by Lin Stepp
“Are you picking me a bouquet of weeds?” he asked her teasingly.
“I love dandelions.” She gave him one of her dazzling smiles as she came up on the porch. “You can tell if someone loves butter by holding a dandelion under their chin.”
She held a dandelion up under his chin, studying the result intently. “Oh, yes, you definitely love butter. There is a yellow glow under your chin that is very distinct.”
“Come here, dandelion girl.” He drew her in closer with one arm. “I need a welcome before I let you in.” He leaned over and kissed her softly. His intent was to be light and informal, but that idea was lost when she leaned sweetly into the kiss and wrapped her arms around his body. Boyce kissed her deeply then, letting his hands roam up her arms and into her hair. Lord, that glorious hair. And she smelled of her lemony fragrance mixed with honeysuckle again.
She pulled away slightly, seeming to regret letting herself go for a moment.
“That’s a better welcome than I expected, dandelion girl,” he murmured against her hair. “I’ll have to ask you over more often.”
“Oh, I’ll miss you so much, Boyce Hart.” She sighed and turned soft brown eyes to seek his. “And I have less than two weeks left to be here.”
His heart and ego swelled at her words. She would miss him, and she’d been studying her calendar, too. “Well, we’re going to make a lot of memories in that time, Jenna.” He smiled at her. “Starting with dinner. I assume that’s your salad offering you just sat down on the porch table over there?”
“It is,” she answered, smiling. “I planned to bring cookies, too, but Tyler Dean loved them so much, I let him take the rest home.”
“It’s okay,” Boyce said. “I got ice cream, plus two kinds of syrup and chopped nuts for later. I thought we’d be decadent.”
“Ummmm.” She followed him in with her salad. “I’m hungry. I only ate part of a baloney sandwich and a peach at Charlotte’s picnic today. I got distracted talking and forgot to eat much.”
“Well, I’ll be sure we don’t do too much talking tonight.” He gave her a wicked grin.
“Oh, you.” She swatted him on the arm. “Get in there and get my steak ready. I’ve cooked for you three times this week, and you owe me.”
They laughed and talked as Boyce got the rest of the dinner together. While they ate, Boyce caught Jenna up on the local gossip and Jenna told him about her calls to Sam and Carla before she came over.
“Sam says he is much better.” Jenna seemed obviously pleased to repeat this. “He said to tell you he is jealous of you for getting so much of my time and my cooking.”
“Have you told him anything about us becoming rather fond of each other?” he asked Jenna in a teasing tone.
“Absolutely not.” She looked upset at the thought. “It would be hard to explain and it wouldn’t sound right somehow. Sam is working so hard with Jake Saunders and with the attorney to get so many things done for me in New York. It just wouldn’t seem right for me to be … well, for me to be …” She paused, searching for the word.
“Involved again so soon?” Boyce offered.
“Yes.” Jenna looked at Boyce with a troubled face. “It’s not that I feel wrong about being involved. Not really. It’s just that it would be hard to explain. Does that make sense? I don’t mean for it to hurt you that I haven’t shared anything about us with Sam. He knows we’ve become good friends. He said he hoped that would happen when he sent me down.”
Boyce considered that. “He probably set us up, the old matchmaker.”
Jenna looked shocked at that idea. “Oh, I don’t think anything like that was in his mind. Sam’s not like that. He was just worried about me and wanted me to have a quiet place to get away to think. And to decide what I wanted to do about everything.”
“And you’ve been able to do that here?” Boyce decided to agree with her and keep his reservations to himself. “Are you still sure about the plans you’ve made? Do you still feel good about your decisions?”
“Yes, I could never go back to Elliott.” Her eyes narrowed. “It would be wrong for me.” She got up abruptly to carry her empty plate over to the sink, obviously upset just thinking about it.
Relief washed over Boyce as he listened to Jenna. He realized there were moments when he feared she would get cold feet and go back to Elliott after all. In fact, he would probably keep entertaining those fears for a while, despite what she said. Jenna showed him photos from New York and he had seen the man’s picture among them. He was a slick, good-looking city man. And he had a powerful personality. That had already been seen.
