He wanted to be the first one back at the house to see Carolyn, but he had to wait while his mother talked to the pastor. He stood impatiently by the door, and soon his dad joined him.
“My baby girl is getting married tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” Mitchell wished his father’s son was getting married, too, although the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that it would happen.
“That sure was nice of your friend to offer to help you with the food instead of hiring a caterer. We’ll have to think of some way to thank her.”
His friend. He wanted Carolyn to be more than just his friend. “Yeah, we should do that.”
“I could be mistaken, but you appear to think of Carolyn as more than a friend.”
Mitchell stared at his father. He figured it was a little late in his upbringing to be talking about the women he dated.
“How old is she, Mitch?”
“She’s only thirty-three.” Mitchell turned to his father, daring him to say anything more about Carolyn’s age. He wanted to defend her, to justify to his father that it was okay for him to be dating an older woman and that Carolyn was more suited to him than any woman he’d ever met in his life.
“Is she a Christian?”
“Yes.”
“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then I guess that’s all that matters. I wish you God’s blessings, Mitch.”
Mitchell rammed his hands into his pockets and stared blankly out the window. “I don’t know how she feels about me. The difference in our ages bothers her.”
His father nodded and rubbed his chin with his index finger and thumb. “I’ve seen a few couples where the woman is three or four years older, but it doesn’t usually go more than that. Women usually go for older men.”
Mitchell’s heart sank another notch. Up until now, Carolyn’s preference had been for older men—something he didn’t need to be reminded of. He couldn’t do anything about his age, so he’d been trying to win her heart in other ways, although all he could do was simply be himself, and he wasn’t sure that was enough.
His mom finally appeared, and his dad left his side to help tuck his mom’s jacket over her cast then give her a small peck on the cheek.
“We’d better hurry. By now everyone’s already at the house.”
Mitchell gulped and swallowed hard. It was time.
Carolyn smiled cordially at Gordie and Roland, who were the first to arrive. Fortunately, Jake and Ellen pulled in immediately after them, allowing her the chance to hide in the kitchen to wait for Mitchell. After that, she planned to stay only for as long as she needed to in order to be polite, then leave. She already had most of the food out and only needed to finish a few of the hot hors d’oeuvres. Then she would be free, and Mitchell could drive her home.
Silently, she kept busy doing things that didn’t need to be done rather than standing around doing nothing while more and more people arrived. Just as she slipped on the oven mitts and was pulling the first tray of crab snaps out of the oven, she heard a female voice behind her.
“Miss Rutherford? Is that you? What are you doing here?”
The hot tray nearly dropped from her hands. She fumbled with it, letting it drop with a clatter to the top of the stove, and whirled around to see Melissa Roberts, one of her students from a few years ago, standing in the doorway, gaping at her.
She pulled the oven mitts off her hands and held them tightly. “I’m helping with the snacks, Melissa.”
“I knew you were teaching night school, but I didn’t know you were doing catering, too.”
“Carolyn isn’t here as the caterer, Melissa. She’s here as my date.”
The sound of Mitchell’s voice nearly made her drop the oven mitts. Mitchell appeared behind Melissa, his face strangely pale, and his lips tightly drawn.
“Oh. Sorry.” Melissa shrugged her shoulders and disappeared back into the living room, where the sound of laughter and conversation droned on.
Carolyn tried to force a smile and knew the effort fell flat. “You’re the last one to get here. I was beginning to worry about you.”
In the blink of an eye, Mitchell strode across the room until they were standing toe to toe. She would have backed up, except it would have sent her into the hot oven door, which was still open. He grinned, making his dimple appear. At the same time, the color returned to his face, and he rested his hands on her shoulders. “Did you miss me?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
It would have been impossible to miss him because even though he no longer lived in his parents’ home, there were signs of Mitchell everywhere. She hadn’t meant to snoop, but on her way into the kitchen after Mitchell and his parents left, she couldn’t help but notice three eight-by-ten framed portraits prominently placed on the living room wall. One was his parents’ wedding picture, with Kim and Roger in their wedding attire and a small child standing between them holding a ring bearer’s silk pillow. Mitchell had been a beautiful three-year-old, and he’d grown into an equally handsome man.
The other two portraits were Mitchell’s and Ellen’s high school graduation pictures. Over the past six years, he hadn’t changed all that much, except that time had matured his features.
After worrying about it, Carolyn had been relieved that Ellen hadn’t been one of her former students, but Melissa had, and, of course, Melissa recognized her. She wondered if all the bridesmaids were former students.
She lowered her voice to a whisper to make sure no one suddenly appearing would hear. “Melissa was one of my students. What am I doing here?”
“You’re here because you’re with me. Don’t worry about Melissa or any of Ellen’s friends.”
His hands moved from her shoulders to her cheeks. He lowered his head and kissed her gently then dropped his hands and backed up.
The oven mitts she was holding landed on the floor. She quickly picked them up, brushed them off, and turned to close the oven door. “If I don’t get those crab snaps out, they’re going to be so cold, no one will be able to tell they’re baked. You’ll want to show them off when they’re at their best.”
