“Yes, this man loves Jesus,” he finally said. “And he wants to believe that.”
“Well then, if that’s the case, yes. I would still marry this everything-I-hoped-for man. In fact, I would marry him if he wasn’t perfect—if he didn’t know how to cook and he occasionally forgot flowers.” Her smile dimmed, and she looked away. “I would marry him and love him for as long as we had because I don’t really care about anything on that list but a man who loves Jesus and loves me.”
She met his eyes then, and oh, Max wanted to reach out. To take her hand. To pull her into his arms.
But he couldn’t breathe. So he put his sunglasses back on and got up, headed for the exit before he could break into tears.
RAINA COULD HARDLY BELIEVE Casper hailed from the same stock as Owen. Instead of dropping her off and driving away Sunday evening, he’d picked up dinner—a basket of fried chicken from a local diner—and spread out a picnic as they watched another glorious sunset.
Raina had managed to forget her anger at his brother—his family—as she settled into his arms. He hadn’t tried to kiss her, but he had leaned her back against him to watch the sky light on fire, the world turning to gold, then crimson as the horizon surrendered to the night.
But now, two days later, her words dogged her, winding into her brain, churning her stomach. What is it with you arrogant Christiansen men who think you can just use people?
She shouldn’t have erupted, shouldn’t have let her past sour the perfect evening she could have had with his family. Maybe she’d overstepped there a little. Even if Darek, who seemed cut from the same cloth as his kid brother, Owen, deserved it.
But if she hoped to keep things civil, even encourage team unity before the next practice, she had to smooth things over with Casper’s family.
“You want this on your tab, Raina, or do you want to pay for it now?” Ty asked as he boxed the pizza.
She picked up the large pepperoni that she’d made after she’d gotten off shift. “Put it on my tab,” she said and headed out the door.
She slid the pizza onto the front seat of the car, leaving one hand on the box to steady it as she drove to Evergreen Resort. She couldn’t decide if she hoped Casper was there or not.
Her insides had coiled into a knot by the time she turned onto the drive for the resort. The temperature rose ten degrees up here in the woods, and she could still smell the faintest hint of ash in the air, despite the greening pines across the lake.
How long might it take for the woods to come to life again?
Raina pulled in next to a blue- and white-striped work truck, the hood open. She grabbed the pizza and got out.
John Christiansen looked out from where he hunkered under the hood. “Hello there.”
She didn’t wait for the courage, just blurted out what she had to say. “I came to apologize.” She held out the pizza. “I shouldn’t have responded to your hospitality like that. I’m so sorry. I’m way too dramatic, I know it, and I should have kept my feelings to myself.”
When she first met John, he’d intimidated her with his large, almost-imposing presence, his barrel chest and bald head, those dark-blue eyes that could see right through her to her secrets. Now he considered her a long moment, and the power of it could take her apart.
Especially combined with his next words. “Raina, did one of my boys hurt you?”
The strength went out of her knees. She managed a quick shake of her head.
“Hmm.” He narrowed his eyes. “You know, if they did, I’d want to know about it.”
She wanted to run. But growing up without a father around, having to stand her ground to teachers, social workers, and finally her brother, she didn’t possess a huge amount of flinch. “No.” She cleared her throat. “Why?”
That sounded mousy. She added a smile but knew it was off-kilter.
He considered her another long moment as if weighing her words. Then, “Pizza, huh?”
She nodded, too vigorously. “Pepperoni.”
John came around the truck, wiping his hands on a rag. He wore a pair of grimy, oil-slicked jeans, a stained shirt, a gimme cap with a worn, cupped brim. “Ingrid’s in town. I think Casper and Darek are working on a cabin.”
She glanced past him toward the cabins and heard the faint scream of a Skilsaw. “Then we’ll save them some.” She put the box on the hood of her car and opened it, retrieved a napkin and handed him a slice.
He set his wrench on the side of the engine compartment and took the pizza. “Thanks.”
