Bliss and the Art of Forever (A Hope Springs Novel)

by Kent, Alison

  “Like you had that Jane Austen bit memorized.”

  “Actually, I did,” she said. The quote had stuck with her for a very long time. The idea of hope being equated with patience . . . funny that patience was a concrete emotion within her control while hope seemed so ethereal, yet they were so closely related as she looked ahead.

  “How’s it healing? The tat?” he asked, walking toward her.

  “It’s good,” she said, tucking her phone into her pocket.

  “Show me.”

  She brought her gaze up slowly, her pulse quickening, the look in his eyes bringing to mind the first time he’d kissed her, the second time he’d kissed her, the third time . . . and how none of them had been kisses between friends.

  “Now?” she asked, because to show him she’d have to lift her shirt to reveal her back and her shoulder, and it seemed too much a tempting of fate with his daughter liable to run into the room.

  “It’s just your shoulder,” he said, stopping in front of her, one brow going up, his tongue in his cheek as he tried not to grin.

  “This isn’t funny. Me baring skin in front of you is not a good idea. Addy could come in at the worst possible time.”

  “That being me looking at your tattoo? It’s not like I haven’t seen—”

  “Don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t. We can’t. Not now.”

  “Hey, Brooklyn.” He frowned as he said her name. “I’m teasing. If you don’t want me to see—”

  “Oh, Callum. It’s not that,” she said, but she didn’t say more, because she wasn’t sure she could explain what she was feeling without losing the very tenuous hold she had on her composure. “It’s just . . .”

  “What?” he asked, his concern making things so much worse. “Just tell me. What did I do? What’s wrong?”

  “That’s just it,” she said, burying her face in her hands. “Nothing is wrong. Absolutely everything is right. Except I’m not going to be here to enjoy this room, or you, or Addy . . .”

  “Oh, baby,” he said, stepping closer and wrapping her up in his arms. “This room isn’t going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere. Addy on the other hand . . .”

  She laughed, nuzzled into his chest, breathed him in, and let go of the doubts and worries that felt like walls closing in. She had patience. She would get through the next month. And she would cling with every ounce of strength she had to the hope that the rest of her life would fall into place.

  WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2001

  Closing her eyes, Brooklyn leaned back on her pillows, needing the break from the books spread across her bed. As hard as it was to believe, she was tired of reading, the exhaustion the fault of the research required for her dissertation. Even the title was enough to put her to sleep: The Use of After-School Programs in Aiding the Development of At-Risk Youth.

  A juicy medieval-set story. That’s what she wanted. Knights and castles and bloody battles. A fair maiden. A noble steed. Sighing, she sank deeper and closer to sleep, her forearm thrown across her forehead to block the overhead light. Just five minutes. Make it ten. No more than fifteen. Her eyes ached. She was starving. She swore she smelled pizza.

  Then came a knock on her bedroom door, a sharp rap of knuckles that only one person ever used. “You can come in if you have food.”

  Artie opened the door wide enough for the pizza box he led with, then peered around the corner. “Pepperoni, bacon, onions, olives, and fresh jalapeños.”

  “Real bacon. Not that ham that likes to pretend.”

  “Real bacon. Exactly the way you like it.”

  He knew her so well. She shoved the books to the foot of the bed, making room for him to join her. “Is it all for us, or did you have to share with my parents?”

  “I offered but they both declined.”

  “You know,” she said as she lifted a slice from the box he opened, winding strings of cheese around one finger, “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen my father eat a slice of pizza.”

  “He does seem to be more the broiled chicken and broccoli type.”

  She laughed at that. “He’s the type who doesn’t think about food as anything but nourishment.”

  “Yeah, well, I may be only half Italian, but it’s the half that knows there’s more to food than that,” he said, finishing off his slice, then dusting crumbs from his hands over the box. “Hope that’s okay with you.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” She bit into her slice, wondering why he’d ask such a thing. Unless he was thinking about the future, the two of them being together, his eating them both out of house and home.

  That made her laugh. She didn’t know how to cook. How would she ever feed him? Because no matter what he said about being Italian and loving his food, one of them would need to be able to do more than pick up the phone and order takeout. Though she was getting way ahead of herself. And doing so today, of all days . . . She laughed again.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Do you know what today is?” she asked him, having caught sight of the date on the calendar above her desk.

  “The happiest day of my life?”

  He was always so dramatic. “The date, I mean. February fourteenth. It’s Valentine’s Day.”

  “Are you kidding me?” He frowned and glanced at his watch. “This has got to be the first V-Day in years I haven’t taken a shift for someone.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t know what today was.”