Together, they began transferring the crab snaps to a platter.
“I don’t think I’m going to tell anyone I’ve done all the food until most everything has been eaten. I want it to be a surprise. Besides, a few of the people here wouldn’t touch anything if they knew I did the cooking.”
“I think you’re exaggerating.”
“Unfortunately, I’m not. I’ll go put these on the dining room table, and then I have to help Dad with something. I won’t be gone long, but it might be a good idea to join Ellen’s friends and just talk to them. You know, to bridge the gap. They’re all in the working world now. I think it’s just hard for them to think of you as anything besides their former teacher. You know, like teachers aren’t people or allowed to have a social life outside the school. Unless you show them otherwise, they’re going to keep thinking that way.”
“I don’t know….”
He smiled and touched her shoulder then lightly brushed one finger against her chin. “I’m serious. Show them the person you are outside of school.”
Nervously, she glanced toward the doorway leading into the living room, as if by simply passing through it, things could be changed.
Most of her friends were her own age, but she thought of the people at her church, where the age gap was wide. There were women there who were in their mid to early twenties who addressed her by her first name, and to them, the age gap meant nothing because they had not previously known her. Likewise, she addressed ladies older than herself by twenty years or more by their first names, and the age gap meant nothing except more life experience. They were all equal in God’s eyes as Christian sisters.
Again, she glanced to the doorway. “All right. I’ll make the first move.”
“Great. I’ll catch you later when I’m finished with Dad.” Mitchell p
icked up the tray and disappeared through the doorway, leaving her alone in the kitchen.
She didn’t immediately follow him. First, she needed a few minutes to compose herself and work up her courage.
After multiple deep breaths, Carolyn ran her fingers through her hair, straightened her glasses, stiffened her back, and began the long journey into the living room.
Mitchell’s older relatives sat on the couch and love seat, and the armchair remained empty. Ellen and the three bridesmaids stood in a small circle near the doorway, holding plates and nibbling at the goodies, totally engrossed in conversation. They didn’t see her approach, giving Carolyn a chance to try to place them before she broke into their little circle.
She had never seen Ellen before, but Melissa had been in her homeroom a few years ago, and she recognized the other two as having attended her regular home economics class, but she couldn’t remember their names.
Carolyn didn’t want to eavesdrop, but her ears perked up when one of the girls leaned her head into the center of their little circle. “You won’t believe this, but I saw Mitchell kissing Miss Rutherford!”
Chapter 16
Carolyn’s feet skidded to a halt. Her heart pounded. She wasn’t aware that anyone had seen what happened in the kitchen. Obviously, she and Mitchell were not as discreet as she had thought.
Melissa nodded her head. “I know. He said she was his date.”
“Mitch? And Miss Rutherford?”
Carolyn heard a chorus of gasps. No one had seen her yet, but Carolyn feared if she moved, it would draw attention to her, and they would know that she had overheard. Her feet remained rooted to the floor.
All the heads stayed bowed in the small circle.
“He told me to call her Carolyn!”
“Get a life, Melissa. She does, like, have a name, you know.”
“Yeah, but it feels so strange. She was my homeroom teacher. And now she’s dating Ellen’s brother.”
“How old do you think she is?”
Carolyn watched the girls counting on their fingers and nodding. She wanted to yell out that she was only thirty-three, not ninety-three, and she had every right to date whomever she pleased, but she didn’t want to make things worse.
She backed up a step then froze when they lifted their heads, fearing they would notice her if she continued to move.
Melissa covered her mouth with her hands. “Ew. That would be like me dating Gordie’s kid brother.”
Carolyn’s stomach clenched into a knot. Gordie’s brother, Steven, was sixteen, in one of her classes, and at the moment he was hopefully getting over a crush on her.
All four of them gasped again, and Carolyn thought she might throw up. She backed up another step until she was flat against the wall, but she couldn’t get away.
The unnamed girl’s voice rose a bit in volume, but she still continued to whisper. “You should have seen him kissing her. It was like in the movies. He was so romantic.”
Melissa sighed. “Mitch can kiss me anytime!”
The girls giggled.
Carolyn no longer cared if they saw her. She turned and bolted into the kitchen. As she rounded the corner, she heard another round of giggles, telling her that her escape had been successful.
She drew in a ragged breath and slipped the last tray of crab snaps into the oven. This time, she would keep herself busy in the kitchen until Mitchell came back, regardless of his urging to let them get to know her as a person rather than a teacher. After hearing what Ellen’s friends really thought, she couldn’t face them alone. She wondered if she would be able to face them at all.
Just as she closed the oven door, Gordie and Roland appeared behind her. She wondered if they were ever apart.
Roland snitched a cheese ball from the tray on the table and popped it into his mouth. “Hi, Carolyn. I just wanted to say how great the food is. If I hadn’t seen it for myself the other day, I wouldn’t have believed Mitch did it. You helped him, didn’t you?”
She turned and smiled at them, grateful for the distraction. “Except for the dessert, he made everything. I helped him a little, but not much.”
