by Jillian Hart
“Paige. You look beautiful.”
The way he said it, made her think that he believed it. She couldn’t remember any man who’d ever said that to her. It wasn’t true, and she couldn’t let herself read anything into his misguided belief, but deep down, it mattered. She knew she was beaming as she smiled at him. “You brought me flowers?”
“I was told by my son it is important to make the right impression. How am I doing?”
Wonderful. “Passable.”
Alex stepped in to take the flowers. “That means she’s pleased. You two have a nice time. Drive safe. Oh, and Mom, don’t forget you have a curfew.”
“You are enjoying this way too much, young man.” Her hand shook as she reached into the hall closet for her Sunday-best coat. “I want all your homework done before you turn on the TV.”
“Roger, captain.” He disappeared into the kitchen. “Call if you’re gonna be late. You know the rules.”
Thank heavens for her son. She was chuckling instead of trembling as she slipped her arm into her coat sleeve and missed. She was rattled, that was all. More nervous than she expected to be. The evening had turned more serious than she had imagined.
“Let me.” Evan was there, a big powerful presence behind her, holding her coat so she could try again. He was so close she could smell the pleasant spice of his aftershave. She felt small next to him, feminine and womanly, something she hadn’t felt in so long. It was as if a part of her was awakening, and there was more light for her eyes to see by and more heart for her to feel alive.
Evan settled the coat around her shoulders with care. “Since you have a curfew, we’d best get going.”
The low rumble of humor in his voice seemed to draw her closer. “I noticed Cal was with you at the diner. What does he think of this?”
Evan held the door for her. “I didn’t get a curfew, but I have to call him with a report as soon as I get home. He tried to give me advice. He thought I needed it.”
“Do you?”
“Considering I haven’t dated for two whole decades, I think that’s a yes.” Evan shut the door and followed her down the steps. “Cal gave me advice all day long. When he stopped, Phil called in with even more advice.”
“So, how does everyone know about this?”
Evan opened the passenger door for her. “I’m sure my son is to blame. I’ll beat him thoroughly the next time I see him.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you will.” Paige didn’t look as if she believed it for a second.
And she would be right. He took her elbow as she climbed up into the cab, and he could feel her muscles tense beneath the layers of clothes. She was small-boned, hardly anything at all to her, he realized, and a hard surge swelled through him, bringing with it the need to protect her. To take care of her.
Strong needs for so early in the game. He didn’t trust feelings, and so he did his best to hold them back as he closed her door and circled around to the driver’s side.
He had to be careful. This was how it had all gone wrong with Liz, or at least that was his theory. He’d been overwhelmed with those strong male traits to love and protect. Liz wanted to be taken care of and he wanted to love and protect her.
He’d fallen too hard too fast, and he hadn’t noticed the small signs and clues along the way until she had his ring on her finger and it was way too late to step back.
He had to tread carefully. He would not make that mistake again.
Had she ever been so nervous in her entire life? If she had, Paige couldn’t remember when. It wasn’t like her at all. She was never rattled. She was a single parent, a business owner and responsible for her employee’s salaries every month. She couldn’t afford to be anything but rock-solid.
It was Evan. He was putting her right out of her comfort zone.
And to make matters worse, he kept getting the doors for her. Didn’t he know she was perfectly capable of getting them for herself?
She walked through the heavy wood-and-glass doors to one of the nicest restaurants in the area. Evan’s hand settled on her shoulder as he followed her into the lobby. The lights were low, and restful piano music added a tasteful background. The décor was Western and expensive.
Nice place. A fire crackled in the central stone fireplace in the dining area of high-backed booths and the firelight reflected in the long row of windows that overlooked the spectacular mountains.
A hostess tended to them immediately and Paige managed what she hoped was a composed appearance as she followed the college-age girl past the fireplace to a window table. Tucked in the corner, it was cozy and private and offered a stunning view of the up close Bridger Peaks and the rugged Rocky Mountains. The pewter sky was swept with broad strokes of magenta and gold from the setting sun.
Evan had pulled out all the stops. There was no possible way she could call this a casual friendly meal, not considering this elegant restaurant. He held out a chair for her, indicating she should take the better view. Wordless, she slipped into the chair and the solid warmth of his presence so undeniably close had her trembling all over again.
She wasn’t prepared for this. Not at all. But she didn’t want to stop it from happening, either.
Evan seated himself across the table, and while she accepted the menu from the hostess and tried to concentrate on the specials, she felt as if the room were spinning. Alex’s words kept replaying in her head. Cal told me his dad’s like waaay serious about you. Why had the boy told her that? She didn’t want to hear things like that! She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a tall cliff with the earth crumbling away around her feet.
As soon as the hostess stepped away from their table, Evan leaned closer. “Did you happen to catch what she was saying?”
“No,” she confessed. “I was too blown away by the view to listen very well.”
Not exactly the truth, but she didn’t feel comfortable confessing just how anxious she was. Would he understand? He looked sure and confident, as always. The menu he held open in his wide, capable hands was steady, unlike hers. This dating thing is for the birds, she decided. Why on earth would anybody do this to themselves?
