Honeysuckle and Roses (Harper's Mill Book 5)

by Summer Donnelly

  Emma’s blue eyes narrowed. He was right, of course, but admitting it seemed like acknowledging a failure. “I need to go,” she said, anger pulsing off of her in waves. The only problem was she wasn’t sure who she was mad at — him or herself.

  “Will I see you later?” David asked.

  “I’m babysitting Noah and Elizabeth tonight,” she hedged. “Weekly baking night, you know.”

  “I can help,” David offered.

  Emma’s shoulders straightened as she mentally counted to ten. Then again in her best high school Spanish. “I need to go,” she repeated before leaving the theater.

  ~~~~~

  Emma pulled the meatloaf and potatoes out of the oven and set the table. Elizabeth played quietly in her bouncy chair while Emma set the table. Her little kitchen was full of the scents and sounds of home and love.

  All it needed was her own babies playing around the house. Her heart clenched at the thought. Little boys with David’s eyes. Little girls with curious smiles.

  “Knock, knock,” David said as he entered the warm kitchen. A cool gust of wind came in behind him and messed up his coal black hair. “I went by Spence and Honor’s place first,” he said, “sorry I’m late.”

  There was an underlying accusation there and Emma opened her mouth to continue their earlier argument but just his gaze jerked over her shoulder. “I didn’t know you collected snow globes,” he said. as his dark eyes spotted something in the living room.

  He walked past her and picked the small globe up and watched it spin. “Is this battery operated? The snow is spinning like it was some kind of Arctic storm.”

  “Honor and I picked that up in a second-hand store back in January,” she said. She reached out to take it from David but as soon as their hands met, a surge of energy poured into both of them.

  “What was that?” David asked, looking down at his hand as if to prove he hadn’t actually singed his hand.

  Emma stared with numbed fascination at the swirling crystal globe. What had the shopkeeper said? Something about how globe was designed to bring hearts together with the combination of stubborn Fairy love and steely Elvin devotion.

  The legend of the snow globe had caught her imagination. But here, as their hands joined over the globe, she had to wonder, exactly, what kind of magic did it hold?

  Her eyes began glowing the bright neon blue as the knowing hit her. She set the snow globe back on the shelf and looked at David with horrified realization.

  A myriad of emotions slammed into her with the force of a semi-truck. Her gift was back after touching David. Noah was in danger. Words left her and she stuttered. “The cock,” she exclaimed.

  She darted into the kitchen, picked Elizabeth up from the high chair, and ran out the door.

  David’s black eyebrows rose in surprise and the water he was drinking spewed from his lips as he choked. “What?”

  Emma shot him a dirty glance as she darted out the door and towards the back yard. He put the water bottle down and chased after here.

  “Big Daddy,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The stupid rooster,” she clarified as she picked up Elizabeth and made her way to the back yard.

  “Noah,” she called, approaching the hen house with stealth. She gripped the baby a little tighter in her worry and Elizabeth whimpered as though sensing the escalating tension. “Didn’t I tell you to stay out of there?”

  Noah stared down the ugly battle-scarred rooster. “Aunt Em?” he called, his voice small and afraid. “I just wanted to check to see if you had any eggs.” He whimpered and Emma felt her heart break a little with his fear. Quickly, she scanned him to make sure he was okay. His jeans had a new rip in the knee and his hoodie definitely needed a run through the washing machine, but other than that he seemed fine. Scared, but fine.

  “I know, honey, but I told you. I check in the morning.” Emma gingerly neared the stand-off between boy and beast. “That’s when that mean ol’ rooster is caught up in waking up this side of town.”

  “It’s okay, kiddo,” David said as he joined them in the caged off area. He advanced the hen house and the rooster transferred his attention from boy to man. “You two get out of the cage. I’ll cover you with Big Daddy over here.”

  Noah whimpered a little as Emma grabbed him around his middle and bolted for the door. Both kids gripped her neck and she ran as fast as one could with two children in her arms. “Hurry, David,” she called over her shoulder. “BD has a temper.”

