“I’ll do that,” Lila promised, taking the piece of paper. “That would be nice.”
“I’m really glad you’re back in town,” I told her, tucking my hands into the pockets of my jeans.
“Thanks. Me too.”
I smiled and raised a hand in farewell before backing out, hopefully ending any chance of saying something truly awkward.
Callum said something to Lila I didn’t hear and followed me out.
“Are you…,” he started, but I turned around and gave a broad smile.
He was doing a good, honorable thing, and the last thing I wanted was to make any of it more difficult than necessary.
I thought highly of him. And, I realized, I wanted him to think well of me.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “I’m fine, and I think…” His hand was inches from me, and I touched his fingers with mine. “I think you’re really great.”
He studied my face, still, like he was afraid to breathe.
Or maybe that was me.
I cleared my throat. “I need—I need to go. I need to get Margot from ballet.”
“Can I pick you up Saturday? For the concert?”
“Yes! Yes, of course.” I looked up at him, and felt the inevitable flush cover my face. “I’m looking forward to it.”
His lips tipped in a slow smile as he studied my face. “Me too.”
“Thank you for the banana pudding recipe.”
He gave a low chuckle. “Anytime.”
36
The sage in bloom is like perfume
Deep in the heart of Texas.
—HANK THOMPSON
Callum
I walked Jane to her truck and watched her drive away before walking back inside the restaurant and to the office.
To Lila.
She lifted her eyebrows when she saw me. “So?” she asked. “Did I ruin everything with you? I’m sorry; I completely forgot she was coming by today.”
I sank into the chair opposite the desk. “No. Not ruined. We’re going out Saturday.”
“Everything’s okay?”
I thought of the way she touched my hand, the way she looked up at me. If my memory of those last few moments was accurate, we were more than okay. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s fine.”
She leaned forward. “You’re blushing again.”
I leveled a gaze at her. “You’re taking this whole sisterly thing very seriously.”
“Someone has to.”
“Haven’t seen you for a few days. The new apartment is working out for you?”
“It is! The neighbors are nice; I like hearing the kids play outside.”
“You know—”
“Yes, I know I can stay at your place. Trust me when I say that I don’t think you need me around, not right now.” Lila gave a nod. “I’m glad she has you. She’s a lucky girl.”
“Don’t go running ahead of things. She just agreed to a first date, that’s all.”
“Sometimes, that first date is just a formality.”
I laced my fingers together. “Speaking of, how’s Clint?”
This time, Lila’s face colored. “Just fine.”
“That formality date go okay? What are you up to, four formality dates?”
“Shut up,” she said, with a smile on her face.
“I’m glad you’re happy.”
She folded her hands over her belly. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to be happy. It’s nice to be wrong.” She looked up at me. “I hope you have a good date.”
That unfamiliar feeling, hope, spread in my chest. “I hope so too.”
37
Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea.
—MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
Jane
Picking up Margot took longer than usual, on account of her inability to leave her newfound circle of friends. I watched them chat away amiably, pleased that she’d found her people.
Once I got her inside the truck, she was full of news about the upcoming spring ballet and the costumes that were planned and how there was a boy at school who’d been particularly attentive lately. The latter topic kept us busy until we reached home. When we arrived, Margot barreled inside to video chat with said friends, the ones she’d said good-bye to only moments before. I was hardly out of the truck myself when Nina came flying out of the big house and across the lawn.
“Jane! You’ll never believe it. Where’s Celia?”
Celia must have heard the commotion, because the door opened and she stepped outside. “Is everything all right?”
Nina raced up to us, clutching her phone in her hand. “Lyndsay! She sent me a passel of texts, not thirty minutes ago. Remember how she went and toured San Antonio with Jonathan and Phoebe Foster? She’s eloping, right this minute, with Phoebe’s brother Rob.”
“What?” I asked, wrinkling my nose. “Lyndsay and Rob?”
Really, come to think of it, the two of them made sense together.
“That’s what the texts say. Apparently she was seeing Rob’s brother, Ted. But he’d just gotten out of a long-term relationship”—Nina wrinkled her nose—“and wanted to keep it quiet.”
I forced myself to breathe in and breathe out. “She was seeing Ted? Before she met Rob?”
So help me, if I ever saw Teddy again, I’d murder him with a tea strainer.
“Yes! Discreetly and long-distance, I suppose. But she got tired of the distance, met Rob, and the rest is history.” Nina pressed her hands to her heart. “It’s so romantic.”
“Romantic,” I echoed woodenly. “Well, that’s…that’s very nice for them.”
“I’m headed to town. I thought I’d buy them a wedding gift, something silver. Do young people use silver anymore?”
I wasn’t capable of enough thought to formulate an answer.
“Depends on the person, I suppose. Lyndsay might like it,” Celia said.
It would be shiny, so I imagined so.
“I’ll go and see what I see. Don’t let me keep you.” Nina patted my cheek and then Celia’s. “You two are so pretty. I’ll bet that when you’ve got your tea shop open, you’ll have a line of men out the door, coming for tea and a look at you both.”
