Home at Rose Cottage

by Sherryl Woods

  But, of course, she was. He could feel her gaze on him, but she didn’t come out of the house. When he couldn’t stand the tension a moment longer, he sighed heavily, put his gear back into his truck and left.

  Instead of soothing him, for the first time in his life the work had left him edgy and more miserable than ever. But he knew from bitter experience that when his heart was aching, the only answer was work.

  Just because Melanie was abandoning him didn’t mean he had to abandon their project. He would be back next week and the week after that, no matter how painful it was, because he’d made a promise to her and to her grandmother’s memory. He didn’t make a lot of promises these days, but the ones he made, he kept.

  Melanie swiped angrily at the tears running down her cheeks. Why had Mike shown up here today? Was he deliberately trying to make her even more miserable than he had the night before? And where was Jessie? Melanie had grown used to having the two of them out there together, kneeling on the ground, heads bent close as Mike taught Jessie how to settle a young plant in the rich, dark earth. Jessie’s bright-as-sunshine laughter had always had a knack for making Melanie’s heart lighter. She could have used a little of that today.

  But, of course, he wouldn’t bring Jessie with him. His daughter would have too many questions about why her father and Melanie weren’t even looking at each other, much less talking. That would have made an already tense situation unbearable.

  So today he’d been all alone, working at a feverish clip as if he were trying to forget something. She sure as heck knew what he was trying to forget, the same thing that was tormenting her. Damn the man and his stubborn refusal to see what was right under his nose. She loved him. She’d done everything but spell it out to him, and he’d sat there insisting that his proposal was only about providing a mother for Jessie. Well, he could just take that notion and shove it.

  When the phone rang, she snatched it up. “What?”

  “You sound cheery,” Maggie murmured. “Maybe I’d better call back when you’re in a better mood.”

  “That could take weeks,” Melanie told her sister.

  “Uh-oh. What happened?”

  “Nothing I want to talk about.”

  “Does that mean things aren’t going so well with the sexy gardener?”

  “He’s not a gardener. He’s a landscape designer.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Why are you calling? Is it just to annoy me?”

  “Actually I was calling to let you know that there’s a job opening here at the magazine. It’s in marketing.”

  Melanie sank onto a kitchen chair. “You’re kidding!” She wasn’t sure which stunned her more, that Maggie had found the ideal job for her on a well-respected regional magazine or the fact that it would mean they’d be working together. Maggie liked having her own niche in the world. Of all of them, she’d always been the least likely to share. But she loved her sisters, and they’d always known that in a crunch she would do what she could for any one of them. This offer was proof of that.

  “Not something I’d kid about,” Maggie assured her briskly.

  “Are you sure you’d be comfortable having me around?” Melanie asked.

  “As long as you don’t try to tell me how to run the food pages, we’ll get along just fine,” Maggie said in a dry tone that wasn’t entirely meant in jest. “Come on, sis. This is perfect for you. It’s one step above entry level, the number two spot in the department. Of course, there are only three people in the department, but that’s even better. You’ll get experience in every aspect of the marketing process. If you’re interested, I can set up an appointment first thing Monday morning. If you drove back tomorrow, you’d have plenty of time for me to brief you about the magazine. I’ve already told the marketing director all about you. She can’t wait to meet you.”

  “Does this mean I’d finally get a glimpse of that sexy photographer you’ve been going on and on about?” Melanie teased.

  “Let’s leave Rick out of this,” Maggie said tartly.

  Melanie tried to read her tone and couldn’t. She’d thought Maggie was merely in lust with the photographer, but maybe there was more to the story than she knew. Whatever it was, she wasn’t going to get it out of her tight-lipped sister.

  But thinking of the reportedly hunky photographer made Melanie glance outside. Mike was gone. She barely contained a sigh. It was over between them, so why was she even hesitating? This was just the shove she needed to head back to Boston.

  Still, she couldn’t seem to make herself say yes to Maggie’s offer. “I really appreciate this, but can I think about it, at least overnight? I’ll call you first thing tomorrow morning. You can’t do anything before Monday anyway, right?”

  “Why aren’t you jumping at this?” Maggie asked, obviously irritated that Melanie wasn’t reacting with more enthusiasm. “Is it Mike?”

  “Mike and I are over,” Melanie insisted.

  “Then I really don’t see the problem,” her sister said. “Are you worried about working with me? I’m telling you, it will be okay.”

  “I’ll call you in the morning,” Melanie said without offering the explanation Maggie so obviously wanted. Maybe she kept silent because she didn’t have one, at least none that made a lick of sense.

  She was still pondering the reason for her lack of enthusiasm at daybreak on Sunday. She was no closer to making a decision than she had been the day before, and maybe that was answer enough.

  Fortunately, when she called home, Maggie was out. Melanie left her sister a message saying thanks but no thanks, then hung up before she could change her mind.

  After that she sat staring at the phone for an eternity, wondering what on earth she’d just done. She’d turned down the chance to interview for her dream job. For what? A man who couldn’t see what was right in front of his face? Staying on in a little town where job opportunities like this one might never come along?

