by Linda Turner
Those words echoed in her ears all the way home, warming her heart as nothing else could. Ever since Gus had died, Dan had always been there for her, and that wasn’t going to change now that he loved her and wanted to marry her.
Reassured, she arrived home with a smile on her face, but it faded the second she stepped inside and the loneliness of her own existence rose up before her. She’d grown so used to Dan being there that she’d forgotten how quiet the house was during the day when Janey was at work and she was there alone. She usually didn’t even turn the TV on until the evening news came on.
Grimacing at the thought, she reminded herself that she wasn’t some pitiful old widow woman who holed up in her house and felt sorry for herself. She had a full life. When she wasn’t doing something with her friends or Dan, she was cooking or canning or working in the garden in the spring and summer. And church, of course, was all year round.
Then there was Janey. She was there for breakfast each morning, and they had dinner together the nights neither of them had plans. Sometimes they were both so busy that they just saw each other in passing, but just knowing Janey lived there in the same house and would be home eventually made her feel less alone.
But Janey has Reilly now, a voice whispered in her ear. One day soon she could decide to leave and get a place of her own, and then where will you be? Sad and lonely and living in this great big old house all by yourself, that’s where!
No! she wanted to cry. It wouldn’t be that way. She’d adjust to living alone. She’d do just fine. And even if she didn’t, she couldn’t marry Dan just so she wouldn’t be alone. That wouldn’t be fair to him or herself.
But even as she acknowledged that, she knew that if she did decide to accept his proposal, it wouldn’t be because she was afraid of being alone. She loved him. The strength and wonder of that love still amazed her. She wanted to be with him for the rest of her life, but she didn’t live in a vacuum. Marriage to Dan didn’t just affect her—she had her children to consider, and they didn’t even suspect that the two of them loved each other, let alone wanted to get married. How would they feel about her marrying another man? She wanted to believe that they would all be happy for her since they were so fond of Dan, but she couldn’t be sure. What if they felt as if she was somehow betraying Gus? Then what would she do?
With the answer eluding her, she couldn’t help but worry as she went about her morning chores. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, she thought as she changed the sheets on the bed in the guest room, then strode into the laundry room to wash them. A wonderful man had asked her to marry him. She should have been walking on air and planning a wedding, not worrying herself to death.
“Mom?”
Her thoughts and hearing drowned out by the sound of the washing machine, she didn’t realize she had a visitor until Joe waved his hand in front of her face. Startled, she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Joe! My goodness, you nearly scared me to death! What are you doing here? I thought you were going Christmas shopping this morning.”
“I am,” he said, grinning as he switched off the machine so they could hear each other without shouting. “I stopped by to see if you could give me an idea on what to get Janey, but you looked as though you were a million miles away. Everything okay? How’s Dan?”
“Great,” she assured him, flashing a smile that wasn’t quite as bright as she’d have liked. “I just got back from taking him home. Reilly’s really pleased with his progress.”
“And what about you?” he asked, studying her with knowing eyes. “Are you pleased he was well enough to go home?”
“Well, of course I’m happy that he’s back on his feet. I was really worried about him at first.”
“But now you miss him, and he hasn’t even been gone an hour.”
She couldn’t have denied it even if she’d wanted to— Joe knew her too well. “I know. It’s silly, isn’t it? It’s just that I got so used to him being here that the house seems empty without him.”
She could have let the subject drop with that and distracted Joe with questions about Christmas gifts for Angel and Emma. But since he’d already guessed how much she missed Dan, the timing just seemed right to tell him everything.
Nervous, not sure where to begin, she struggled to find the right words. “There’s something I need to tell you, honey.”
“All right,” he said with a frown when she hesitated. “It sounds serious. You’re not sick, are you?”
“Oh, no!” she said quickly. “It’s nothing like that. I’m fine. Everything’s fine! It’s just that…I don’t know how to say this—”
“Spit it out, Mom,” he retorted with a chuckle. “If ev erything’s fine and nobody’s dying, then it can’t be that bad. Say it.”
“Dan and I are in love with each other and he’s asked me to marry him.”
The words came out in a rush, not the way she intended at all, but she needn’t have worried that she’d shocked Joe. Grinning broadly, he snatched her into his arms for a bear hug. “It’s about damn time! So when’s the wedding?”
That wasn’t quite the reaction she’d expected. Confused, she stared up at him with wide, hopeful eyes. “You’re okay with this? I was afraid you might think I was betraying your father.”
“What?” Stunned that she would think such a thing, Joe hugged her again, this time more gently. “Mom, Dad’s been gone a long time. I’ve never expected you to live the rest of your life alone. Especially when you have a chance to find happiness with a good man like Dan. He’s been crazy about you for years.”
“You knew?”
Grinning at her shocked tone, he nodded. “Dan’s not very good at hiding his emotions. It was written all over his face whenever he looked at you.”
So everyone had known. And she’d never realized. “I must have been incredibly blind. Why didn’t somebody tell me?”
“Because you weren’t ready to see it,” he said simply. “Now you are. So when’s the wedding?”
