by JoAnn Ross
“I love you,” she said quietly. But evenly.
He’d known that. Probably from the beginning. Even before people started telling him that she’d had that thing for him. He’d known it and had taken advantage of her feelings for his own selfish damn pleasure. Because being loved had him feeling human again. Making love had made him feel alive.
“And I’m falling in love with you.” Hell, he was all the way there, but wouldn’t admitting that make things even worse? He pulled the shirt over his head. It smelled like the hospital. Illness and antiseptic and urine and other things he didn’t even want to think about. How did anyone work in a place like that? How had Zoe survived such misery every damn day?
“So, what’s the problem?” She’d gotten off the bed and was standing there, all flush and pretty and naked, looking at him, her expression confused.
“It’s not you. It’s me.” Oh, Christ, Jesus, had he actually said that?
“Okay.” But it wasn’t okay. “So, you’re dumping me because you love me?”
“No. Okay. Maybe.”
“Is it because you’re feeling guilty because of Zoe? Like you’re cheating on her?”
“No. Seriously. It’s not that. I worried I would, in the beginning, a little. But I didn’t. That’s not it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I thought I could handle it. And, call me a coward, which I guess I am, but I can’t risk losing another woman I love.”
“The reason you’re breaking up with me is because you’re afraid of losing me?”
“Yeah.” He dragged both hands down his face. “I’ve been through that pain once. And the ironic thing is, you’re the one who made it better. Who brought me back from hell. Or at least the purgatory I was stuck in.
“But Mom’s heart attack, watching Dad seem to shrink three sizes and look like he was about to flatline, too, reminded me that people die. Every damn day. Hell, right this very second, there are probably millions of people all over the world dying. And maybe some of the survivors who loved them are strong enough to put their hearts on the line again, but I’m not one of them.”
“I don’t really have any intention of dying anytime soon,” she said.
Her tone was mild, but he could hear the tremor of strain behind her words as she grabbed the sheet from the floor and wrapped it around herself. Not that it was going to provide any real protection against the pain he was inflicting.
“But we just never know, do we?” He shook his head. “It’s like life’s just one big crapshoot. Just when we think we have things under control, shit happens.”
Not only had he used her, both emotionally and physically, but now, watching the color drain from her face and the pain in her damp eyes, he knew that he was also breaking her heart. “Look. I’d better go before I make all this even worse.”
She folded her arms, holding herself tight, as if to keep from shattering apart. “I doubt that’s possible.” She closed her eyes, drew in a breath, then, with the backs of her hands, wiped at the tears that were falling down her cheeks. “Dammit, I never cry,” she said.
And didn’t he know that feeling? So why did he feel on the verge of bawling like Kylee and Mai’s baby now?
She lifted her head. Jutted out her chin in a way that was far more familiar. She’d probably looked like that when Doctor Dick had accused her casino’s games of being rigged. “You’re right,” she said on a stronger voice. Going into the closet, she pulled out a duffel bag, some jeans, shirts and two pairs of sneakers (one Gore-Tex for wet days), then went over to the dresser and dumped her underwear drawer, along with the clothes from the closet, into the bag.
“This isn’t going to work because you refuse to let it. And yes, I know you warned me up front, and yes, I’ve settled for a friends-with-benefits deal these past weeks, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Or have expected more. So go ahead and go home, or back to wherever the hell it is you go every Sunday, and I’ll move to the farm while you finish work on the house.”
“I can do that,” Seth said, even as sharp claws ripped away at his guts.
“Good.” She took her toothbrush and makeup bag from the bathroom and threw them into the duffel bag. “You know my plans for the rest of the rooms. Just send word through Quinn when it’s done. Then I’ll move back in.”
He had to ask. “What about the carriage house?”
Her laugh, which surprised him, held no humor. “I’ve no idea. I’m not really up to thinking about it today. I may contact that guy you told me about down the coast in Oregon.”
“Lucas Chaffee. I’ll have Ethel send you his card. Just in case.”
“Fine.” She shook her head as she zipped up the bag. “And aren’t we being so very civilized?”
Funny, for once they weren’t on the same wavelength. Because nothing about this felt the least bit civilized.
* * *
ONE ADVANTAGE OF her former occupation was that she’d learned to move quick and travel light. Brianna grabbed her purse from where she’d left it on the downstairs counter, and walked out the door. For the last time until Seth got her dream house done.
“Wouldn’t you just know it?” Bandit was standing there with his ratty old tennis ball in his mouth.
“You’re such a sweet boy,” she said as she patted his huge head, starting his tail thumping on the wooden slats of the porch floor. Oh, how she was going to miss this goofy, adorable, loving rescue dog.
He dropped the ball at her feet, his request obvious. She picked it up and threw it as far as she could. She might not have played official sports like Kylee, but years of playing baseball in the baseball diamond they’d made in one of the farm’s fallow fields had given her a strong throwing arm.
As he took off after it, she jumped into her car and drove away down the tree-lined drive that was going to be such a stunning welcome entry for guests once Amanda Barrow finished with it.
