
“I didn’t say ‘if only.’” He placed both of his large hands on her tightly raised shoulders and lowered his face until the entire world seemed to narrow to the two of them. “I said ‘what if.’ Big difference.”
“There is?” she murmured, mesmerized by the possibility.
“‘If only’ speaks of regret.”
If only she had been a better Christian and turned to God and prayer for answers instead of running from hard realities. If only she had been a braver sister and spoken up when Molly Christina disappeared or paid more attention when they were in Santa Sofia and found the connection sooner. If only she had been a bolder woman, willing to stand and fight for what she wanted.
“Regrets,” she repeated softly. “Yeah. I see that.”
“Whereas ‘what if’ dreams about possibilities.”
What if she started trying to do all that now—living her faith, bonding with her sisters, standing and fighting for what she wanted?
Kate smiled. “I like that distinction.”
“Good.”
She put her hands on his chest. “So go with it.”
“Go with…what?”
“Not ‘what’ but ‘what if.’ You said I looked good with a baby and it made a guy wonder.” You were just about to propose, she wanted to tell him. Instead she just prodded, “What if?”
“Oh, yeah. Seeing you in my home like this, knowing it’s a temporary thing this weekend, got me thinking.”
“What if,” she prodded yet again.
He nodded, squared his shoulders and came out with it, sort of. “What if you had a chance to do the caring for me and mine, doing baby duty and more, on a…let’s call it a nontemporary basis.”
Was that a proposal at last?
Kate didn’t even know. A chance? Caring for him? Baby duty?
Wait. Had he said baby?
She could not concentrate on the question of marriage with this new twist stirring in her being. A baby. With Vince.
If she had not broken their engagement all those years ago, she would have expected that at some point she and Vince would have been…well, expecting. But now? With him as a grandfather and her thirty-nine?
It was not impossible but it did seem an unlikely dream. “What if” dares to dream.
Dare to dream, Kate. Stay and fight for that dream…on a nontemporary basis. That’s what he was asking her.
“Yes,” she said, before she overthought it and scared herself off.
She’d lived her life running away, afraid she’d make another mistake she could not undo. Now the man she loved stood before her asking her to commit to that very thing—to marriage and motherhood, two things that if Kate undertook, she could never run out on.
“Yes,” she said again as she wrapped her arms around the man and laid her cheek on his chest.
“Yes?”
“Yes!” She said it louder this time then went up on tiptoe and kissed him to back it up.
“Kate, that’s great.” He brushed her hair back then kissed her briefly.
It was great. But was that all he was going to say about it? All he intended to do?
No bended knee? No whoop of joy? No grabbing her up and twirling her around?
Okay, that last one probably never would have occurred to him, given her big old cast and banged-up tootsie. Still, for her having accepted his proposal after their having loved and lost and loved one another over all these years, for her having said she would have his babies and take care of him and not run off? Kate felt a twinge of disappointment that his reaction wasn’t bigger.
He put his hands on either side of her face and smiled. “So let’s get this straight. If Gentry and Pera do move to Miami, you’ll move, too, to give us a shot at being a family.”
“Move?” She hadn’t thought about moving. “Well, I guess…if that’s where you go, I suppose I’d have to…”
“Are you having second thoughts?”
“It’s just that I thought I’d found my home here in Santa Sofia. This is where I thought I’d grow old.” With you. “It’s where my family is all together, now, finally. It’s where, you know, I thought we’d raise our family.”
“Raise our what?” He stepped away from her.
“Don’t act so shocked.” She tried to laugh it off but the look of confusion tinged with a tiny bit of horror in his face made her feel anything but funny. “You’re the one who brought up babies.”
“I meant Fabbie.” He pointed to the closed door of the room where the baby lay sleeping.
“Fabbie? But she’s not our child, Vince.”
“I know that. She’s my grandchild, though. And I thought, you know, when I looked after her in the future, I’d want you around, too.”
Nontemporarily. Meaning not on a temporary basis. Yet also, to a man who made such a clear distinction between “what if” and “if only,” a very carefully selected term. Not temporary, but also clearly not permanent
.