That wasn’t something she’d allowed herself to think about, not yet. But Joe’s reaction had lifted a huge load off her shoulders, and she had no reason to think that the other kids would respond any differently. Suddenly the possibilities for happiness were endless, and she couldn’t stop smiling. “I’ll let you know,” she promised, hugging him again. “First I have to tell Dan.”
Reilly couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such a hell of a day at work. Nothing seemed to go right. Three different patients had allergic reactions to the prescription drugs he prescribed for them, and the waiting room was packed to the rafters with patients suffering from the latest flu bug making its way through town. If patients weren’t sniffling or coughing, they were complaining about headaches and back aches and looking to him for a quick fix. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one.
Swamped, he’d been running behind schedule almost from the moment the office opened its doors that morning, and things only went downhill from there. By the time he was able to slip away for his rounds at the nursing home, he was an hour late and in a bear of a mood. He caught a glimpse of Janey going about her duties at the far end of the east hall, but she was busy and didn’t see him, and that only frustrated him more.
She was all he could think of. He’d lost track of the number of times he’d picked up the phone to call her, only to change his mind before he could even punch in her number. He’d upset her last night by rushing things—she needed some time to come to grips with the change in their relationship. He knew that, accepted that, and still had to fight the urge to track her down, sweep her up into his arms, and carry her off to someplace quiet and secluded so the two of them could be alone together.
Would she even talk to him? he wondered glumly. He had a sinking feeling that he’d ruined everything, and he didn’t know what to do.
“Dr. Jones? My blood pressure is all right, isn’t it? I’ve been feeling a lot better since you changed my pills.”
Jerked back to his surroundings by Henry Perkin
s, Reilly looked up from his thoughts to find the old man frowning at him worriedly. Only then did he realize he must have scared him to death with his scowl. “You’re doing great,” he assured him gruffly as he quickly unwrapped the blood pressure cuff. “I was just thinking about something else. Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Henry said easily. “Janey’s been distracted all morning, too. I was worried about her. Is anything wrong?”
When he arched a bushy gray brow, encouraging Reilly to confide in him, he had to grin. Oh, he was good. And smooth as silk. With a touch of concern in his eyes and his tone pitched to just the right degree of worry, the old man was the picture of a caring friend who just wanted to help. Reilly didn’t doubt that he did truly care for Janey, but he couldn’t let himself forget that Henry was also a member of the Busybodies. By quietly going about his business and innocently visiting with people, he unobtrusively collected bits and snippets of gossip like other people collected stamps. Anything was grist for the gossip mill and shared with Abby Hart and the others, who were better than CNN at spreading the latest news.
“Nice try, Henry,” he said, chuckling, “but you’ll have to ask Janey that. I don’t have a clue.”
If he was disappointed, he didn’t show it. “Oh, well then, I guess you two aren’t having problems. That’s good.” When Reilly merely looked at him, refusing to comment one way or the other, he grinned. “Maybe I’ll have better luck with Janey.”
“Maybe so,” Reilly said with a laugh. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”
His examination finished, he sent Henry on his way to find Janey and was half tempted to go with him. But he needed some advice before he approached her, and there was only one woman he knew who was wise enough to help him. That was Sara McBride. If he finished his rounds early, he could drive out to the ranch and talk to her before Janey got off work. The decision made, he hurried down the hall to his next patient.
After talking to Joe, Sara spent the rest of the morning and afternoon alone, thinking. She loved Dan. She didn’t know why it had taken her so long to realize how she felt about him, but now that Joe had assured her that he and the rest of the children would totally support whatever she wanted to do, she knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Before she could tell him that and accept his proposal, however, she had to first make peace with her lost love—Gus.
They’d had twenty years together, but now, looking back, it seemed like only hours. Hours of laughter and loving and raising a family together that had ended almost before they’d begun. One day they’d been newlyweds, so much in love that their feet hadn’t even touched the ground, and the next, twenty years had passed, and he was gone. Just that quickly all the laughter had gone out of her life. Oh, she’d still had the children to love and bring her joy, but it had never been the same without Gus.
He’d been her partner, her lover, the one she could share her hopes and dreams with, and she’d missed him terribly. But he was part of her past, her youth, when everything was possible. And she had to let him go.
Tears flooded her eyes, but it wasn’t with sadness. Because she realized now that the love she felt for Dan was separate from what she felt for Gus, and one didn’t take away from the other. She loved them both, in different ways, at different times in her life, and that was all right.
All this time, she thought with a tearful smile, she’d been so torn by the fact that she loved them both. How could she have been so foolish? Gus would never have begrudged her a chance to find happiness, and given the chance he would have picked Dan for her himself. After all, they’d been best friends. And if the situation had been reversed, she knew in her heart Dan would have done the same thing. How could she have been lucky enough to love two such good men in a single lifetime?
She’d intended to wait until that evening when they had dinner together to tell him she would marry him, but suddenly she couldn’t wait that long. She needed to see him now, to tell him how much she loved him and that she wanted whatever time they had left together to be wonderful. Quickly wiping the tears from her face, she hurried upstairs to her bedroom to change. When a woman was going to accept a man’s proposal, the least she could do was wear something a little more appropriate than jeans and an old flannel shirt.