“Carla told me Elliott called again,” Jenna continued, frowning. “He was annoyed because he hadn’t been able to talk to me since he left.”
Boyce watched her twist her hands nervously.
“He called my mother to complain, and Mother called Carla - upset because Elliott sounded upset.” Jenna chewed on a fingernail. “Mother read Carla the riot act about leaving me up there in the Poconos to nurse some neighbor of hers. It worries me that Mother is upset. She’s got an intuitive side.”
Boyce’s jaw clenched. “She never seemed to have much insight about you that I’ve heard.”
Jenna considered this. “Well, no, perhaps not in a kind way,” she answered. “But Mother could always sense things. Know when her friends were lying. Know when something was going on that people were trying to keep from her. She often ferreted it out, too. Mother doesn’t like not knowing things, you see. When she doesn’t know things, she can’t be in control. And control is very important for Mother.”
“You’re more knowledgeable now about your family, I see.”
“As Charlotte would say, ‘It’s about time, isn’t it?’” She smiled at Boyce a little sadly. “I had to get away from my life and family to begin to see them as they really are. That’s not easy.”
“I don’t imagine it is. Let’s go in the living room. I’ll build up the fire and we can sit and talk.”
Jenna sighed. “I used to dream night after night that Elliott might say something like that to me, might even want to do something like that with me. Just want to sit and talk and be with me.”
“I’m not Elliott, Jenna.” Boyce announced this crossly through clenched teeth, biting down his rising anger.
“I know.” Jenna’s answer was soft. “Don’t get mad, Boyce. I meant it as a compliment, that you are such a better and nicer person.”
“A guy always wants to hear that he’s nice.” Boyce knew his reply was sarcastic.
Jenna looked amused. “What do you want to hear?” She dropped down into her favorite corner of the sofa near the fire.
He leaned over her on the couch to brush his lips over hers. “That I’m manly, sexy, handsome, talented, and irresistible and that you want to have my babies,” he answered smoothly.
“That’s a pretty tall order,” she quipped back, her voice a little unsteady and breathy. Boyce sat down on the sofa beside her, watching her blush. Probably the idea of having babies was getting to her.
He grinned at her slowly when she looked at him, and she blushed again.
“I’d like to have twins.” He tossed that additional comment out at her to see what reaction he could get.
She threw a pillow at him across the space between them.
He tossed it back at her and wrestled her into his arms before she could throw it at him again. She struggled against him, laughing, until Boyce’s lips found hers and their wrestling turned to heated passion.
Jenna pulled back this time, her pupils dark, her breathing shallow and ragged. “I don’t know if I can bear many more weeks of this,” she whispered huskily.
“It gets worse every time.” He agreed with her, touching her face gently and wishing he could take the moment further. Instead, he smiled lazily at her in fun. “Or maybe it gets better every time, depending on how you look at it.”
She giggled then, relaxing. But she pulled further away to settle back over into h
er side of the sofa.
“I want to know about the other women in your life,” she declared out of the blue, surprising him. “You’ve never told me anything about the women you have loved or even if you’ve ever loved. If you’ve ever hurt anyone or if anyone has ever hurt you.”
“What brought this sudden interest on?” He sent her a teasing look. “You wondering if I’ve had twins with some other woman?”
She giggled again. “No, don’t be silly. I just think we should both know about each other. After all, you know all about me. You know about my first and only real boyfriend before Elliott, and all about my life with Elliott. I don’t know anything about you.”
“You couldn’t worm this information out of Charlotte?” He raised a brow in question.
“That’s not a nice thing to say, Boyce,” she answered primly. “And actually, I didn’t really try to. I wanted to ask you. I wanted you to tell me.”
“Well, let’s see.” He decided to humor her. “There’s not as much a story to tell as you might be thinking.”