  Apparently so. She sighed. All she knew for certain was that she needed time—time to know her own mind, time for Mike to figure out his.

  Then, if there was obviously no hope at all, she’d go back to Boston. This job might be gone, but there would be others. Much as she hated admitting it, given how furious she was with him, Melanie knew in her heart that finding another man like Mike wouldn’t be nearly as easy.

  Mike was beginning to question his own sanity. He couldn’t seem to stay away from Melanie’s. He was back in the garden every Saturday waiting for who knew what to happen. Maybe he was hoping that eventually she would get his unspoken message that he wasn’t going anywhere.

  He was actually surprised that she hadn’t left by now, fled to Boston just to avoid the pain of seeing him, just as she’d fled here in the first place. There was obviously nothing holding her here.

  Or was there? Had she started to see through his muddled proposal to what was in his heart? Had she figured out yet that he was too terrified, too vulnerable, to put himself on the line the way she expected, the way she deserved? He was obviously waiting for a miracle that might never come.

  Jeff and Pam had been badgering him for weeks now to talk to Melanie and straighten things out. They still didn’t know the whole story, only that whatever had happened had been his fault. He’d admitted that much.

  Jessie was retreating into sullen silences more and more each time he refused to arrange a visit to see Melanie. Things had never been more tense between him and his daughter.

  Why not just talk to Melanie and lay everything on the line? Mike asked himself. Surely he couldn’t be any more miserable than he was now.

  He woke on Saturday morning to brilliant blue skies with not a cloud in them. The temperature was already in the mid-seventies by the time he dropped Jessie off at Lyssa’s and got to Melanie’s. His mind was made up. He was going to settle things once and for all today. It helped that all the plants were in the ground and flourishing. After today he’d have no more excuses for hanging around if she turned him down a
second time. He’d even driven to Richmond the day before and picked out a ring. Surely that would show Melanie how serious he was.

  Of course, planning the whole thing out and actually working up the courage to knock on the door were two entirely different things. The backyard might as well have been a million miles wide. Add in a moat and that was the width of the divide between them.

  He remembered something his mother had once told him years ago when he’d been scared to try out for his high school baseball team. “Nothing beats a try but a failure.” It had been her favorite saying, a message that sometimes people defeat themselves and that he should never allow himself to fall into that trap.

  He knelt down to loosen the soil around the rosebushes, put a few stakes in the hollyhock garden, then tended to the foxglove and snapdragons. None of it was necessary, but it gave him time to gather his courage, all the while aware that Melanie was standing at the kitchen window, watching him.

  “It’s now or never,” he told himself, but before he could move, he looked up and, like the miracle he’d been waiting for, she was there.

  Melanie hadn’t been able to bear it another moment. Every Saturday for weeks now, Mike had worked in the garden. He’d never brought Jessie again and he never announced his arrival. She would just look outside suddenly and see him there, the sun glinting off the threads of gold in his hair, his muscles straining as he worked.

  If he chanced to look up and spot her, he waved, but that was all. He never smiled or beckoned.

  Nor did Melanie seek him out. It hurt too much simply to see him, his big hands so gentle with the fragile plants he was tending. It hurt to know that those hands would never touch her with such tenderness again.

  Today she had watched from the cottage’s kitchen window and imagined his work-roughened hands on her skin, remembered the tenderness with which he’d coaxed responses from her body.

  Maybe it was need or yearning, but suddenly, with a flash of insight, she knew exactly what love was. It was a man who didn’t believe in it risking his heart by asking her to marry him. It was a man who couldn’t find the words showing her over and over again with his steadfastness and tenderness that he loved her. It was a man who hadn’t gone away because she’d said no, but instead had stayed, proving his love with his presence and commitment. It was a man who trusted her enough to ask her to become the mother of the daughter he adored.

  Hands shaking and heart pounding, she walked outside and knelt in the dirt beside him. He glanced at her, his eyes filled with desire and shadowed by questions.

  “Yes,” she said quietly, praying that single word would be enough. Like him, she wasn’t sure she knew what else to say to make things right, to grab forever.

  He gave her a puzzled look. “Yes?”

  Her lips curved. “Have you forgotten the question?”

  After an eternity, hope suddenly shone in his eyes. “How could I?” he asked simply. “It’s the most important one I’ve ever asked.” He searched her face. “Are you sure?”

  “That I love you? Yes. Without question.”

  “Enough to stay here?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the rest?” he asked. “Do you know how I feel?”

  Even now he was leaving it to her to figure things out, but she no longer minded. The truth was in his eyes. “About you loving me? I know that, too. Someday you’ll see the feelings for what they are, and then you’ll say the words. I can wait. I just can’t wait alone.”

  He nodded slowly. “I was thinking a summer wedding,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

  His tone was nonchalant, but Melanie could see the vulnerability in his eyes. He still wasn’t sure of her, wasn’t sure of any of this, but he was taking a gigantic leap of faith for her, for both of them.

  “The garden should be in shape by then,” he continued as he withdrew a velvet jeweler’s box and held it out. “What do you think?”

  Melanie took the box with shaking hands and opened it. The diamond inside sparkled like the sun. She grinned. “Is that why you’ve been working so hard out here?”