  “Now she tells me,” David muttered. After making sure Emma and the children were safely away from the cantankerous old rooster, David backed out of the cage. “Ow, crap,” he cried as Big Daddy attacked. Fowl and male eyed each other with distrust.

  “Don’t look directly at him,” Emma said.

  David rolled his eyes. “Maybe you could have told me all these things before I offered to cover for you. Now what do it do?”

  “Do you have any food on you?”

  David turned to look at her. “I left my chicken feed in my other pants,” he said.

  Noah pulled out a beat-up bag of chips from the pocket of his hoodie. “I have this,” he offered.

  “That’ll do,” Emma said. She tossed the bag to David. “Feed him. It will show him you’re not a threat. Or another rooster.”

  “Got it,” David said as he caught the crumpled bag. He broke the last remaining chips and tossed them at the ground. He didn’t think it would work, but BD let him leave without issue.

  Emma set Noah down and dusted him off. “Your folks will kill me dead if you come home with your hands all pecked up again,” she scolded.

  Noah smiled and cupped her face in his dirty little boy hands. “I love you, Aunt Em.”

  Emma melted. “How do your parents keep you inline?”

  “They love me,” Noah explained as though she weren’t quite bright. “And they love you, too, Aunt Em. They’d never kill you dead.”

  Emma closed her eyes. “Just no more in the coop without an adult with you, okay?”

  “Deal,” Noah said, his eyes full of mischief. “Now, can I go play with the neighbor’s horses?”

  Emma winced. “I think my heart has had enough strain for one day, kiddo. Can you play a game while I clean up and get dinner on the table? Your folks will be here to get you in ninety minutes and I promised them you’d be fed and bathed.”

  “But was it a pinky promise?”

  Emma laughed and sighed at the same time. “Go,” she said, letting Noah lead the way into the house.

  They walked past Emma’s overgrown mums and Noah tsked. He looked at her with eyes much older than his ten years. “Aunt Em, you know I love you, right?” She nodded, wondering where this was going. “But let’s face it. Your garden is a mess. Maybe you need to get one of the Races up here to help you out.”

  The Races were one of the Old Families best known for their ability to grow anything in any soil.

  Emma blushed with awareness. “Yes, I’m aware of that. That doesn’t mean I don’t keep trying,” she said. “Now, scoot.”

  “You have months before spring planting,” Noah continued as though she hadn’t said anything.

  “House,” Emma said, propelling the little boy forward and hoping he wouldn’t look at her garden again. It really was a wreck.

  “You joining us for dinner, right, Nuge,” Noah said, jumping around with excitement. He lifted his hands in the air and zoomed like a spaceman. “I just got a new game. Want me to kick your butt?”

  “You bet, kiddo,” David said, plucking Elizabeth out of Emma’s arms. “Get cleaned up and we’ll have dinner with the kids, okay?” He ruffled Noah’s hair. “And then I can let this guy whoop my butt in whatever game he brought over.”

  She held David’s hand, allowing Noah to outpace them. “I’m sorry. About earlier,” she said softly. “Without my visions, I’ve been feeling like a ship adrift. Everything has been so flat. On top of this blind spot I have where you’re concer
ned. Well. It felt like you’d been keeping things from me,” she finally admitted. “And I overreacted.”

  “You had a vision tonight. That’s got to count for something,” David said.

  “It does. It means everything. It means I’m on the right path. With us.” Already the color was returning to her world. The people around her felt more real. More solid.

  She took a breath of relief. She never wanted to feel that isolated and alone ever again.

  “I’m glad,” David said, touching her hand gently. “I didn’t mean to hide anything, sweetie. There really wasn’t that much to tell. Like Gloria said, I love old movies and I thought it would be a good fit for me. I’ve spent years being where I need to go in the right uniform and being there twenty minutes early. The idea of owning part of a business appealed to me. I want to put down roots here in Harper’s Mill.”