“Is this a Chevy?”
“Yep.”
“A 1980s model?”
“Yeah, a 1984. I got it not long after Ingrid and I were married.”
“My dad had one of these. Diesel. He used to work on it when he was off the road.” She peered into the engine compartment, the smells of oil and grease luring her closer. “I’d come home from school, and I’d know whether Dad had an overnight turnaround or a few days off by whether the hood was up on the truck. He was always tinkering with it.” She leaned in, noticing cables to the battery, a new radiator. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Won’t start.” He’d folded the pizza like a sandwich to eat it.
“You tested the battery, right?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“It’s the first thing Dad would do. Are you getting fuel?”
He stepped up to the truck, wiping his fingers. “Yep. I just changed the fuel filter too.”
“So maybe it’s a spark?”
“Nope.” John indicated a spark plug kit on the ground. “I was just ready to take off the distributor cap and test the timing.” He leaned over the engine. “Hand me that screwdriver down there. The one with the star-shaped head.”
She found the toolbox. “The Torx driver?”
He raised another eyebrow, accompanied it with a hint of smile.
She leaned over, watching him. “I helped my dad rebuild the entire engine one summer. We had parts all over the garage, but we got the truck running. I remember him piling me and Joey into the cab and driving us to Dairy Queen in celebration. I hadn’t seen him smile since my mom left, but he ordered us both large cones and got one for himself. He put ice cream on my nose and dared me to lick it off.”
She didn’t know why she’d decided to tell him that, but he didn’t react, didn’t suddenly look at her like she’d taken out a piece of her heart. He simply removed the cap and handed it to her. Raina put it on the ground next to the toolbox.
“Get in and give her a crank,” he said.
She climbed into the driver’s seat, the smell of age and grime embedded in the cab. “Ready?”
John stuck his hand out from beyond the hood to give her a thumbs-up. She cranked. The engine didn’t turn over, but she could hear it working.
“Okay!”
Raina turned the truck off and got out. “So?”
“Timing is good, and the belt looks okay.” He stepped back, scratching his head at the base of his cap. He’d already left a black smudge there. “I’m going to have to remove the spark plugs, see if we have enough compression.”
She grabbed a piece of pizza and leaned against the truck, catching up with her memories. “What I didn’t know was that Dad was planning a trip to see my great-aunt in South Dakota. We were about thirty miles from her house out in the middle of nowhere when the truck died again on the side of the road. We pulled into this grassy truck stop, and my dad climbed under the hood. He tested everything and decided that we had to replace the cylinder gaskets.”
She watched as John pulled out the spark plugs, then disabled the ignition coil. “He called my great-aunt and asked her to come get my brother and me while he fixed the truck. She lived in this tiny house on the edge of this Podunk town, but it had a swimming pool and every day, while we waited for my father to show up, we’d go swimming. The pool had a slide and a diving board, and I made friends with all the kids in town. An entire week went by before I caught on that he hadn’t show
n up yet.”
She put her pizza back in the box. She hadn’t realized she would end up here—the day when she stood on the stoop of Aunt Rae’s house, her hands on the screen door, refusing to go to the pool until her father arrived.
“Why don’t you climb in; we’ll give it another go,” John said, breaking through the quiet, sketchy past.
Raina climbed in.
“Keep your foot off the gas!”
She cranked the engine while he tested each of the spark plug holes.
“Okay, you can stop.” He leaned out from under the hood. “Just stay there. I’ll need you to crank again.”
She sat in the cab, the familiarity of the truck casting her back to sitting on a cracked, weedy stoop for another week—hot, hungry, her stomach all gnarled and angry as she waited.
“Raina?”
She looked up to see John staring at her, something of worry in his eyes.
“Sorry.”
“Give it another go.”
She cranked while he tested the spark plug holes again. Then he held up his hand to stop.
She got out. “So?”