She’d sworn she wasn’t going to look back, but couldn’t resist glancing up into her rearview mirror. When she saw Bandit, ball in his mouth, chasing after her, Brianna allowed herself to sob.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THIS WELCOME HOME was nothing like the earlier one. Instead of joy, her mother’s face was etched with sorrow and concern. And not just for her daughter, but her best friend.
“Are you sure you want to be here?” Sarah asked.
“I need to be here. He practically threw me out of my own house. After he’d told me he loved me.”
“Of course he does. Otherwise he wouldn’t be so afraid of losing you,” her mother said.
Brianna jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “It’s stupid.”
“It’s human.”
“Like I told you, I never thought I’d get over Bonnie,” her grandfather reminded her. “But then I met Harriet, who rescued me. Not only from my grief, but the bottle. I never talk about it, but I drank some back then. A lot, if you want to know the truth. I was in a dark place. But this woman—” he took hold of Harriet’s age-spotted hand and lifted it to his lips as if she were a young woman he was courting “—she brought the sunshine back into my life.”
“Your grandfather was a tough nut to crack,” Harriet said. “But he’s been worth all the tears I shed until we made it to a good place.”
“The best place,” Jerome said. “Or would be if you’d take the same advice everyone wants to give that Harper boy and quit worrying that I’m going to keel over on you at any minute.”
Her grandmother shook her head. “I hate it when he’s right.”
The laughter that statement encouraged lightened the mood.
“I’m making four-cheese mac and cheese. With some slipper lobster Quinn is picking up at Kira’s Sea House for me.”
“The ultimate comfort food,” Brianna said. Her mother usually saved that decadent dish f
or New Year’s brunch.
“That’s the idea. Why don’t you go settle into your room, then come down. We’ll have wine or tea while your grandmother and I cook and the men go out to get an early start on the planting before the crowd arrives.”
And didn’t that cause a little stab in her heart, given that she and Seth should have been out there together planting with them? But she’d always enjoyed time in the kitchen with her mother and grandmother and it beat locking herself away in her room and feeling sorry for herself.
“That sounds great. But I’d better stick with tea.” The last thing she needed was to get drunk. Which actually didn’t sound like such a bad idea. But then she’d have to pay for it afterward, and although she still loved him, dammit, Brianna refused to give Seth Harper that much power over her life.
She’d just unpacked the duffel bag and moved her things into her old dresser when Quinn knocked on her open door.
“Come on in.” The family was rallying around her. Which felt good and sad at the same time because, having prided herself on her independence, she’d never really needed to lean on them before.
He wrapped his arms around her in a hug, letting her rest her head on his shoulder for a long, soothing time. “FYI,” he said against her hair, “Harper’s been banned from Mannion’s.”
Brianna leaned back and looked up at him. “You’ve already talked to him?” So much for Honeymoon Harbor’s glacial pace.
“Yeah. He thought I ought to hear from him that he’d dumped you. So I told him exactly what he could do with that announcement, punched him in his pretty face and threw him out before I came here.”
“You hit him?” She grabbed his left hand, viewing the red skin on his knuckles that would be an ugly purple-blue bruise in a few days.
“You’re my little sister. He made you cry and broke your heart. What the hell would you expect me to do? He’s just lucky I didn’t turn Jarle loose on him. He’s had a crush on you since you arrived in town.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. But don’t worry about hurting his feelings if he asks you out and you turn him down. Jarle tends to fall in love with every good-looking single woman who comes into the pub. I think it’s the Viking in him. So far he hasn’t carried any off, and doesn’t harass them, just admires from afar, so I figure putting all that emotion into his cooking helps improve business.”
This time her laugh felt lighter. As did her heart.
Just a bit.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“YOU DO REALIZE you’re acting like a damn fool,” Ben Harper told Seth three days later as they drove to the hospital to bring Caroline home. “Go out and grovel. Hell, get on your knees if you need to. Crawl naked down Water Street. Do whatever it takes to get her back.”
“Is that Dr. Blake speaking?” Seth asked.
“No. She’d probably nix the naked public crawling because it’d land you in the clink. But she would tell you that you’re the one at fault here.”
“Don’t you think I already know that?”
“You losing your wife was a tragic thing, I’m not going to deny that,” his father said. “But fate, destiny, God, whatever, has given you a second chance for happiness. It’s your responsibility to grab it with both hands and not let go. Then spend the rest of your life making up for your stupidity.”
“That’s a positive view of my possible future,” Seth said dryly.
“Okay, here’s this... Do you love her?”
“Hell, yes.”
“Then do something about it. Mike Mannion told me that if I didn’t get my woman back, he was going after her. That lit a fire beneath my tail, let me tell you. Your mother is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You come in a close second, but I wouldn’t have you if she hadn’t been willing to marry me instead of that rich Southern lawyer or Mannion.”
“She and Mannion had a thing?”
“He tried. But I won. Then I almost blew it. But I’m going to make it up to her. Starting today. And after we get her home, you ought to get your ass out to the Mannion farm and do the same thing.”
