by Dyanne Davis
He thought of offering to go alone to the motel, but something in Toreas’s stance told him she needed to do this.
“So Mom, do we come in, or do you want Jared to hold on to those bags forever?”
He noticed a spot of color dust the older woman’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, Jared. I forgot my manners. Please come in.” She opened the door wide and waved them inside.
He could hear her voice as she trailed after them. “I was just a little surprised. I spoke to Tesa twice this morning and she never mentioned bringing a friend. The woman gave Jared a quick wink and put her finger to her lips to shush him. Ahh, Jared thought, this will be interesting. He was ready and willing to have a co-conspirator and a friend.
Before he could answer Toreas piped in. “That was my fault. I didn’t ask him until the last minute.” She smiled at Jared. “I’m glad he said yes.”
For the first time since meeting her mother, Jared knew the smile was truly for him. The rest of it was a battle she evidently thought she needed to fight. Little did she know the battle had been already won. But if Toreas didn’t gear up for battle he wouldn’t know it was her, now would he?
“Jared, let me show you to the guest room.” Before he could answer Toreas, her mother stepped in front of them both.
“I’m sorry, that room’s all torn up. I think Jared will be more comfortable in the basement. He can have his own private bathroom and no one will bother him.” She averted her gaze, telling him she wanted him sleeping as far away from her daughter as it was possible to put him.
Sensing Toreas’s objection, Jared smiled. “That would be wonderful. Thank you. It’s really thoughtful of you to give me a bathroom all to myself.”
Julie Rose turned, the look on her face saying she wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or was truly issuing thanks. She frowned at him, then glared at Toreas before leading him down the basement stairs.
It was really better than he had expected. The room was finished and quite comfortable. The bathroom had a claw foot tub, large enough for two. He glanced over Julie’s head at Toreas.
Their gazes met and he glanced once again at the tub, eliciting the blush he had known would come.
The older Rose started for the stairs, calling for her daughter to follow her.
“I’ll be up in a few minutes, Mom. I want to show Jared where everything is.”
“I’m sure he won’t have any problem finding things. Your dad will be home soon, so you might want to take your bags to your room.”
Jared grinned at Toreas when he heard the door close. “That wasn’t so bad.” He reached his arms out for her, sighing as she entered them. “Are you really glad I came?”
“Yes, but by the end of this trip you might wish you hadn’t come. Believe me, after a few days here you’ll know just why I couldn’t wait to get away. This entire town is stifling. In a couple of hours everyone will not only know you’re here, they’ll likely have more information on you than the FBI.
They both laughed. As if on cue, Toreas’s mother called her once again to come up.
Jared kissed her slowly, not wanting to stop. “Listen, Toreas, I need to tell you something. I never finished telling you about Gina.” Her head went down and he took the pad of his finger and lifted it back up. “My unhappiness was never about Gina. My mother had made me promise to give her grandchildren. Even though she was half-kidding I’d still given her the promise. I’d never broken a promise to her or to anyone,” he said meaningfully. “I had thought that maybe I was in love with Gina. That maybe I could keep the promise I’d made to my mother.”
“Jared?”
He leaned into Toreas and kissed her forehead, holding her in his arms for a long moment before pulling slightly away to look into her eyes. “My mother was killed in an auto accident shortly after that fiasco with Gina.”
“I’m so sorry, Jared.”
“I know, baby. I loved my mother dearly. We’d already lost my father so it was just the two of us. The pain and unwarranted guilt made me go after romance writers. I blamed them for taking Gina from me, for my not fulfilling the promise I’d made to my mother. I couldn’t get over wishing I’d given my mother the grandchildren she’d wanted.” He smiled. “But there was no way I could have kept that promise then. I had not yet met the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.”
“Tesa, you’d better come on up here now and let Jared get settled in,” Julie yelled down.
“You’d better go,” Jared said, raining soft kisses on Toreas’s face. “I’ll give you a few minutes alone before I come up.” He brushed her lips lightly with his thumb, then turned her in the direction of the stairs.
Jared nosed around the basement, picking up odds and ends, trying to get a sense of the family that lived there. He saw pictures of smiling faces that radiated love.
Toreas’s face was the one that stuck out in the family photographs, her expression morose, unlike that of her parents and brothers.
He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes should be long enough for her mother to give her the third degree. He started for the stairs but stopped near the top when he heard Julie Rose’s voice.
“Why did you lie?” he heard the older woman ask her daughter.
He heard the defensiveness in Toreas’s voice. “What are you talking about?”
“You said you didn’t have anyone special to invite here. It’s obvious you’re in love with him.”
Jared’s hand was reaching for the knob. He stopped. This was eavesdropping, pure and simple, but he didn’t care. He inched his head closer to the door to hear her answer.
Toreas’s voice was raised, panic punctuating her words. “Please don’t embarrass me, Mom. Jared doesn’t know.”
“He doesn’t know you love him? How can that be possible?”
“We’re too busy fighting all the time. Plus, he told me that he cares for me. Can you believe that? How was I supposed to tell him that I love him?”
