Blue Heron [2] The Perfect Match

by Kristan Higgins

  And she had Tom.

  Sort of.

  Speaking of grooms, there was Dad, down in the merlot vines with Pru. Honor smiled and waved, and made Spike wave as well, and they waved back in unison. Peas in a pod, those two, both wearing very similar plaid shirts. No coats. They were Yankees, after all. What was a little cold and wind to a farmer?

  “Honor,” Ned said, appearing in her doorway, “I’m gonna swing by some of the accounts. Press the flesh, maybe do a tasting here and there, since it’s almost happy hour.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Need anything from me?”

  “Nope. I’m good.” Her nephew smiled.

  “Yes. You are,” she said. It was true; unlike Dad, Pru or Jack, who preferred to be left alone to tend to their grapes and subsequent fermenting, Ned had the gift of schmooze. “You’re a man now, Neddie dear. Which doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten that you sucked your thumb until you were seven.”

  “Oh, I still do,” he said with an easy grin. “Why give up a good thing? See you, Auntie.”

  Nice to have someone else from the family out there, representing Blue Heron. For twelve years, Honor had done it alone, dragging Dad along once in a while. But Ned liked doing it.

  “Hey, Tom,” she heard Jessica say. “How are you?”

  “Jess, lovely to see you,” Tom said.

  Honor felt her cheeks fire up and couldn’t stop herself from looking at her reflection in the computer monitor. There was just something about that accent that hit her right in the ovaries. Preach it, sister, the eggs agreed. How about getting us a little action here?

  Sure, Honor knew sex was on the horizon. Very soon, in fact. She’d almost jumped him the other night when he kissed her hand. So they’d get it on, of course. They had the marriage license, and this thing was happening. And once nooky commenced, Honor had the very strong suspicion that she’d be crazy in love, and a lot more vulnerable to heartbreak.

  So what? Beats being celibate forever, the eggs pointed out. Get a move on!

  “Yeah, yeah,” Honor muttered. “Hang in there. We’ll know when the time is right.” She could just about imagine them pointing at their tiny watches in outrage.

  Word. But Tom had this odd ability to be both wonderful and distant at the same time. Case in point—the discussion of the mugging the other night, as they lay in bed. Oddly intimate, until click, he shut off.

  Last night over their mostly quiet dinner, Tom had asked about the Black and White Ball and what it was for, and Honor found herself inviting Tom to tramp around the property. Ellis Farm abutted the rear fields of Blue Heron, so they’d hike up past Rose Ridge and down onto the unused farmland, where soon, Honor hoped, they’d begin work to make the land more accessible. She’d been talking to a bike trail designer for six months now, and had a grant from the state to help offset some costs.

  “Hallo, Honor,” he said now, poking his head in her door. “How was your day?”

  “Great,” she said. “And yours?”

  “It was good.” He smelled like fresh air and coffee. “Brought you a treat.” In his hand was a familiar bag—Lorelei’s Sunrise Bakery.

  “Thanks.” She opened and peeked in, and Spike stuck her head right in. Sugar cookies. Very nice.

  He wore faded jeans and hiking boots and a battered brown leather jacket. Effortlessly hot. And dang, he was watching her ogle him, a faint smile crinkling his eyes. “You don’t dress like a math teacher,” she said, clearing her throat.

  “I’m not a math teacher.” His smile widened, flashing that slightly crooked tooth, and hope flashed as fast and strong as lightning in her heart.

  She could love this guy.

  She slipped off her pumps (which Faith had deemed “tragically sensible” but were very comfy, unlike Faith’s own complicated, painful and enviably slutty collection of footwear) and pulled on her muck boots. “Spike, want to go for a walk?” she said, smiling as her dog’s shaggy little ears pricked up at the magic word, then clipped on the neon-pink leash she’d bought the past week. Already, it was frayed from where Spike had been chewing it. This would be the fourth leash since she got the wee terror.