“Mitch is a great guy, you know.”
Her smile dropped. She had a bad feeling that Roland had come into the kitchen to talk to her about more than the food. She nodded and turned to check the last tray of crab snaps in the oven. “Yes, he is.”
Roland swallowed a bacon-wrapped scallop then cleared his throat. “Are you and Mitch, you know, going to continue seeing each other?”
She gritted her teeth at his question. She didn’t know the answer. She had already committed herself to being Mitchell’s date for the wedding, but tonight had shown her that it simply wasn’t going to work. Mitchell had almost convinced her it was possible to keep seeing each other, but even his friends were questioning their relationship. She really didn’t know what was right anymore.
At this point in her life, she was seeking marriage. Mitchell had completely shocked her when he told her that he loved her, not once, but twice. The first time she could have let it go, but after the second time, she couldn’t help thinking that the natural progression would point toward marriage.
Mitchell was nothing like the man she had been praying for. Yet, despite everything, she wanted to keep seeing him, which was selfish and wrong.
The right thing to do would be to tell him she couldn’t see him again, to tell him to find someone else to love, someone more suited to him—a woman he could be with, without being the subject of everyone’s gossip.
She couldn’t say anything like that to his friends. She had to say it to him in person.
“Yes,” she answered, justifying her reply in her mind, knowing she hadn’t been specific. “I’ll be seeing him after tonight.”
For a few minutes, they simply stood and stared at each other, making Carolyn feel like a bug under a microscope.
Gordie stepped forward then fixed his gaze at some point on the wall behind her. “If you’re wondering why we’re asking, it’s because Mitchell’s been acting kind of funny. We haven’t been seeing as much of him lately, and it’s like when Jake started going out with Ellen, you know, seriously. We just wanted to know if you felt the same way.”
Carolyn swallowed hard. Mitchell’s quiet “I love you” echoed through her head, and her fingers immediately went to touch the little ring on the middle finger of her left hand—the little heart that said so much. It wasn’t right, but she loved him, too.
“Yes,” she whispered hoarsely. “I do feel the same way.”
Gordie and Roland both nodded, then just as quickly as they arrived, they disappeared.
Carolyn’s hands shook as she took the last tray of crab snaps out of the oven and set them on the counter to cool. She’d almost convinced herself to say good-bye to Mitchell, but the ache it brought to her heart was too painful. Using more concentration than needed for such a mundane task, she refilled the tray with goodies, leaving room for the last crab snaps, and told herself that now she had to stay put until they were cool enough to add to the tray.
While she waited, she tidied the kitchen until it was so perfect she had nothing else to do.
The time dragged. Laughter again drifted from the living room.
She stared out the window into the dark yard, where everything was quiet and still. Rather than joining the crowd or watching the crab snaps cool, she stepped out onto the large wooden patio deck, where the cool night air was pleasant after being close to the hot oven most of the evening. She leaned with her hands against the cedar railing beneath a large tree, which stood regally alongside the structure, and looked over the property.
Suddenly, footsteps tapped on the path that led through the yard.
Jake’s voice split the silence of the evening. “So, what are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure,” Mitchell mumbled. She could barely make out his words as they walked farther away. “I can’t help feeling sorry for her. I’ll have to think of something ext
ra special. I know she likes cows.”
Their voices faded as Jake and Mitchell disappeared around the side of the house. The gate squeaked open then snapped shut.
Even though she still hadn’t been able to figure out what it was Mitchell saw in her, she hadn’t expected that he felt pity.
Immediately she thought of Killer, whom Mitchell had taken home rather than allow the dog to be put to sleep. One of the reasons she’d been so quick to fall in love with him was his kind and compassionate nature.
She could understand why he felt sorry for her. She was more than aware of the pathetic creature she’d been when Mitchell had walked in to find her sunk to her knees in the middle of her living room floor, crying like a baby over the fiasco with Hank.
She suddenly realized that in the same way Mitchell felt so sorry for a poor, pathetic dog, that he gave it a good and loving home, he had declared his love to her—out of pity. She felt a sudden, almost physical, pain in her heart.
Before Mitchell came to find her outside and realized she’d overheard, she hustled back into the kitchen and started transferring the cooled crab snaps onto the tray.
Footsteps tapped on the linoleum floor behind her.
“What are you still doing in here?”
“Getting ready to put this out,” she stammered then cleared her throat. “Gordie and Roland were just here commenting on what a good job you’ve done with the food.”
He glanced over his shoulder to the clamor coming from the living room. “They probably just came to snitch something while no one was watching.” He faced forward and took one step toward her. “Never mind them. I came to pull you out of the kitchen. You’ve been spending too much time in here. You should join the party.” He smiled wide and picked up one of the trays she’d finished preparing.
Her stomach tied into a knot, and she stepped closer to Mitchell so he couldn’t see her trembling knees.
Their eyes met, steeling Carolyn’s strength and nerve. She stood as tall as possible for someone barely over five feet tall and picked up a second tray of food. “Let’s go.”
Time to Laugh Romance Collection Page 60