“I see what you mean, honey. Men tend to be rather dense concerning matters of the heart.
Jared heard both women laugh, then Toreas’s voice pleading again with her mother not to say anything to anyone.
“Tesa, honey, it’s obvious he loves you too. I saw the way he was looking at you.”
“He has to tell me that, Mom.”
“Tesa, honey, how does he look at you and talk to you? Does he treat you like he loves you? He’s here with you. You know that says something.”
“But I don’t want to just go on clues or hints. I could be wrong. I want him to tell me.” The way the hero does in romances, she thought.
“Some men just have a hard time saying it.”
“Not Daddy.”
“Please!”
“Daddy always tells me he loves me.”
“You’re his daughter. But me, ha, I don’t think he ever said the words to me until I laid you in his arms. A two year courtship, marriage and two sons and it wasn’t until I gave him a daughter that he told me he loved me.”
“Mom, you never knew?”
“Of course I knew. Are you crazy? Do you think I would have married your father wondering if he loved me? His touch, his smile, his eyes, everything in the way he treated me told me he loved me. The way he held me shouted his love to the heavens and back. That was always more important to me.”
“Did you tell him that you loved him?”
“A million times.”
“Didn’t you get angry when he wouldn’t say the words back to you?”
Toreas watched as a smile came over her mother’s face.
“Tesa, honey, you have a lot to learn. The way your father has always made me feel, the way he looked at me then and looks at me now, that man could always make me melt. I knew he loved me in his arms or out of his arms. I always knew and I don’t believe you when you say you don’t know if Jared loves you. If you didn’t know that he loves you, you wouldn’t have brought him home.”
“But I want him to say the words, Mom. I
need to hear them.”
“Did Fred ever tell you that he loved you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you believe him?”
Toreas felt a shiver of dread. “No.”
“Did you tell him that you loved him?”
Again the shiver. “I don’t really remember. I might have.”
“Honey, it’s not always the words men say, it’s what in their eyes and in Jared’s eyes is his love for you.”
This time Toreas didn’t care if she was being stubborn. “Mom, I know I love him and I think he loves me. But I want to hear him tell me the words. I’m not you. I won’t marry him and wait until I’ve had three babies before he finally tells me. He will have to tell me he loves me way before then.”
“So you’re planning to marry him?”
Toreas shook her head and laughed. “One thing at a time.”
“But you want to?”
“Why are you being so insistent? He hasn’t asked.”
“But if he did, Tesa, what would you say? Do you love him enough to want to spend the rest of your life with him?”
“Mom, don’t push okay. I can’t answer that question until it’s asked. I can’t do anything until Jared tells me he loves me.” Toreas cut into the homemade chocolate cake sitting in front of her wondering why on earth her mother was so bent on marrying her off to Jared. She’d only met him twenty minutes ago. Did they really want to see her married so badly that it didn’t make a difference if the man didn’t profess his dying love? Maybe that approach had worked for her mother but it wouldn’t for Toreas. “The cake is very good, Mom,” Toreas said around a mouth full of fudge, intentionally changing the conversation.
***
Jared backed softly down the stairs. He had to tell her that he loved her? What the heck did she think he’d been doing for the past few months? And the nerve of them thinking men were dense. Well, he had a surprise for his lady love and when it was revealed she’d never think he was dense ever again. He shook his head in disbelief before running nosily back up, calling out for Toreas, alerting her that he was coming.
For over an hour he sat with Toreas and her mother eating chocolate cake and all the other goodies her mother put before him. Now that they were con-conspirators Julie Rose had warmed considerably. She only mentioned Brian Johnson once and that was to say maybe she should call his mother and tell her the plans had changed.
The moment she went toward the phone Toreas looked at Jared. “Now begins the small town telegraph.” To which they both laughed.
He watched Toreas in her family home, testing the sound of Tesa, the name her family called her. He liked it. He also liked thinking of her as Toreas Rose, or maybe Toreas Stone, or Tesa Stone.
“Jared, you’re not listening to me.”
“I guess not,” he admitted. “I was thinking of doing something else, but don’t worry, it included you.” He reached out and gave her a hug as she started to blush.
And that was his introduction to her father, William Rose. The man stood glaring at him as though he had caught him breaking into his home and stealing his most prized possession.
He tapped Toreas’s shoulder. “I think your father’s home.” He stood then, his hand outstretched. “Hello Mr. Rose, I’m Jared Stone.”
He watched as the man’s glare became even fiercer. Jared looked toward Toreas, then back toward her father.
“Jared Stone. Why are you here? Aren’t you the critic who was hounding my daughter on national television?”
The man’s angry gaze swung to his daughter. “Tesa, what is the meaning of this? Why did you bring this man to our home? He’s the critic.”
“I know, Dad. Since I’ve always had critics in my life, I thought it was time I invited another.” Both men looked at her, watching her grin in amusement.
“Jared’s my friend.” She refused to look away from the fury in his eyes. “Actually he’s a lot more than that. He’s important to me, Daddy, and it’s important that he spend Thanksgiving with us. He’s going to be in my life for a long time. I want you to be nice to him.”