  “I do know. Like I said. The happiest day of my life.” He reached into his pocket, then pulled out a jewelry box before he scooted off the edge of the bed and dropped in front of her to one knee.

  His face, freshly shaved, she noticed, grew somber, his eyes wide, nearly misty. He swallowed, as if fearful he would choke. “Today’s the day I’m asking the woman I love more than life itself to marry me. The day I know she’s going to say yes because she was made just for me.”

  “Oh, Artie.” She pressed her hands to her cheeks, blinking back tears as he opened the box. The diamond solitaire was simple, no unnecessary extras, just the round-cut jewel on a white gold band. “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s yours. I’m yours. If you’ll have me.” He took the ring out of the box, then reached for her finger. “There’s going to be a lot of worse to go with the better, I fear, but that’s part of being a firefighter, and I’ll make it up to you the best that I can. I hope we’ll both be as rich as thieves, and never know a day of anything but the best of health, but I’m not frightened by illness, or being poor, and Brooklyn Olivia Nilsson, will you be my wife?”

  “Yes, yes, oh, yes!” And once he’d slid the ring onto her finger, she wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, and kissed him until neither of them could breathe.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Two weeks later, Callum was mostly moved into the house and making all the living-in-a-new-place adjustments. The biggest one was doing a better job managing his time. Luckily, school was almost out, because getting Addy to class on time, then himself to Bliss, meant his alarm went off thirty minutes earlier than it had for the last nearly five years.

  Thirty minutes didn’t seem like a lot in concept, but when dealing with a sleep-loving six-year-old, it felt like hours. Still, the ride to town on his bike was his favorite part of the day, eclipsed only by the ride home. Three Wishes Road meandered through some gorgeous acreage, and something about it had him feeling all one with the earth, a thought he kept to himself because it was too ridiculous to put into words. Still . . .

  How far he’d come since loading his bike into the back of his truck, securing Addy in the car seat that had been a gift from Duke, and getting the hell out of California. He’d been pins-and-needles panicked in those early days, thinking the mistakes he’d made would catch up with him, that he’d lose his girl, that no matter his choice to raise Addy on his own, that he’d fail. So many of his choices had sent him down a very bad road . . .

 
He wasn’t quite as excited about the new place as he’d thought he might be. Proud of it? Sure. He’d worked damn hard to get here, and it was a hell of a house. Thrilled at how much Addy loved it? Without a doubt. Seeing his girl’s excitement as she ran out the back door and through the huge yard to her swing set gut-punched him every time.

  Being able to give her an acre of yard, instead of the limited time at the park they’d made do with, three thousand square feet instead of the loft where running was outlawed because their floor was a neighbor’s ceiling . . . contentment wasn’t even the half of it, but then he’d always had trouble defining the emotions that came with being a dad.

  Pulling into his parents’ driveway, he killed the bike, took off his helmet, and helped Addy out of hers. She ran for the back door and he followed, realizing the moment he walked into the kitchen that something was wrong. His father stood at the counter in front of an electric skillet flipping pancakes while bacon sputtered on the stove.

  If his mother had been home, there would be no pancakes, no bacon, and whatever might’ve been cooking, grease wouldn’t have been popping anywhere. “Where’s Mom?”

  His father turned to his left, then to his right, as if looking for Addy, who Callum knew had gone to check on the fish. Then he looked at the clock on the stove. “I’d say she’s sitting at her sister’s kitchen table with a big fat cup of coffee in hand, complaining about the waste of her life spent married to me.”

  Callum frowned and tried to find something to say. “Come again?”

  “She’s in Connecticut. She left me.” The older man flipped the pancakes. “She’s divorcing me.”

  Whoa, what? His heart thundering, Callum moved to his father’s side and leaned against the counter. “I know I didn’t just hear that.”

  “You did. You want pancakes? Bacon? Coffee?”

  “Dad—”

  “Callum, I’m fine,” he said, sliding his spatula beneath one pancake, then another, and slipping them onto a plate. “Your mother and I haven’t been much more than roommates for years. You know that.” He turned to set the plate on the table. “Addy! Breakfast!”

  Roommates. Callum sighed, thinking his father too blasé for a man whose wife had left him. “When did she leave? When did she tell you she was leaving?”

  “Yesterday evening. She came home in a huff after stopping by Bliss. I guess you and Addy weren’t there.”

  “We left early.” They’d been doing that a lot since moving. Addy was having a ball at the new place. “What did she want? Did she say?”

  “No clue. Could be she wanted to tell you in person. By the time she got home, she was going on about all the sacrifices she’d made so you could make your chocolate, her words, not mine, and you couldn’t even bother telling her you’d bought a new house until after the fact, not to mention keeping her from her granddaughter until Addy was almost a year old.”