“There are holes in a couple of the cylinders. I’ll need to replace gaskets.” He was wiping his hands with a rag.
Cicadas buzzed in the afternoon heat.
“So did he ever show up?”
Huh? She looked at John.
“Your father. He sent you to your aunt’s house. Did he ever show up to get you?”
“Yeah. He’d had some trouble with the engine, had to catch a ride to Sioux Falls for parts.” But she kept her eyes away, haunted by her own words.
Deep inside, she’d feared he’d wanted to leave her there. It would have been easier than trying to figure out what to do with two hungry, unruly kids.
“Got any more of that pizza?” John asked.
She nodded and gestured to the box. He helped himself, again folding the pizza like a sandwich. “You’re pretty good at this. Fixing cars. Catering. Paddling boats.”
“I try to help. To fit in.”
He finished the slice. “You fit in just fine, Raina, without trying.”
Her throat swelled. “I guess Casper didn’t need my defending.”
He gave a low chuckle. “Oh, Darek and Casper have plenty of war wounds. I think we could all use a little defending sometimes.” His eyes found her, too much warmth in them for her to bear. “But Casper is not the one I’m worried about.”
Oh. She couldn’t breathe. It felt like that moment when her father had shown up, opened the truck door, and said, Climb in, I’m taking you home.
“Apology accepted,” he finally said softly.
“Hey! What’s going on?” She looked up to see Casper approaching. He wore a black T-shirt, the sleeves stretched around his biceps, a tool belt hanging low over a pair of nearly white faded jeans. Sawdust littered his dark hair.
“Just hanging out, eating pizza with your first mate,” John said. He winked at Raina fast, and she turned away before she did something else strangely dramatic, like cry.
Max couldn’t dislodge the spur of anger Grace’s words had ground into him. Crazy, he knew, but he had stared at her walking away at the Pearl Harbor monument, and even over dinner at the resort, and a burning fury began to move through him.
What kind of woman said she’d marry a man she knew would die? That was . . . wrong. Nuts.
Infuriating.
Because it sparked a thousand impossible dreams. Like a desire to get married. To have a home. Even children, although he’d never have his own. Suddenly he completely understood why Brendon couldn’t hold himself back any longer, despite his fatal prognosis, and had married the woman who made him, for the first time, feel alive.
Who gave him something to live for.
That only made Max’s anger sharper because he already had something to live for. Hockey. Or at least that’s what he thought before he’d gotten on a plane to Hawaii and sat next to a woman afraid to fly. Afraid to reach out and live.
Funny how helping her leap into life had ignited the same desire in himself.
Grace had the power to tug him out of his dark places, drive him to his last nerve, and stir in him such a longing that he found himself . . . making soup.
“Seriously? Soup?” Max said, looking at their basket of ingredients. Day two of the Honolulu Chop competition, and he desperately needed to get his head back in the game.
“Yes,” Grace said as she sorted through their ingredients. Today, the morning had started with a downpour, and gray clouds hovered over the island. They’d break free by afternoon, but for now, a cool, clinging mist hung in the soggy air. Grace wore her hair back, her sleeves rolled up, so much verve on her face, he thought they might have a chance at making it through this round.
But soup?
“Listen, Mr. Grumpy Pants. Not only is this the soup-and-salad phase, but soup is good for the soul. More importantly, it’s actually hard to do well, so you can bet the others won’t go near it. The good news is that you happen to have a gourmet soup chef in your midst.”
She was miked, and he heard the audience, thinner than yesterday’s, twitter. “Okay, soup girl, what are we making with our . . . plantain, tofu, and pineapple?” He pulled the ingredients out of the basket.
“The plantain is a starch, so we’re going to treat it like a potato. Get out the pressure cooker.”
“Are you sure—?”
“Have you never eaten mashed potato soup?”
“Not with bananas.”
“Trust me.”
He guessed he deserved that. But how could he trust crazy?