She smiled at her father, then went to hug him, hugging him so tightly that he tried to pull away. “I love you, Daddy, please be nice to him,” she whispered in her father’s ear. She wanted to whisper that she also loved Jared.
She felt her father’s arms tightening around her and knew he would do his best. She’d forgotten to tell him that she’d made peace with Jared, that he was no longer the enemy.
Before anyone could say another word, both of her brothers bounded into the room and rushed toward her, lifting her high into the air and passing her back and forth between them as though she were nothing more than a football.
Toreas wished that Kelle had taught her something to do in this situation. They were literally throwing her and from the sound of their laughter, enjoying it.
“Would you two baboons put me down? We have company.”
For a split second she was suspended in midair as both brothers momentarily forgot her while turning toward Jared. Then in the same instant they both put out their arms, catching her between them.
They deposited her on the floor, hugged her to them, kissed her cheeks and turned to Jared all in a matter of seconds.
“This is Jared Stone.” She introduced her brothers.
“You kicked this big guy’s butt?” Billy asked.
Billy and Michael laughed and shook hands with Jared. Toreas had expected they would be as angry with him as her father but their attitude was entirely different. They seemed to like him. For that she was thankful. But something strange was going on. It was as if her entire family already knew Jared. They were being much too calm, not drilling him. The more she thought about it, even their initial glaring had been too mild. What the heck was wrong with these people?
“What the heck do you have on?” Her brother Michael looked at her, frowning. “Your clothes are ugly.”
“And too big,” her oldest brother Billy chimed in. “What are you doing, buying your clothes from a flea market?”
She turned toward Jared, seeing the smirk she had known would be there on his face. She wished she knew a karate punch that would take the three of them down in one fell swoop.
Then her father got in on the act, surveying her. Apparently he hadn’t noticed her clothes before in his anger at finding Jared sitting in the middle of the kitchen with her in his arms.
“Tesa, the boys are right. Why are you wearing those clothes and where on earth did you get them?”
“I’ve been trying to save money, so I sometimes buy my clothes at secondhand stores.” She was praying that for once she wouldn’t blush.
“Why? You could have asked me for money.” Then she watched as her father frowned. “What happened to the clothes you had before? You never dressed like this when you were dating Fred. Where are those clothes?” He growled at her and frowned more fiercely, then glared at Jared. “And you cut off your beautiful hair.”
“Don’t blame Jared. I cut my hair because it’s easier to manage. And I changed my wardrobe before I ever met him. This is more my style.” She pulled on the huge sweater, then twirled around, pretending not to be mortified.
It was one thing for Jared to call her clothes ugly. She didn’t even mind her brothers’ comments, but for them to do it together, they were ganging up on her.
“You’re going shopping with your mother tomorrow.”
“No, Dad, I owe you enough already.”
“This isn’t a loan. It’s a gift.”
“I like my clothes.”
“I don’t and you’re not going to church with us looking as if you’ve no family to take care of you.”
“Why don’t you just have Mom tell Mrs. Johnson that I dress like this on my own? The town should know in a minute that my dress is not your fault.” She knew immediately she had gone too far.
The four men she loved were staring at her. Her father’s face wore a wounded expression and her brothers wore i
dentical looks of contrition. Jared’s look was embarrassed amusement.
“I’m sorry.” She hugged her father, then kissed his cheek. “I’ll go shopping in the morning with Mom for a proper dress to wear to church on Thursday.” She felt like what she’d always tried to be, Daddy’s good little girl. “But Daddy, I have enough money to pay for the dress myself.” She held up a hand. “No argument, I’ll buy the dress.”
During dinner Jared talked with her brothers. He appeared to be enjoying their good natured teasing and she wondered at that. Their teasing was always a bone of contention with her. It annoyed her.
Hours later when she went to bed, Jared was still being entertained by her family. They barely seemed to notice when she said goodnight, except to yell a cheery goodnight back to her.
She lay in her old bed fuming, feeling a weird jealousy. Her family had stolen Jared’s attention, and he had stolen theirs. She was the only one not having a good time with any of them.
Her family had never been this much fun. Why was Jared enjoying them? Why wasn’t he bored out of his skull? She heard hearty laughter coming from the living room, causing her to shove a pillow over her head.
They were disproving everything she’d told Jared about them, everything she’d thought of them. Where the heck had this family come from? And what had they done with her true family?
Wednesday she barely had time to see Jared. Immediately after breakfast her brothers and father took off with him. When her mother appeared in the door of the kitchen as she was finishing up with the breakfast dishes, she informed Toreas they were going shopping.
By the time they returned home she had been hugged by so many people she was sure she had people burn from their rubbing their cheeks against hers.
When had this town become so loving, so fond of her? They behaved as if they genuinely loved her and had missed her. How could that be possible? She’d always been as obnoxious a brat as she could get away with.
Of course obnoxious for her was refusing to accept a piece of cake from one of the neighbors her mother had forced her to do errands for. They probably hadn’t noticed, or else they had forgotten.