Evan studied her with a small smile, as if he had a secret. “The view? I didn’t notice. All I can see is you.”
The air evaporated from her lungs. Her heart forgot to beat. Thought fled from her poor befuddled brain. This was not friendship; this was not safe ground. The earth was crumbling faster around her metaphorical feet, and she didn’t like knowing she was about to fall.
“Cal said the steaks here are great.” Evan kept talking, his tone calm and steady and everything a dream man should be. “That’s not the exact words. I think he said they were awesome.”
Their boys. This was safe ground; safe conversation. She groped for what normalcy she could. “How is your son liking MSU?”
“Cal’s thriving. Busy. Wasn’t homesick for a minute. He got a good roommate in the dorms, and he’s made friends. I think he manages to study in there some time. Actually, he’s doing well. Growing up and away.”
“Kids tend to do that. Alex is going to be spending the summer working as a camp counselor up near Glacier National Park. And so after this graduation, I’ll be sending him off into the world. Now that it’s getting closer, I don’t think I’m going to like that as much as I always thought.”
“I know what you mean. I raised my boys to be good men. They are. I’m proud of them. But they were my life.”
“As they should be.” They had this in common. Not only were they the ones in their marriages who had stayed the course, they were also the ones who had had the reward of spending their lives day by day with their children.
That’s what real love was, the holding on when it was hard to do so. Evan had a steadfast heart. And, after feeling the sting of a husband who’d bailed, there was nothing more important to her in a man.
A perky waitress arrived, obviously a college girl from the nearby campus, who introduced herself as Caitlin. Fortunately,
she repeated the specials for Evan, who considered the choices and indicated that Paige should order first.
She chose the smallest steak, thinking the less food, the quicker the meal would be finished and the sooner she could get this over with. A suffocating ache had dug in deep in the center of her chest. An ache that was pure emotion, a little of the past hurting, and mostly fears she could not put into words. They were fears she didn’t want to acknowledge.
While Evan ordered one of the evening’s special Angus steaks, Paige watched the sunset. The pewter clouds turned nearly purple as the last of the light burned into the glacial peaks of the Rockies. It was stunningly beautiful, but she felt a little like that sun slipping into the unseen beyond and treading in unfamiliar country.
Relationships—even a first date—required vulnerability. Exposing an honest piece of who you really are to another person. She’d done that once, and gotten burned where she was most fragile. She’d decided long ago that nothing—nothing—could ever be worth the risk of hurting like that.
Except one thing.
As Paige reached for her water, her attention caught and held on the couple one table over, just visible some distance behind Evan. They were in their retirement years, seated together on the same side of the table, leaning toward one another instead of away.
How sweet. The wife gazed up at her husband with honest adoration, and her husband took her delicate hand and kissed her knuckles tenderly, the sconce light reflecting on the slim gold wedding ring she wore.
A great love. Wasn’t that what every girl dreamed of finding one day? It hadn’t happened to her; she believed that it could not. But she’d seen plenty of people who seemed to have marriages that worked. And some couples had something more, something special. That true love was so special and rare, it had to be like holding on to a little piece of heaven.
“That’s really something, isn’t it?” She hadn’t realized Evan had finished speaking with the waitress, who had turned out, apparently, to be a friend of his son’s. Embarrassed to be caught watching something that was so private, she reached for her water goblet. “It’s heartening to see that some marriages really last,” he continued.
She nodded, for that was just what she had meant to say. “It’s so easy to see the bad divorces and the painful marriages and love that has broken apart.”
“Especially when that’s what happened to you.” Evan’s deep baritone resonated with understanding. “What happened to Alex’s father?”
“He decided he’d had enough of responsibility and left in the middle of the breakfast rush.” Her hand was trembling again and she tried to still it as she lifted the water glass. Somehow she managed to get a sip of water down without choking.
“No,” Evan said gently. “What really happened?”
I don’t want to tell you what really happened. Her hand wobbled. She set down the goblet before she dropped it. “No one knows that story. It’s not very interesting.”
“I’m interested.”
Her heart gave a lurch. She’d never been so glad to see a waitress. Caitlin arrived with their house salads, with ranch dressing for her and Italian for Evan and ground fresh pepper, giving Paige enough time to prepare herself. While time had dulled the pain, the scars had gone deep. All the way down to her soul.
She’d never told anyone the truth. She didn’t know if she could open up so much now.
Instead of taking up his salad fork, Evan laid his big, warm hand over hers.
His touch was as unsettling as it was comforting, because she was used to neither. She’d been alone in the most essential way for so long, the connection of his hand on hers felt like everything she could ever want and at the same moment everything she was afraid of. “There’s not much to tell. I married Jimmy when I was nineteen and he was twenty. We thought we were in love.