  His smile turned more than a little wicked. “Honestly, the last few times we got together, I didn’t want to mess anything up by talking about our real lives.”

  “I didn’t mean to treat you like a…a…booty call,” she said, stumbling over the words.

  David grinned and brushed a kiss across her forehead. “I didn’t mind. You can call me and use my body at your discretion.”

  Emma felt her cheeks grow warm under his gaze. “I just may do that,” she said. She kissed him — just a light and affectionate brush. She dropped a kiss to Elizabeth’s forehead. “C’mon. Let’s get dinner on the table for the kids.”

  They walked in a companionable silence to her door. A fall wind, hinting of colder temperatures and frost blew past them and Emma shivered in response.

  “You never talk about your parents,” she commented.

  David paused as he approached the sink to wash his hands. “We have a complicated relationship,” he said. “I love them both dearly but.” He shook his head. “I seem to have disappointed them most of my life.”

  “It can’t be that bad,” she said softly. Working side by side, they washed Noah’s and Elizabeth’s hands and got dinner on the table.

  “It’s not like your relationship with your folks,” David said. “They were older. They didn’t understand why I wanted to play video games instead of getting a job. It was me and my cousin Heather and they were far more proud of her accomplishments than mine. They saw me going into the Navy as wasted potential. I should have been in school.”

  “Can I meet your folks?” she asked.

  David’s coal black eyebrows raised. “You want to meet my parents?”

  “I think it’s only fair, don’t you? You know my entire family.”

  David nodded slowly. “I guess.” She didn’t need the gift of sight to know David was resistant to the idea of her meeting his parents.

  “Is it me? Will they disapprove of me?”

  “No,” he said absently. He dropped a kiss on her forehead in reassurance. “I just don’t want it to be another go-round with them.”

  “Can you invite them out?” she pushed.

  David nodded again. “I will call them. See when it’s convenient for them.” Each word was timed slowly and again Emma wondered if there was a problem. She shrugged it off, trusting that whatever the cause of David’s reluctance, his parents would adore her. They had to. There was no other option.

  And as he led the way into her home, Emma had a vision. Not a knowing vision. Not a certain vision. But a regular human glimpse into the future she and David could make as a family.

  Chapter Five

  Honor was definitely flushed when she arrived to pick up her children. Emma grinned as she glanced from Honor to Spence.

  “Looks like someone had a nice relaxing evening,” David said, handing a sleeping baby over to Honor’s eager arms.

  Honor cooed softly at her daughter. Her face lit up as she held her and it was all Emma could do to not break down and cry. Her friend had been through so much and found such joy in the smallest things.

  “Dad, guess what?” Noah said in a stage whisper. “I whooped Nuge’s butt Zombies take Manhattan: the Brooklyn Addition.” He held up the disk with glee.

  “That’s my little man.” Spence’s lips twisted in a slight smile. He patted David on the shoulder.

  “C’mere,” David said to Emma as they watched Spence’s car back up and leave. “I need some snuggle time, too.”

  Emma turned into him and let him guide her to the couch where they settled in to watch an old Bogart movie.

  Emma yawned and snuggled into the warm expanse of David’s chest. The kids were gone, the kitchen cleaned up, and it was getting late. Emma knew she should ask David to leave but she was relaxed and comfortable and the thought of moving was unbearable. The TV was off and David put some music station on. Something slow and jazzy and full of saxophone was playing over the speakers, they were curled up on the couch, and watching the fire glow a bright orange-red in the fireplace.

  If heaven were a moment, this was it.

  “Do you speak Vietnamese?”

  David shook his head. “I was born here,” he said. “A few phrases here and there, but what you see is what you get.”

  “I like what I see and what I get,” Emma said. Her fingers traced the lines of his throat. Across the line of his shoulder blade. Down the length of his arm.

  “My parents, huh?”

  She nodded. “Is that a problem?”

  “No. Just. You should know, my parents call me Danh.”

  “Is that what you prefer to be called?