That out of the way, he pulled up into the loading zone, cut the engine and said, “Let’s go get your mom.”
* * *
CAROLINE COULDN’T WAIT to get home. Oh, the hospital staff had been lovely, the view of the Olympics stellar and the food had been surprisingly good. Especially the couple bites of cake, which wasn’t on her approved dietary list, but which Ben had sneaked up from the cafeteria when she’d complained about missing chocolate. She’d been moved to tears when he’d told her about going to the therapist, which had scared him enough that he was about to go running out into the hall to call for a nurse.
“It’s okay,” she said, pulling a tissue from the box on the rolling table next to the bed. “They’re happy tears.”
“How does your heart feel?”
“Fine. And why don’t you stop asking me that? I have a better sense of the signs now and promise not to ignore them.”
“Okay.” He sighed. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Caro.”
“You won’t have to,” she assured him. They still had years together. After all, everyone was saying the sixties were the new forties.
He’d stunned her by telling her about his therapy sessions. If there was anything more amazing—and undoubtedly difficult—he could have done to prove his love, Caroline couldn’t think of it. Dr. Blake might have opened his eyes to many things, but he’d always be a man’s man unable to fully understand the female mind. And, quite honestly, she wouldn’t want him any other way. She’d merely wanted to feel appreciated. Which he’d definitely done, refusing to go home that first night when the nurses told him visiting hours were over. Eventually they’d caved in and brought him a cot to sleep on. And except for those trips to the cafeteria, and outside to call and update all her friends on her condition, he hadn’t left her side.
She’d just finished dressing when the door opened.
“You’re looking great,” Seth said, giving her a careful hug that had Caroline wondering how long it would be before people would quit treating her as if she were made of crystal and easily broken.
“Thank you. I’m feeling great,” she said.
Her son, on the other hand, looked nearly as bad as he had when his wife had died. Ben had filled her in on that breakup drama, which she had no doubt would eventually work out, but it was painful to see the man who’d always, deep down, be her baby boy so miserable. She’d also heard, from a nurse who’d been at the pub, about the altercation that had given him that ugly bruise. Although she didn’t approve of violence, Caroline couldn’t really fault Quinn.
She turned toward her husband. “I’m also ready to go home.”
“The paperwork’s been all taken care of,” Ben said. “So, let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
Caroline wasn’t all that happy about the hospital’s insistence on patients being rolled out in a wheelchair, but apparently rules were rules.
The double doors opened, and there, beneath the canopy, was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
“Ben Harper, you didn’t!” The motor home was all shiny and new, painted in shades of smoke and gray and white with sweeping swoops that made it look as if it was all ready to drive them away on an adventure. A huge red plastic bow had been stuck on the hood.
“I know it’s going to be a while before we can take off and start seeing all those parks and other places, because the doc’s going to want you to stick around a couple months for those stress tests and such, but I thought maybe tonight, since we missed our date, you might want to try it out with dinner in the driveway. Luca made veggie lasagna and antipasto.”
“That sounds lovely.” Tears pricked at the back of her lids. Not wanting to scare the poor man to death, Caroline resolutely blinked them away. “Both the food and
the company. And this is the most beautiful motor home I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s not real fancy, like those big buses people drive those days.”
“They look like they’d be so much trouble getting in and out of places, and then we’d need a car to tow, and there’d be more to clean,” she said. She’d never had one of those behemoths in mind. “This isn’t so small that we’d feel cramped in a sardine can. It’s absolutely perfect. I can’t wait to go somewhere in it.”
“I thought, while we’re waiting for you to get the okay to take off, we could do day trips around here,” he said. “Maybe spend some nights. The doctor said that’d be okay.”
“I’d love that.”
“Then there’s something else I was thinking maybe you’d like.”
He reached into the Gore-Tex jacket he’d put on for the spring rain and pulled out an envelope. Opening it, she gasped as she looked at the gleaming white ship floating on a cerulean blue sea.
“There are two tickets for a cruise to Hawaii,” he said. “For that honeymoon I promised you. It’s late, but—”
“It’s better,” she said. “Even without the money problems back then, we would have been too young to truly appreciate it. Now it’s going to be perfect.”
The aide had folded back the footrests, allowing her to stand up, twine her arms around his neck, and not caring who might be watching or if she embarrassed her son, she kissed this man who’d won her heart from the moment she’d seen him.
“Take me home, Ben Harper.” It was what she’d said to him the night he’d proposed.
“I’d be right happy to, Miz Caroline,” he said back to her. All these years later, the man still had the worst fake Southern drawl Caroline Longworth Harper had ever heard. Which was only one of the things she loved about him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
FIVE DAYS AFTER moving back into her parents’ house, Brianna was already going stir-crazy. She kept busy learning breakfast recipes from her mother and grandmother, and helping organize the planting party, which had been put off again due to more spring rain, but she missed her house. She also missed Kylee, Mai and Clara. Especially baby Clara, who even as she made her yearn for a child of her own, also lifted her spirits and made her smile.