“I’ve always wanted to serve tea in a zoo,” I quipped before we said good-bye and walked inside.
I closed the door behind us and leaned against it, trying to catch my breath. “Lyndsay and…Teddy.” I looked up at Celia.
She wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“This didn’t surprise you,” I observed. She was upset, yes, but shocked? I didn’t see it. “You knew about them.”
Celia took a deep breath, and exhaled until her shoulders slumped. “Lyndsay told me.”
I squinted at her. “Lyndsay…told you?”
“Yes.”
“So, this whole thing is supposed to be a deep, dark secret, and Lyndsay comes to Austin under—let’s be honest—the thinnest of pretenses, and the one person she tells is you? Teddy’s ex-girlfriend?” My eyes widened. “She was warning you off. The snipe. And then when he wasn’t advancing the relationship fast enough, she bailed for Rob. I might not be happy with Teddy, but that’s not a lateral move.”
“She confided in me about seeing Teddy, asked me to keep it quiet,” Celia said. “And I agreed.”
“But why? After all, Teddy had already broken up with you.”
“But he didn’t,” Celia answered simply. “I broke up with him.”
“You—what?”
“It was Dad’s scandal. We loved each other, but his superiors made it clear that as long as we were together, he wouldn’t advance.”
“That promotion,” I said. “The one he didn’t get.”
“Right. He should have, but he didn’t. He told me it was fine, told me that he’d been thinking of quitting and going to seminary.”
My brows lifted. “That’s a switch. I bet Phoebe loved that.”
Celia tipped her head. “No. It was creating problems with his family, and my presenc
e was creating problems for him at work.”
“So why didn’t he just leave?”
“It was a big decision; he’d been wrestling with it for months. And after things went so badly with the shop and Jonathan and Phoebe, and he did…nothing, I knew we couldn’t be together anymore. Marrying him would mean that Phoebe would be my sister-in-law, and whatever the Fosters wanted, or his job wanted, would come first.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t do that.”
“So you broke up with him.”
“Not just because I was mad. I loved him,” she said simply. “I still do. And Dad’s scandal was holding him back at work, at the job he couldn’t convince himself to leave. He wasn’t able to make a decision, so I made it for him.”
“Oh, Celia. And then Austin…”
Celia ran a hand through her hair. “It was far away. It seemed…it seemed like the best option, to be far away. Not just for that,” she continued in a rush. “I hated that after all these years, we were still Walter Woodward’s daughters. At some point, it would have touched Margot too. So we had to go somewhere, and Ian offered the casita. It seemed to be the right thing.” She hugged her arms to herself, and her voice grew thick with tears. “In hindsight, I realize…I was running away and dragging you and Margot with me.”
I crossed the room to her then and wrapped my arms around her in a tight hug. “You know that we would follow you across the world, right?” I pulled back so I could see her face. “I’m so sorry about you and Teddy. I was so terrible to you about it, especially after Sean…”
And then we were crying together and hugging and crying some more. “I should never, ever have kept it from you,” Celia said. “Never ever. From now on, I’m telling you everything.”
“Yes! It’s nothing but TMI from here on out,” I promised, heartened by the laugh my statement elicited. “I love you, Celia. You and Margot are the most important people in the world to me.”
“I love you too, Jane. You’re my best friend. I can’t believe—I wish—I’m sorry—”
“Stop apologizing and hug me,” I told her. “We’re going to be fine.”
Callum picked me up for the concert Saturday night, and I left with Margot’s hoots ringing in my ears. Nina waved at us through the window of the big house. I think I saw Ian give us a thumbs-up.
If I’d felt like dating Sean had happened in a fishbowl, going out with Callum made it thirty times more intense.
I looked up at him to find him grinning back, and felt…complete bliss.
So I waved back at Nina and Ian.
The concert was lovely, and I was excited to hear my favorite song of theirs, “Lament,” which, for the sadness of the title, was lyrical and peaceful.
Callum leaned over, his lips next to my ear, and his breath warm on my cheek. “The guy on guitar and keyboard is really good.”
My face flushed. “He is,” I agreed, though it was difficult to pay attention at that moment.
I was lucky that the music was so soothing, because my heart was already beating so fast that something up-tempo might have sent me back to the hospital.
Not long ago, I was thinking of being with Sean Willis forever, and then that house of cards had come crashing to the ground in a heap. And now here I was with Callum, listening to one of my favorite bands, sitting so close I could feel him breathing.
This was the man, I reminded myself, who had rescued his former sister-in-law, who had fished me out of a lake, who had read to me in the hospital.
Never mind he was an American hero.
After Sean, being out with someone felt crazy. But when that someone was Callum?
It still felt crazy. Just…good crazy.
We’d eaten dinner beforehand, but the butterflies in my stomach seemed to have worked their way through it, because my stomach rumbled as we walked to Callum’s Jeep. I didn’t say anything, but Callum must have heard it because we stopped by Torchy’s on the way home. “It’s a good night for a taco,” he said simply. “Or three.”