“You always say that,” she complained. “Just tell it anyway.”
He propped his feet up on the ottoman to get comfortable. “Okay. My first great love at thirteen was Eleanor Sparks, and, boy, she made me feel sparks whenever I was around her.” He grinned. “Then senior year in high school, I fell in love with Julie Blankenship. She was the first girl I ever bought a gift for, one of those dime store heart necklaces. She wore one half and I wore the other.”
“Oh, that’s sweet.” Jenna smiled wistfully. “I always wanted one of those. They’re so romantic.”
“Well, if I still had it, I’d pass it on to you.” He grinned at her. “But Julie took it off to college with her when she left.”
“You don’t stay in touch?” She looked over at him in question.
“Nope.” He shook his head. “Last I heard, she and her husband were in North Carolina somewhere. It was a long time ago, Jenna.”
“And what about since you’ve been grown?” Jenna probed.
He scratched his head. “Well, at twenty-one, I fell hard for Audrey Bierman, an actress making a movie here in Townsend one summer.”
He laughed remembering that time. “She was too experienced for a poor, little mountain boy like me, and she had me wrapped around the crook of her finger for quite a while.”
“What happened?” Jenna leaned forward eagerly.
“I began to see through the acting eventually. She was just playing a part and entertaining herself while visiting here. She had no intention of staying in a little back mountain place like this and went back to Hollywood where she belonged.”
Jenna studied him with her eyes. “Did you ever hear from her again?”
“Only once,” he replied. “But we all remember that summer because we’ve got Jack Teague’s twins to remind us of that time.”
Jenna looked confused.
“Jack’s an older guy, but a good, long time friend. He’s been a real Cassanova, a ladies man, for as long as I can remember – good-looking man, big smile, salt and pepper hair, brown eyes. And he’s always been attracted to younger women. Ever met him?”
“I think I met him one day in the store.” Jenna blushed.
Boyce grinned. “Did he flirt with you?”
“I guess.” She looked down at her hands. “He kept suggesting that maybe he could show me around the town sometime.”
“That’s Jack.” Boyce laughed. “Well, anyway, he chased after Audrey’s friend that summer - a pretty, little actress named Celine Rosen. It surprised everyone when Celine married Jack as the cast packed up to leave.”
He scratched his chin. “Celine was one of those up-and-coming actresses in the movie world, and I thought she’d head straight back to Hollywood for sure. Never met a woman more stuck on herself and her own beauty. Of course, when we saw Celine good and pregnant a few months later, it all made a lot more sense. Jack didn’t care about that; he fell hard. After the twins were born, Celine slipped off and left Jack one night while he slept. Took a nice chunk of his bank account and left him a Dear John letter on the table. She also left him heartbroken, embarrassed and humiliated, and with two twin girls to raise on his own.”
“That’s sad … but what about Audrey?” Jenna asked him, returning to their original discussion.
“She’s the one Celine ran off to in Hollywood. The one time I ever heard from Audrey she sent me a note asking me to tell Jack that Celine arrived safe and was all right. For him not to worry about her.”
Boyce paused and studied the fire for a minute.
“I told you about Jack because I always feel a little guilty around Jack and the girls. It could just as easily have been me, I think, that ended up married and dumped with two kids. I was equally stupid and impressed with our Hollywood starlets. It taught me some lessons. It taught me to look deeper than just the physical appearance. And to use a little more of my God-given discernment.”
“Do you think all of us have that?” Jenna raised her eyes to his. “God-given discernment?”
“I think we have a lot more of God’s nature than we think we do,” he answered thoughtfully. “We just don’t draw on it. My father used to say the world has a loud, pushy voice, but God has a still, small voice. Most of the time we just don’t listen for it.”
“That’s a nice thought,” Jenna said. “A comforting one. To think God wants us to find the right way. That He wants to speak to us.”
“The Bible says ‘Out of heaven He made us to hear His voice.’ Shouldn’t be such a surprise to us that He’s interested. But it often is.” Boyce got up to stir the fire and put another log on.