Her heart racing, she went through her closet like a mad-woman, selecting first one item, then rejecting it for another, before she finally settled on a royal-blue wool dress that exactly matched the color of her eyes. Her cheeks were already tinged with a blush, her eyes sparkling, so all she needed was a couple of swishes of mascara and some lipstick and she was ready. Unable to stop smiling, she grabbed her purse and keys and ran down the stairs like a twenty-year-old.
The doorbell rang just as she reached the bottom step, and her first thought was it was Dan. Somehow, he’d known she’d needed to see him. But even as she hurried toward the front door, common sense kicked in and she knew it couldn’t possibly be him. Reilly hadn’t cleared him to drive yet, and even if he had, Dan had promised to give her time. He wouldn’t go back on his word. Which meant her visitor was someone else.
Hesitating with her hand on the door, she was half tempted not to answer it. She wanted to see Dan, not visit with an uninvited guest. And it wasn’t as if the person on the other side of the door even knew she was at home—her car was in the garage and the house was quiet. If she just waited a few moments they’d think she was gone and leave.
And she’d feel like a heel.
“Your mother raised you better than that, Sara,” she muttered to herself. “What if it’s someone in trouble? Open the door and be nice.”
Resigned, she knew her conscience would never let her do anything else. Opening the door, she half expected to find Helen Guthry, a nosy neighbor from down the road, on her front porch, wanting to gossip. Instead, she found herself face-to-face with Reilly.
Shocked, she started to smile. “This is a pleasant surprise,” she began, only to stiffen as she realized that he wasn’t in the practice of stopping by the house in the middle of the day unless Janey was there. “What’s wrong? Is it Janey? Dan? Oh, God, something’s happened!”
“Oh, no!” he quickly assured her. “They’re both fine, as far as I know. I just needed to talk to you about something, but you look like you’re on your way out,” he added, noting the purse she’d slung over her shoulder. “I should have called first. We can do this another time.”
He started to turn away, but Sara never even considered letting him go. He was obviously troubled about something. Pulling open the door, she smiled kindly. “I was just going into town to see Dan, but that can wait. Come in. Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Soda? It won’t take me a second to make you something.”
He hadn’t meant to put her to any trouble, but five minutes later, he was seated across from her at the old kitchen table, drinking the best coffee he’d ever tasted. And somehow, talking to Sara in the same kitchen where countless McBrides must have discussed their problems with the women in their lives turned out to be easier than he’d expected.
“When my wife died,” he said quietly, “I felt like my entire life had been ripped apart in a heartbeat. Victoria was the other half of me, the best part of me, and suddenly she was gone. I was so lost without her I didn’t know what to do. I’d never been more miserable in my life.”
Understanding softening her eyes, Sara reached across the table to pat his hand. “I’ve been there,” she told him huskily. “It’s the loneliest place in the world.”
Hurt, muted some by time, squeezed his heart. “Then you know what it’s like. Nothing matters. Not family or friends or work. You can’t sleep or eat and the pain never seems to go away, even though everyone tells you it will.”
“‘Just give it time,’” she quoted with a grimace, repeating the advice everyone had rushed to give her. “‘Give it time and you won’t feel so lonely. Just give it time and you’ll be able to remember him without it hurting.’ God, I hated it
when people used to say that! I could never understand how they thought they knew what I was supposed to feel when they’d never lost their husband. They didn’t have a clue what I was going through.”
“The pain was so awful, I thought I’d never love anyone again,” he confided. “I didn’t want to risk that kind of hurt again. Then I met Janey.”
A slow, pleased smile spread across Sara’s beautiful face. “And everything changed.”
He couldn’t deny it. She’d changed everything. “I’m falling in love with her,” he said huskily. “And I feel so damn guilty, it’s tearing me apart. Victoria hasn’t even been dead nine months. How can I already love someone else?”
“Because you didn’t die, too,” Sara said simply. “Be cause you’re human and have feelings. Don’t ever feel guilty about loving someone, Reilly. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world. And true love is so rare. I never had the chance to know your Victoria, so I don’t know what kind of woman she was, but I can’t imagine you loving anyone who would be so jealous and possessive that she’d want you to spend the rest of your life alone, grieving for her. If she truly loved you, she’d be happy that you’d found someone else to love.”
“But it’s too soon!”
She smiled. “Is it? Love has its own time frame. Some people only need eight months. Others—like me—need twenty years. That doesn’t mean that you loved Victoria any less than I loved Gus. It just took me longer to let go.”
Caught up in his own thoughts, it was several seconds before her words registered. Stunned, Reilly just looked at her. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
She nodded, her blue eyes twinkling. “I’ve fallen in love with Dan, and he’s asked me to marry him. So you see, I know exactly how you’re feeling. When I realized I loved him, I felt guilty, too, like I was somehow betraying Gus. But Gus is gone. And as much I loved him and treasured the years we had together, it’s time for me to starting living again. With Dan. If Victoria could talk to you, I bet she’d tell you the same thing. Go on with your life, Reilly. You’ve found someone to love. Don’t let that go.”