  “No, I’ve grown used to David,” he said. “That’s the name they put on my birth certificate. Danh is like a nickname, but it means a lot to me. Like, it’s my secret name,” he said, nuzzling the soft chestnut curls at the nape of her neck.

  “I don’t have a secret name,” Emma said with a pout. David promptly kissed it away.

  “You’re my em yêu,” he said, his eyes wide and a touch vulnerable.

  Emma smiled. “What does that mean?”

  “It means my love.”

  Emma’s nose wrinkled with delight. “I like it. Em yêu,” she said, stumbling over the pronunciation. “Is that what I’d call you?”

  “I can be your tình yêu. Your love,” he said. Heat and vulnerability warred in his expressive brown eyes. He was teaching her something. Exposing another facet of his heart to the possible glare of her judgement.

  “I want that,” she said, her eye lids growing heavy as she brushed a soft kiss across his chin. “I want you to be my love.”

  The heat generated from their glances was deep and real. He brushed a kiss along the delicate curve of her neck and felt her shiver in response.

  Knowing she felt the same — that his feelings were returned — soothed some of his anxiety. Loving someone who doesn’t love you back leaves you open and confused. Vulnerable and Naked. They had been here before with a deep feeling of exposure and she’d closed up and used humor to deflect.

  He couldn’t bear it if she did that. Not now. He’d never shared his language with anyone but his parents. Never let anyone see into this secret part of himself.

  This was real and he wanted her to know him.

  “This is me, Em,” David said, tilting her chin to look at him. To see him, the man before her. “I’ve never shared my language with anyone else. Never dated a Viet girl. Never wanted a woman the way I want you. You need to know my true self.”

  “It’s the same for me, too,” she admitted on a bated breath. “I’ve been afraid of telling you something as well.”

  David’s heart beat swelled to the distant beat of the jazz musician’s wail. “What is it?”

  “You know I can sometimes see the future, right?”

  He nodded. “Those eyes are pretty hard to miss.”

  She grinned and looked down. “I know they make people feel uncomfortable. They put a wall up around themselves to keep me away. There’s no way of knowing when or of what the images will be about. And I’ve lost friends over it. I never really had any friends aft
er my first premonition until Honor came to town.”

  David stroked her hair and held her close. She needed to talk and so he let her. “I learned to keep people at a distance. To never let them get too close.” Her eyes met his and tears trembled in their china blue depths. “I can’t see you,” she confessed, breaking down and crying into the soft cotton of his shirt.

  “I’m right here, love,” he said, pulling her close. Feeling her heartbreak and not know how to comfort her.

  “No, not like that. I see people almost in an extra dimension. Like, their thoughts and feelings and it’s those that help me when I have a premonition. But you’re…flat. Like a picture instead of someone with depth and reality and I haven’t had any premonitions with you in them. You’re like my blind spot.”

  David nodded slowly, his brain going over both what she said and left unsaid. “You’ve never trusted anyone without relying on your visions.”

  She shook her head, relieved to feel this jam of emotions come pouring out of her. Flooding from her heart into his like a tidal wave.

  “No,” she admitted, oxygen rushing into her lungs. The admission was like releasing a burden she didn’t know she carried. For the first time in years, she felt the coiled pain and fear spring loose. “I wouldn’t say I was fully empathic but usually I get something from people. Some sense of what they’re feeling and it scares me to death that I don’t have that with you.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that it’s you and not me? You’ve been keeping me away for months.”

  She stopped and let his words sink into the dry, arid landscape where her blind spot lived. She put her hands on his cheekbones and explored her heart and his. Seeking. Only to find nothing.

  And then, a spark.

  “Did you feel that?” she whispered.

  “I felt something,” he said, shaking his head. “But I don’t know what. It was too small, like a match against an ocean of darkness.”

  She swallowed and smoothed his thick black hair away from his face. “I’m afraid.”

  “Of me?”

  “Of what will happen when I let go. Will it hurt?”