Jenna smiled at him teasingly as he started back to his seat. “That’s the preacher’s son talking, I guess.”
He frowned. “I’m not ashamed of my father or my faith,” he told her, not willing to be teased about this. “Both are two of life’s greatest gifts to me.”
“You are such a good man, Boyce.” Jenna was quiet for a moment. “Do you know I have never had a conversation about God with my husband, my parents, or any of my friends.”
“That seems strange, when God is all around us,” replied Boyce, shrugging. “To me it would be odder not to talk about God sometimes. Don’t you feel Him when you paint or get inspired to do your art? Or feel His love in you with a sweet clutch in your heart when you look at someone you care about?”
She dropped her eyes. “Yes, I do.”
Because she seemed embarrassed, Boyce changed the subject. “So, are you satisfied now that you know about the significant women in my past, Jenna?” He sent her a roguish smile. “The others in between have just been women I dated for a short time. I never got very involved.”
He paused, studying her. “What are you really wanting to know, Jenna? If I’ve ever been deeply in love? Or whether I have any secrets stashed away?” He looked at her curiously.
She colored under his gaze, obviously unsure how to answer.
“The truth is best,” he said frankly.
She turned her eyes to his. “I mostly wondered if you’d ever really been hurt, and if so how you handled it. How you got through it.”
Boyce caught the gist of her thoughts then. “You mean, you wondered if I’d ever been hurt like you?”
“Maybe …” She hedged.
He shook his head. “Well, I haven’t. Audrey was as close to heartless as I’ve encountered in a woman. She had me fooled for a short time. It hurt some when I realized it. It’s easy to be fooled by people, Jenna. We don’t walk through life expecting people to be dishonest, manipulative, lying, or betraying. We expect the opposite. We want to believe the best of people.”
“And should we believe the best?” Her question was sincere.
“I think so, in general.” He considered this. “We get a lot of what we expect in this life. And I’d rather be expecting good and mostly get good, than be always expecting bad and get mostly bad. I’m a pretty upbeat, trusting guy, in gene
ral. Optimistic. I think I’d rather risk looking for the good - and get disappointed now and then - than to always be looking for the negative, being wary and suspicious. Don’t you think people that are always distrustful and on guard have to be unhappy?”
A furrow touched her brow. “Yes. And I know because I’ve allowed myself to become locked up, wary and suspicious like that. Unhappy. For me, it was because I had been criticized and hurt so much. I came to expect that from almost everyone. Being down here has helped me gain a better perspective on people than what I had.”
“Raynelle says you’ve bloomed out like a flower down here with us.” He smiled at her, watching her blush at the compliment.
She smiled. “Raynelle has been sweet to me.”
“Hey, Jenna. Promise me something.” He sat forward, catching her gaze.
“What?” A touch of hesitancy came into her voice.
“That if New York starts to take the bloom out of you that you’ll come back.” Boyce leaned a hand over to touch her face, adding more seriously, “Maybe you belong here, Jenna. Maybe you should stay.”
Jenna twisted her hands in confusion, not meeting his eyes.
He watched her. “I’m not putting any pressure on you, Jenna. But think about it when you return to New York. And if your heart calls you back, then come back.”
Her answer was evasive. “I might come to bring Sam for a visit if he gets better. I think if I came down here with him, and if we could get someone here to help him get in and out of the bed, that he could manage. It would mean so much to him.”
Boyce wished her answer had been different. He tried not to reveal his disappointment as he replied. “If Sam can come, you know I’ll help him. And so will Will Lansky down the road if two of us are needed.” He paused. “But that’s not what I was talking about, Jenna.”
She looked at him honestly then. “I have to take one step at a time, Boyce. My life is not in a place that allows me to do anything else right now. I have a lot of hard things ahead for me, and I need to focus on that now. I’m not used to being confrontational, and it is going to take all my energy and all my strength. I have some big life changes coming up, and, to be quite frank, I’m scared.”