  Outside, the wind was sharp, the air growing colder by the minute. This would have to be a quick hike, or her ears would freeze. Even so, crocuses had pushed their way up through the lawn, and the maple trees were red-budded with the promise of spring. They headed up the hill toward the conservation property, birds calling to one another as they swooped and preened.

  “This is lovely,” Tom said, stopping at the family cemetery.

  “Yes. Everyone from the ancestor who fought with Washington to my mom.” She stopped, opening the little gate that enclosed the area, and put Spike down so the dog could capture leaves and make them her prisoners. Honor brushed a few leaves off her mom’s headstone and adjusted the pot of pansies she’d left there yesterday.

  For more than half of Honor’s life, her mother had been gone. It didn’t seem possible.

  “You Hollands have a good bit of land, don’t you?” Tom asked, breaking the silence as they continued up the hill.

  “We do,” she said.

  “And here I am, a city kid who grew up in a three-room apartment, marrying into American royalty.”

  “Hardly that. American farmers.”

  Tom grinned. “Same thing in this country, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll tell my dad you said that. Whatever misgivings he has will evaporate.”

  “Does he have misgivings?”

  Honor picked Spike back up, as her teensy feet would be getting cold, and tucked the dog into her coat. “Well, sure. He’s a father. You and I haven’t known each other that long. If we were getting married a year from now, I’m sure he wouldn’t worry.”

  “I imagine I’d feel the same, if I had a daughter.”

  A daughter. The thought made her heart swell with longing.

  Faith’s pickup truck was in the gravel lot at the top of the ridge. “My sister’s working on the Barn,” Honor said. “Want to go say hi?”

  “Not really,” he said, taking her hand. “You know you look a bit ridiculous with that dog’s head poking out of your coat? In an adorable way, of course.”

  Oh. That was...that was nice.

  His hand was much warmer than hers. Warm and firm and flippin’ huge, and all of a sudden, Honor felt incredibly feminine and adorable...and randy. What—and when—to do about that was another question altogether.

  She hadn’t had any trouble figuring out what to do that night when she’d pulled open Tom Barlow’s shirt and licked his neck and kissed him till he pushed her against the wall and held her hands over her head. No sir. No indeedy.

  The eggs fluffed their hair and took off their bifocals.

  “Ellis Farm Conservation Land,” Tom read from the sign. “All right, Miss Holland. Give me your spiel.”

  “It’s land. They don’t make that anymore.”

  “Simple as that?”

  “Yep. We’ll put in a bike trail that will link up to the rail line. The 4-H club will use the barn for their cows, and we’re going to put in a co-op vegetable garden. There’ll be a picnic area, some hiking trails.”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  “And see that pond? In the winter, we’ll flood it for skating.” She paused. “Do you know how to skate?”

  “No,” he said.

  “I’ll teach you. I’m pretty good.”

  He smiled. “I bet you are.”

  She could see it very clearly—the skies gray and heavy, holding Tom’s hand in the cold air, then going home to warm up. Naked.

  “And your party this weekend, it funds the whole thing?”

  “Excuse me? Oh, um, no. But the ball raises a lot of our budget. Private donors do the rest. Some of the local businesses.”r />
  “Including Blue Heron.”

  “You bet.” Spike was wriggling to get loose, so she put the doggy down and let her wander as far as the leash would let her.

  Tom was staring out over the hill. The snow had mostly melted here, as the sun shone on the fields all day. The pond was still frozen.

  When she was younger, Honor had skated there with the Ellis kids, when the pond had seemed like a foreign country filled with mysteries no one else had discovered, and only seven-year-olds on ice skates held the key. Then they’d troop back to the New House, and Mom would make cocoa and serve cookies, a Norman Rockwell scene if ever there was one.

  And soon, that kind of thing would be available for all the kids in Manningsport. Kids like Jessica and Levi, who’d grown up in a trailer park, and kids like Charlie, who spent most of their days indoors, could have what the Hollands had been lucky enough to be born with. Land. Nature. Acres and acres of woods, water and forest. Birdsong and wildlife and hours of being outdoors.