Afterward, we pulled up at the casita quietly; all the lights were off. It was a warm night, with just a soft breeze. A perfect night—and I didn’t want it to end.
Callum tipped his head toward the pool. “I brought the book with me,” he said. “Want to sit poolside and read a little more? Unless,” he rushed to add, “you’re tired. That’s fine too.”
The dark hid just how broad my grin was. “I’d like that.”
As we walked to the pool, slowly—his leg healing, my own stamina not yet recovered—I took account of the seating options. Deck loungers, deck chairs, and strung between two of the trees, a hammock.
“How about the hammock?” I asked.
He cleared his throat. “Good idea.”
We climbed in carefully, the initial swaying slowing as we found a comfortable spot. We were side by side, and while my arm wasn’t around him, nor his around me, his body felt warm and pleasant beside me.
As we settled, a thought occurred to me. “How exactly are we meant to read out here? It’s a little…”
He chuckled. “A little dark?” He reached inside his jacket. “There’s this device called an e-reader, and it’s got a handy little backlight.”
“Look at you being clever.”
With a little work, he found where he’d left off reading and began to read again. “ ‘She was outside his hovel before dawn. Inside, she could hear him already awake. She knocked. He appeared, stood in the doorway. Behind him she could see a tiny candle, open books. He waited. She looked at him. Then she looked away.’ ”
Listening to his voice, curled up next to him, I felt both more relaxed and more alive than I’d ever felt. I listened as Buttercup told Westley how she felt about him, and how he’d slammed the door in her face. And how the next day, he was packed to go and find his fortune, but not before telling her that he loved her and had all along.
He read until I felt so relaxed that I seemed nearly boneless.
Somewhere in there, we’d shifted positions. His arm had come to be beneath my neck, so that my head rested in the crook of his arm, my hand on his chest.
He smelled good, like spice and trees.
After a while, when his voice had begun to grow rusty from reading, he turned off the e-reader and put it back inside his jacket.
“This is nice,” I said. “Thank you. I know I keep thanking you, but you’ve given me so much to thank you for.”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I enjoyed spending the evening with you.”
There were so many other things to be said, they hung around us like fireflies in the dark.
I shook my head. “It’s not nothing.”
“Jane—” He pushed himself up to a near-sitting position. As much as one could in a hammock. “The truth is, I’ve—I’ve cared for you for a long time. We haven’t spent a lot of time together, so it’s hard to say if it’s love. Maybe it is. I don’t know.” He took a breath and exhaled hard. “But I didn’t do anything for you because I’m altruistic. I did it because I didn’t want to be without you.”
“Oh,” I said, because that was all I could manage. Every other word had fled from my mind.
“You don’t have to say anything. I know it’s been a difficult time for you. But I thought I should be honest.”
I looked up at him. “I— I’m not sure I believe that.”
He started to protest, but I held up a hand and continued. “If you say you love me, I believe you. I do. But I don’t believe that you weren’t altruistic. If it had been Celia or Margot, or Charlie or Nina, wouldn’t you have gone out looking for them too? And done everything possible to bring them back?”
He didn’t answer.
“Ian told us about your last battle overseas. You rescued people. Not as many people as you wanted but as many as you were able. You help people. All kinds. It just happens that some of the people you really care about have needed your help in a big way, and I, for one, couldn’t be more thankful.” I rested a hand on his c
hest. “You have a hero’s heart, Callum.”
Callum reached for my hand and cradled it with his own. “Thank you, Jane,” he said, his voice deep and husky.
I gave a slight nod, my words gone.
But I wasn’t silent because I was overwhelmed with feelings—well, I was, but it wasn’t just that. I was silent because he held my hand so gently in his, and with our faces very, very close together, I was silenced by my own curiosity.
What would it be like, I wondered, to kiss Callum Beckett?
As I wondered, our eyes caught and held. I couldn’t look away.
Callum cleared his throat. “As I said. I recognize that you’ve endured a time of significant emotional upheaval. But”—his voice grew hoarse—“I would like to kiss you. If you’re not ready, it’s understandable—”
He was going to keep talking, and there was only one thing to do. I used my elbow as leverage against the hammock fabric, and closed the small distance to kiss him.
Just a light kiss; more like a brush. That’s all it took get him to stop talking.
Up close, he smelled wonderful, but the feel of his lips beneath mine was even better. The feeling was so heady, so overwhelming, I could have stopped there and been content.
But not Callum.
In the space of the smallest breath, the moment shifted from me kissing Callum to Callum kissing me. Kissing me deeply.
Kissing me with joy and fear and reverence, each emotion taking precedence before shifting to the next and back again. His fingers wove into my hair, drawing me close, every caress a question.
I answered every question with a caress of my own.
Kissing Callum was like finding a favorite thing I hadn’t known I was looking for. But now that I’d found it, I didn’t want it to ever end.
Just as I thought my heart would burst, Callum gave my lips a last caress before brushing kisses on my cheekbones, my eyelids, all while rubbing the base of my neck gently with his thumb.
“I should be gentlemanly,” he said, his eyes searching mine, “and walk you to your door.”
Jane of Austin Page 28