  He gave her a chagrined look. “I guess subconsciously I was hoping you’d change your mind.”

  “And if I hadn’t?”

  “Then I would have found the words,” he said confidently. “They’re in my heart, Melanie.” He pressed her hand to his chest. “Can you feel them with each beat?”

  She smiled at him. “Steady and enduring,” she said at once. “They’re good words, Mike.”

  “And love?” he asked quietly. “You didn’t feel that?”

  She lifted her gaze to his. “It’s in your eyes,” she told him. “In your touch. In everything you do.”

  He sighed. “As long as you know,” he said.

  He took the ring and slipped it on her finger. It was a perfect fit. They were a perfect fit.

  “I’m sorry I ever doubted it,” she said.

  “Maybe we both have to learn to have more faith,” he said quietly. “We’ve been given a gift. We simply have to nurture it.”

  Her eyes stinging with tears, Melanie glanced around at the profusion of flowers that had come from this man’s nurturing touch. Love was blooming everywhere. “I think you’re just the man to show me the way.”

  Epilogue

  Colleen D’Angelo stood at the back door of Rose Cottage, staring out at the garden, tears in her eyes. Melanie regarded her mother worriedly.

  “Mom, are you okay?”

  “I’m speechless,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s beautiful, just the way it was when your grandmother was alive. How on earth did you remember it so clearly? I’d forgotten.”

  “I didn’t,” Melanie admitted. “I showed Mike a picture, and he knew exactly what to do. It’s almost as if he felt some sort of connection with Grandmother. He fussed and badgered until I agreed to let him put the garden back the way it had been.”

  “He’s a wonderful man, this Mike of yours,” her mother said, smiling at her. “He’s making you happy?”

  “Of course,” Melanie said, laughing. “We’re getting married in an hour.”

  “That’s more than enough time to change your mind,” her mother informed her. “I can’t believe you want to move here. You’ve always been such a city girl.”

  “Mike’s here,” Melanie said simply. “And when we get back from our honeymoon, I’m going to open my own marketing firm. Mike will be my first client. Not that I want him working any harder than he already does, but he won’t be nearly as demanding as other clients might be. He’ll forgive my mistakes while I’m learning the ropes. And Jeff and Pam want me to put together a marketing proposal for the nursery. Starting out with two clients isn’t bad.”

  Her mother gave her a fierce hug. “I’m so happy for you. Your father’s fit to be tied that you’re not coming home. Don’t be surprised if he punches Mike in the nose for taking you away from us, instead of giving the bride away the way he’s supposed to.”

  Melanie stared at her with alarm. “Dad wouldn’t really do that, would he?” She asked because it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. He was a very protective dad, and he’d been regarding Mike with suspicion ever since they’d arrived for the wedding.

  “Not as long as Mike keeps you smiling,” her mother assured her.

  “That won’t be a problem,” Melanie said, just as her sisters burst into the kitchen.

  “Hey, why are you two standing down here in your robes crying? We have a wedding in less than an hour,” Ashley announced.

  “I think they’re having the S-E-X talk,” Jo teased.

  “Ah, that must be it,” Maggie chimed in. “See how flushed Melanie’s cheeks are.”

  “Stop it, girls,” their mother ordered in the no-nonsense tone they’d learned early to obey.

  “Yes, ma’am,” they chorused, then burst into giggles.

  Melanie grinned at them. They’d laughed more in the past twenty-four hours than they had in years. She
was going to miss them desperately.

  Maybe she’d just have to figure out some way to lure them to Virginia. Surely the magic of Rose Cottage hadn’t been used up on her and Mike.

  “Daddy, stop wiggling,” Jessie said, her expression solemn as she surveyed him. “You look gorgeous.” She twirled around. “How do I look?”

  “Like a fairy princess,” Mike said, his heart in his throat. Melanie’s insistence that Jessie give him away, rather than taking the more traditional flower-girl role, had been just right. Jessie was taking her responsibility very seriously. Jeff had hardly anything left to do in his capacity as best man.

  “I’m feeling extraneous,” he grumbled, running a finger under the collar of his shirt. “Tell me again why I’m wearing a tux, when I could have been sitting in the crowd in a suit?”

  “You’re the best man,” Jessie told him. “But I’m more important.”

  Jeff laughed as Mike scooped Jessie into his arms. “You are indeed, short stuff. Now let’s get this show on the road.”

  The three of them took their places in the garden as the organ music began. Mike’s gaze locked on the back door of the house, where first one D’Angelo sister emerged and then the next. They were all beautiful in their rose-colored gowns, but there was only one sister he was desperate to see.

  Then Melanie emerged in a slim gown of white silk and lace, a bouquet of white roses and lily of the valley from the garden in her hands. Her gaze locked with his, and a radiant smile blossomed on her face. It was a stark contrast to the glower on her father’s features. Max D’Angelo didn’t scare Mike. He knew the man wanted only the best for his daughter, and Mike intended to exceed his expectations. He had a hunch he’d be just as fiercely protective when Jessie found the man of her dreams—say, thirty years from now.