  Spike whined, meaning she had to pee. And to do so, she needed privacy, as the dog had a shy bladder. Tom was sitting on the fence that divided the Ellis land from Blue Heron and was just gazing out at the vista.

  “Okay, Spike,” she said, walking down the hill. “Let’s find you a spot.”

  All of a sudden, Spike whimpered, trembling, then pulled at the leash. “Those are deer,” Honor explained. “They’re too big for you to take down, so stick with ants, okay?”

  Spike didn’t agree; she tugged again, and the frayed leash snapped. In a blur, the dog was off through the grass. “Spike, no,” Honor said. “Come on. Come back here.” There were coyotes around, after all, though it was still light. She started to run, clumsy in her boots. “Spike! Come!”

  The dog didn’t listen, charging forward at the deer, barking with all her might, and the deer bolted into the woods on the far side of the pond.

  Spike chased after them.

  Oh, God. “No! No, Spike, no!”

  Her dog was on the pond.

  And the weather had been cold, but it hadn’t been that cold. The pond was stream-fed, and Mr. Ellis had never let them skate there unless it had been below freezing for at least ten days straight. It was maybe twenty feet across, forty feet wide, and if Spike fell through—

  “Spike! Spike!” she called, and she heard Tom yelling behind her, but the wind was in her ears.

  Then Spike disappeared, blip, just like that, through about two-thirds of the way across. There, and then gone, swallowed into the black water where the current was too strong for ice to form unless it was freezing for ten days in a row, and Honor barely recognized her voice as she screamed her dog’s name.

  “Honor, no!” Tom yelled from behind her, but she was already on the ice. She could do it, she thought, her brain flashing with images of just how this would work. She was a skater. She knew this pond. She’d stay on the edge where the ice was thicker, and she’d head to the end of the pond, and the current would bring Spike there, and she could grab—

  The ice broke, and the cold bit into her like knives, making the breath whoosh from her lungs. But it wasn’t deep, Honor knew, maybe four feet, and if she could just get closer to where Spike had gone, she could find her dog. “I’m coming!” she yelled. “I’m coming, Spike!” Two steps. Four, the bottom slippery with icy mud that pulled at her boots.

  Her foot slipped, coming completely free from the boot, and water closed over her head. Oh, God, it was so cold, the cold slicing right to her bones. She found footing again, barely able to feel the mud now because of the numbness. She slipped again, came up for air. This wasn’t working. This was a bad idea, but Spike, her loyal, cuddly little friend, her only—

  Honor tried to pull herself onto the ice again, but it broke under her numb hands, and her arms were too heavy, her legs weren’t obeying. The body’s job is to preserve the heart and brain, she could almost hear the narrator saying, because yes, chances were increasing that she’d become one of those stories on the Back from the Dead medical stories.

  Hopefully.

  Oh, Spike. A sob shuddered out of her. Her little dog had gone through so much. She didn’t deserve a pointless death like this, alone in the dark water.

  She slipped again, and this time, the water didn’t hurt so much. And this time, her legs were even slower to kick.

  Then she was being dragged upward, and held against Tom, and he was moving, he could walk, and the ice was breaking as he muscled his way through to the shore. She couldn’t hear him, the blood was pounding in her ears so much, and it hurt. All of her hurt. Her sodden coat dragged at her, and water streamed from her hair.

  The shore was steep here, and Tom heaved her out of the water. She landed with a tooth-jarring thud on the hard earth.

  His mouth was moving, and my God, he looked so angry she was almost scared. “Spike,” she said, shuddering with the cold, barely able to get the word out. “Please.”

  Fuck, he said. Well, his mouth made that shape, anyway. Honor was shaking so hard it was like one of her sister’s epileptic seizures, and she tried to stand, to help Tom, because yes, he was going back into the water.