Kate stepped back again, putting more than enough space between them so that, even with his arm outstretched, his hand no longer rested on her upper arm. “Vince, just what exactly were you asking me to nontemporarily do?”
“I wasn’t asking you to do anything, Kate. I just wondered if maybe, if it came down to it, if you’d consider—”
“That’s too many ‘ifs,’ Vince.” Another step back. Yes, she was literally as well as emotionally retreating. She had to. She had finally taken a stand. “I’m not talking dreams or regrets. I’m talking reality. Mine and yours, Vince. I’m talking the future I want to build for myself, for us if that’s what you want.”
“My future is pretty unsettled right now, Kate. What with my whole family possibly going to pick up and move to a new city.”
Not your whole family, Vince. She wanted to say it but if she did she’d never know if he really saw her as his family or if he simply acquiesced to smooth things out between them. “So you’re saying?”
“I can’t really say anything until I know what my family plans to do and can decide what’s best for them.”
“I see.” She nodded and took another step back. “Well, then, I guess that doesn’t leave me any choice but to go home.”
“Kate, what’s wrong? I don’t understand.”
“The fact that you don’t understand is what’s wrong, Vince.” She turned at last and headed for the door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, though, right?” he called after her.
“You’re staying in the house across the cul-de-sac from my home.” The cottage on Dream Away Bay Court, her home? She’d said it and she’d meant it. “I promised I’d help take care of Fabbie. I’m not running out on my promises ever again, Vince. If you need me, you will see me tomorrow.”
“And if I don’t?”
Don’t see me or don’t need me? Kate didn’t dare ask. She just slipped through the door with a silent wave and waited until she’d gotten all the way onto her own front porch before she broke down and began to sob her heart out.
Chapter Nineteen
Not since she’d discovered her now-infamous Cromwell connection had Moxie had an evening like this. A six-hour shift at the Bait Shack for which she would receive not one dime in pay, and what tips she’d earn, she’d share with some deserving member of the staff.
Before learning about her long-lost family?
This was how she spent pretty much every weekend evening for…too many years. Back then, she’d resigned herself to it and spent most of the time trying not to dwell on her situation. Tonight she reveled in it.
With the good news from the hospital that they wanted to release Billy J tomorrow, not because they were sick of him, as she had been telling people as a joke, but because he was well enough to come home, her worries had lightened. With Jo out of town, Kate spending time with Vince and Dodie resting up for the trip to get Billy J tomorrow, Moxie finally had an evening all to herself.
Well, not all to herself.
“I don’t know that this really made any difference, Moxie.” Hunt clunked an empty glass pitcher onto the counter at the drink station, which had originally been a bar in the days before Billy J made the place a family establishment.
He cocked his head and exhaled in a long stream, his way of telling her he’d had enough of waiting tables and interacting with pretty much everyone eating out in Santa Sofia tonight.
“The last customer is out, Moxie. The drawers are balanced, bank deposit in the safe, kitchen clean. Want me to lock the door and turn the sign on my way out?” The night manager had the experience and the authority to pretty much do anything except sell the place for less than market value, so the question she called out was merely a show of courtesy. And a very thinly disguised way of letting Moxie know the staff was leaving and she and Hunt had the place to themselves.
“Thanks!” Moxie gave a wave.
“Great working with ya!” Hunt waved, too, then turned to Moxie. “Who was that?”
“She ordered you around all night, and you never learned her name?”
“If I tried to learn the names of everyone who ordered me around tonight…well, why would I bother? It would be easier to just carry around the Santa Sofia phone book. That almost sums up the list.”
She contemplated sticking out her lower lip and giving him a sweet and sympathetic “poor baby” but thought better of it. Hunt Diamante was anything but a baby. He’d taken her suggestion to work here tonight like a man. She got the feeling he took everything like a man and gave back in kind.
So instead of talking down to him, even in an act of good-natured coddling, she decided to let him know he wasn’t the only person who had busted his behind all night. “Welcome to my world.”
“You do this often?”
Too often. That would sound as if she had no other life beyond these walls. No social life at least.
She didn’t have, really. Even though she had dated Lionel for years she had still ended up here most weekends. Working when her dad needed her, sitting and yakking with Lionel and friends when he didn’t.