“But in a year’s time, I was pregnant, there had been a kitchen fire in the diner and we were in debt up to our ears from the repairs. I was raising Amy and Rachel; Ben was in and out of trouble and acting out. I had more responsibility than I could handle, and Jimmy just had enough one day. He walked out with half our morning regulars listening to us argue. That’s it.”
Technically, her story was correct. But it left out the real things, the painful arguments and disappointments that she did not want to remember. Because if she did remember what love had brought her, then she would also remember how she’d vowed never to go through that devastation again.
“That’s not it. You loved him.”
She knew that surprise showed on her face. “I was too young to know what love is. I thought he was something he wasn’t. It was my mistake.”
“You thought he was the kind of man who stayed, even when the better turned to worse?”
She swallowed hard. The truth, Paige. Evan had asked for the truth, and he was waiting patiently, the silent demand of his touch seeped into her like the heat from his skin on hers. She studied his hand, his knuckles were thick but not beefy, his fingers well-proportioned and so capable looking. He knew the unspeakable sadness of a failed marriage. Of a broken love.
She was going to trust that he would understand. “I thought he loved me enough to stay. Until I found out he didn’t love me at all. Not really. He just wanted someone to take care of him. You know, do his laundry, put a roof over his head and food on the table. He said that I was good at taking care of other people. It’s what I do. And he was right. I think that’s what hurt the most.”
She tried to tug her hand free.
He held on tight. “I’ve been there, too. Liz went from her parents’ house to her college dorm at her school to marrying me. She’d had a sheltered childhood, and she was looking to be taken care of. It was my mistake, because I was looking for a real helpmate in a wife, in a best friend.”
“I thought that’s what marriage was.”
“Me, too.” Evan couldn’t explain why, but he could feel her truth like the bright cast of light from the setting sun on his face. In a blinding moment, he understood. She’d been raising her younger brother and sisters, running a business on her own, responsibilities he’d never had at that age, and she’d been looking for a man. Had hoped that’s what her husband would be. The same as he’d done with his wife. “Being let down like that, why, it does something to a person.”
“Yes.” She shook out her napkin, hand trembling, and turned to stare longingly out the window.
Was she dreaming of escaping him, he wondered, or was it escape from remembering the past? She’d said yes to the date; she must want to be here. But that didn’t make it any easier to risk trusting him. He knew that. “I want you to know up front, that I’ve never intentionally let someone down in my life. Just so you know.”
He released her hand then. “Do you want to say grace? Or do you want me to do the honor?”
“Y-you.” Paige cleared her throat, thankful she was able to get that one word out. Her throat felt as if it had closed shut and she knew she’d never be able to say a blessing. He’d gone and said the one thing that mattered the most. “N-neither have I. Let anyone d-down.”
As the last ray of sun slid behind the Rockies, the twilight and shadows lengthened everywhere but in her heart.
Chapter Twelve
Paige felt a mix of relief and regret when Evan turned his truck into her driveway. Clouds blotted out any starlight, and the night stretched black and ominous as the headlights slashed twin paths through the dark woods. A movement blurred just beyond the reach of the light.
“My horse is out.”
Evan saw it, too, and braked to a sudden stop just in time. The shadowed movement became an Arabian that bolted across the road, turning golden in the beam of the headlights.
“That mare.” Paige rolled her eyes and popped open the door. “You can just leave me here. I’ve got to get her.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Evan shifted into Park and set the parking brake. “Didn’t I tell you at dinner? I’m not the kind of man wh
o bails.”
I’ve noticed. Paige didn’t want to feel the tug of appreciation that made her throat ache and burn. It was easier just to hop out into the gusting wind and night and feel her good shoes squish in the mud on the shoulder of the graveled driveway.
She heard Evan’s door close as she wrapped her coat around her and called out to the mare poised in the middle of the road like a deer caught in the head lights. “Annie, baby. Did you get your stall door open again?”
The mare’s nostrils flared as she scented Evan.
“Do you want me to herd her toward you?” he called from the other side of the truck.
“No, she’s just having some fun. Baby, come with me.” Mud sucked at her shoes as she approached, hands out, palms up.
The mare pressed her nose into those hands and her head against Paige’s stomach. Spotlighted by the headlights in shades of gold and platinum, woman and horse came together, a revealing moment as she rubbed her mare’s long nose. The animal’s trust and affection for her mistress was unmistakable. As was the realization that hit him. He was short a horse-riding partner.
Paige rode horses.
“Hey, girl.” Her voice was tender and her slender hands gentle as she grasped the nylon halter the mare wore. “Evan, I’m just going to walk her up to the stable. Thank you for an unexpected evening.”
“Unexpected, what does that mean?”
“I mean that I’m glad you asked me.”
As if shy that she’d said too much, Paige dipped her head, turned her back and hurried down the driveway. The big mare at her side ambled with her, her hooves crunching in the gravel.
She’s glad she went out with me. Slow joy spread through Evan as he hopped back inside the cab and put the truck in first gear. There was a lot to like about Paige, the private woman who kept her real self well hidden, but he’d seen the part of her she protected so well.