  * * *

  IF TOM HAD thought he was cold before he went in the pond, that had been a fucking walk on a tropical beach, hadn’t it? Stupid, stupid Honor, going out on ice after the idiot dog. If it hadn’t held a five-pound dog, how the hell was it going to hold a full-grown woman?

  He could feel a slight current in the water, pulling at his clothes, and did a quick calculation in the water—weight, velocity, depth, momentum, resistance—and sloshed over to where he thought the idiot animal might be.

  Chances were small to nil, let’s be honest. His chest was tight, his skin screaming against the cold. If he had a heart attack right now, it would serve Honor right, because she’d scared the fucking blood out of his fucking veins.

  He reached down, groping. Nothing.

  This was not going to end well. He glanced back at Honor, huddled on the shore. Forget the dog. She needed to get warm.

  Then his hand brushed something. He grabbed it. Ratty, all right, ice cold and limp, eyes open just a slit.

  The dog was dead.

  His eyes met Honor’s and she let out a sound he never wanted to hear again.

  “Fuck me,” he said. Turned the horrible dog upside down and pressed on its little belly. Water came out of its mouth. It still didn’t move.

  Honor was sobbing, crawling over to where he stood. Her hands were bloody.

  Tom took the dog’s tiny muzzle in his hand and blew into the dog’s nose. This really took the cake. Mouth-to-mouth for a dog who hated him, bit him, destroyed his shoes, peed on his bath towel and was trying to eat his computer.

  He puffed again. The dog’s cheeks flapped, so Tom gripped her muzzle a little harder. Another puff. Two. Three.

  Then there was a sharp pain in his lip. Tom jerked back, and Spike started gacking up water. It gave a watery bark, then shook itself, coughed again and barked once more. Alive, the little bugger. Good. Tom could kill it later.

  He sloshed to Honor and handed her the evil creature.

  “Spike! Spike, honey!” Honor gathered the dog against her chest, her hands shaking uncontrollably.

  Without any finesse, as the cold was affecting him as well, he yanked Honor to her feet, grabbed the neckline of her coat and shoved the dog in against her skin. “Hold on to that little rat, because I’m not risking my life for her again,” he said, then swung Honor up into his arms. One of her feet was bare.

  By the time he reached the place where her sister was parked, Tom was breathing hard, had a cramp in his calf and was more angry than he could ever remember being in his life.

  He tossed Honor in the front seat of Faith’s truck. Good girl, she’d left the keys in. No time to ask fo
r permission; he got in the driver’s side and started it up, then threw it in gear and drove down the hill.

  Honor was still shaking, shivering violently, hunched over, her arms folded around herself and the dog. Bloody idiot. Both of them.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Don’t say a word,” he ground out.

  Past her father’s, past the grandparents’ crooked house. The tires screeched as he pulled onto Lake Shore Road, and he gunned the engine, laying down rubber as he sped home. His breath made clouds of fury in the cold truck.

  Onto their street, into the driveway. Tom barreled out of the truck in a flash. He yanked Honor’s door open and pulled her into his arms again. He might’ve been a little rough, because she gave an ooph as he did, but bloody hell.

  Into the house, his wet shoes squeaking on the floor. Up the stairs, into the bathroom. He set her down and threw on the taps, then started undressing her, as her hands were shaking too hard. Shaking and bloody and filthy.

  From under her shirt, the dog moved. So it was still alive. Pity.

  He yanked off her clothes. Her skin was nearly blue.

  Fuck.

  He grabbed the dog and set the dog in the shower, where it barked. Then Tom lifted Honor in, following her, all his clothes still on.

  He still couldn’t look at her. Too bloody furious.

  Or something.

  Water streamed down Honor’s body, her skin quickly turning pink. She had a bruise on her leg and several cuts, and her eyes looked too big. Tom picked up her dog and stuck it under the water with her, then lathered it up with shampoo, ignoring its little snarls. When he was assured the dog was as warm and mean as usual, he set it outside the tub, where it shook itself dry.