He found the pressure cooker, added chicken broth, then peeled the plantains, cut them, and added them to the cooker. Grace was already sautéing a chopped onion, garlic, and ginger on the stove, and she threw those into the pot. He set it on high, clamped the lid on. “Let’s hope that cooks in ten minutes.”
She handed him the tofu. “Chop this up.” Meanwhile, she went to work on the pineapple, trimming and skinning it, cutting it into quarters, and removing the core with a paring knife. Finally she sliced it into long spears.
He’d taught her that, and he smiled at her skills.
Max glanced over at the hippies. They were chopping the plantain, making a salad with it and the pineapple.
That sounded like a winning combination, and he nearly mentioned this when he saw Grace fire up the grill.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m grilling the pineapple.”
“What is with you and fire?”
“I keep thinking about yesterday’s brûlée, and how the char brings out all the flavor. Quick, make me a glaze of honey, lime juice, and black pepper.”
He ran to the pantry, found the ingredients, and whisked them together. She’d arranged the pineapple spears on a plate, and he ran the glaze over them with a brush.
Grace picked them up with her fingers and plopped them on the grill. “Give these about four minutes per side. Wait until they start to dry out on the surface, but don’t overcook them or they will turn mushy. Or burn.”
“Yes, chef,” he said, and she stuck out her tongue at him.
The crowd laughed.
And then so did he because it felt so natural and even easy to be in the kitchen with her, watching her work, seeing her mad skills at throwing together dinner.
He could do this every night. Forever.
That thought sparked another flame of frustration.
She opened the pressure cooker and steam billowed out. Fishing out one of the plantains, she tested it on the counter, squishing it. “I think it’s ready.” She ladled out the pieces and dropped them into a blender. Then, scooping up the chopped tofu, she dropped that in also.
She set the blender on puree, the sound a buzz saw across the kitchen. The other contestants’ heads gophered up, checking on their progress.
Max glanced at the clock. Thirteen minutes left. He turned the pineapple.
“Almost d
one?” Grace ran to the pantry and returned in a minute with turmeric, coriander, cumin, and a bunch of fresh cilantro. She added the spices to the soup, chopped up half the cilantro. “Give me four of those spears.”
He handed her four on a plate, and she dropped them into the blender, sped it through, and turned it creamy. Then she dumped it all back into the cooker and popped the cover back on, turning it up.
He pulled the rest of the pineapple off the grill. “Now what?”
She stared at him a long moment before saying, “We need some cream.”
Cream. He headed for the refrigerator as she pulled out soup cups. She plated the pineapple, then opened the lid of the pot and ladled the soup into the cups.
Max returned, and Grace used a spoon to design a creamy flower in each bowl, like someone might with a cup of coffee. Then she garnished each soup with cilantro.
It kind of resembled pumpkin soup, with a hint of yellow, a sprig of green, and the charred pineapple so fragrant, it just about made Max reach for one.
“Don’t you dare,” she said.
He wondered if she could read his mind. Probably.
She stepped back, took his hand, held it up with hers as Palani called time.
The hippies had built their salad on a slab of tofu. The aloha siblings had created a grilled tofu and plantain dish with onions, lime, garlic, and ginger. The Twinkie girls had made a tofu salad with pineapple and plantain chips.
Palani walked by each of them, surveying their dishes with the crowd and the camera. Then they loaded them on trays to present to the judges.
Yesterday Tonie had made a point of mentioning Max’s use of Hawaiian condiments—the mirin and shoyu sauce. It just sounded good, really. Tonie could have called it vinegar or soy sauce. But if she wanted to help him win, he wouldn’t fault her.
He hoped today she wouldn’t mock Grace for her simple ingredients.
And that the soup would taste good.
He stood with Grace, fighting the urge to take her hand again and then angry that he longed for her touch. He watched the hippies present their dish while trying to rewrite yesterday’s conversation to something that made sense and sorting through what they might do today after the competition that would help him find his footing again and—
When I Fall in Love Page 17