Yet for all that time spent here, none of it had felt as productive as tonight. Productive and…exhilarating.
She looked across the tall counter at Hunt and suddenly she knew why. “It wasn’t so bad, was it? Spending time with me here?”
“Naw.” The sole of his athletic shoe squawked against the brass foot rail. “Not bad at all.”
“Good.” Good. What a perfect word to describe this guy. Good work ethic. Good heart. Good-looking.
She eased out a soft, dreamy sigh and gazed at him for so long that he finally waved his hand in front of her face.
“Hey? Drift off for a minute?”
“Oh! I…” She blinked, rapidly trying to come up with a clever remark to cover for her lapse in conversation.
You are so cute.
Do you like me?
Will you be my new boyfriend?
A list of geeky questions clicked through her mind. Happily none of them made it all the way to her mouth.
“Um, yes, good. Glad you enjoyed working here tonight. You’ll see results at the Sun Times from it, too. You’ve made more inroads than you think.”
“Inroads? By pouring an ocean of sweet tea? Sweet tea? Honestly?”
Moxie yanked the wayward pitcher he had collected down into a small sink filled with hot sudsy water. “You’ve heard the old saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?”
Hunt narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, so?”
“Well, the way to Santa Sofia’s heart is through…” She motioned with her hand, encouraging him to complete the sentence.
He hazarded a guess. “Through…a straw?”
“Service!” She popped a dish towel in his general direction. “A straw? The way to our town’s heart is through a straw?”
“Big straw.” He spread his hands wide. “You know, for drinking the sweet tea?”
She reached down and pulled the heavy pitcher up, setting it on the countertop with a solid plunk to dry. “You do not drink sweet tea through a straw.”
“How do you drink it?”
“Um, let’s see, you sip tea. You gulp it. And you…hmm.” She went through the motions of drinking from her invisible glass again, trying to think of other words for the way locals consumed their favorite beverage. “You—”
“You shower in it?” He had come around the side of the drink station and almost fallen into a huge pillow of trash bag filled with nothing but disposable “go cups” that people had gotten to take with them when they went home, except most of them did not go home, but sat and visited with friends the whole night long. “That’s what I’m guessing, judging from the number of these you go through around here. And that’s not counting all the actual glasses I made the rounds filling every few minutes.”
“Maybe they just liked the service,” she teased.
“This is where I came into this conversation.” He parked the dis
h sack on the counter to get a better grip.
Moxie slung a hand towel over her shoulder and reached for the sack. “Here, you’ve done enough. I’ll take care of—”
Her fingers curved around to gather the opening of the sack together just seconds before Hunt’s hand closed over hers.
“Those,” she mumbled to finish her directive just as she lifted her head and found herself instantly lost in Hunt’s unwavering gaze.
She’d had her eyes on him all night. To make sure he didn’t do his cause—or her daddy’s customers—any harm, of course.
Still he didn’t make a bad picture with the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up to expose his strong forearms and the pencil stuck behind his ear standing out against the bristle of his short dark hair. He’d hustled hard all evening long, making a big show of his exasperation but with his smile always just beneath the surface ready to break free.
And now here he stood, his fingers entwined with hers. “You really think working here one night will leave any kind of lingering impression?”
“It already has,” she whispered.
“How do you know? You soliciting orders for ad space behind my back?”
“Ad space?” Moxie crinkled her nose, released the bag and took a step backward. “No. I can’t promise…It’s just that people like to deal with people they feel they know and—”
“That’s what I thought.” He made quick work of tying up the bag’s top.
His broad shoulders sloped forward. He rubbed his hands over his face then looked out at the now-empty dining room of the Bait Shack.
He’d worked so hard tonight. Not just pouring tea but pouring on the charm, and not that false “salesman desperate for a sale” kind of charm, either. The real, intense, encompassing charm of a man doing what he did best—listening, learning. A true journalist who loved to find the story behind the story, not just the headline, not just the sound bite. He had talked to the people he met here tonight. Really talked. He had gotten people she had lived near, worked with, shared church pews and chugged sweet tea with for most of her life to share tidbits that she had never known about—everything from their most embarrassing Bait Shack moment to their most moving example of what life in Santa Sofia meant to them.