  What the—that was old news. Nearly five-year-old news. The Addy part anyway. “She’s blaming this on me?”

  His father pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and gave him a look. “Not you as much as Ms. Harvey.”

  Wait just the hell a minute. “How in the world did she make that stretch?”

  “Something about gossip she heard that Brooklyn didn’t want children,” he said, slicing Addy’s pancakes into bites. “And your mother never getting to hold a newborn grandbaby—”

  Crap on a cracker. He had to be kidding. “Give me a freakin’ break. She said that? Brooklyn and I aren’t anywhere close to talking about children.” Though the idea of having a baby with her . . . it was like a jarring blow to the head. A brother or sister for Addy? Brooklyn the mother of his child?

  His father arched a brow as he poured Addy a puddle of syrup. “I never claimed her reasons made any kind of sense. Addy! Breakfast!”

  “I’m here, PopPop,” she said, hopping up into her seat. “Do you think fish like pancakes? And bacon?”

  Callum’s father chuckled. “Well, if they had teeth, they just might.”

  Addy picked up her fork. “If they don’t have teeth, how do they eat their food?”

  “Those little flakes you sprinkle into the water?” he asked, making the motion with his free hand. “They melt on their tongues. Like candy.”

  “Nu-uh,” she said, shoving a big bite of pancake into her mouth. “Daddy, PopPop is silly just like you.”

  “Your daddy is even more silly than me,” her grandfather said when Callum continued to stand there, rooted to the floor; why was he having so much trouble processing what didn’t seem to bother his father at all? “He’s got a job he needs to get to and he’s just standing here like a bump on a log.”

  “There’s a bump on the log in the ’quarim,” Addy said, her mouth full. “I’ve seen the fishes go in and out of it.”

  Tuning out his daughter’s fish chatter, Callum told his father, “You’re coming to the house tonight for dinner. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  “And I’ll look forward to it,” his father said. “But right now I’ve got to get back to the pancakes before I burn down the house like your mother was always afraid I would do.”

  Frustration gnawing at his gut, Callum pulled his father into a quick hug, dropped a kiss to the top of his daughter’s head, and left the house, digging his phone from his pocket before he climbed on his bike, and pacing until Brooklyn answered. “What’re you doing this evening?”

  “Hello to you, too, Callum,” she said, her voice husky with sleep. “Nothing, why?”

  “You want to come over for burgers?” he asked, not stopping to analyze his need to have her there. He just did. Black-and-white. Simple. “I thought I’d cook out on the patio, let Addy run wild.”

  “Sure. What time?”

  “I’m going to try to get out of Bliss early.” His dad was dealing with enough, no matter what he said about Addy taking his mind off things. “My dad’s coming out, too. My mom’s . . . she went out of town last night.”

  “Oh, sure. Okay. What can I do to help?”

  “Would you feel like grabbing stuff for burgers?” Nice. Invite the woman over to eat food you don’t even have. “Like, you know, the burgers? Meat, buns, cheese—”

  She laughed quietly. “I guess this means your kitchen’s not stocked yet?”

  “I’ve got eggs, bacon, cocoa butter, and chocolate.”

  “Hmm. A breakfast bonbon. That’s probably one of those not-such-a-good-idea things.”

  This woman . . . man, he liked her. He liked her a lot. And that was only the beginning of the things he felt. “Six okay for you?”

  “It’s perfect. I’ll see you then.”

  Brooklyn bought everything she could imagine anyone wanting on a hamburger, including bacon and sliced jalapeños and blue cheese. She had no idea what Callum or his father or Addy might like, so thought back to some of the cookouts she’d been to with Artie, and the firefighters who’d never met a condiment or a topping they could get enough of.

  Callum hadn’t mentioned anything about sides, but she went all-out there, too, knowing the chips and potato salad and baked beans, if not eaten this evening, would be there for leftovers tomorrow. And because she knew how Addy felt about ice cream, she also splurged there: cones for scoops taken straight up, caramel, chocolate, and strawberry sauces for sundaes.

  By the time she made it down Three Wishes Road, it was six fifteen, and pulling into the driveway, she found herself wondering if Callum had lighter fluid and charcoal, or even a grill. He’d lived for nearly five years in a loft, after all, with room for nothing but a balcony-sized hibachi for cooking outside.

  She found him and his dad sitting at the picnic table in the side yard with Addy’s swing set in view. She was draped across one of the seats, chattering to no one in particular as she pushed herself back and forth, dragging the toes of her shoes through the dirt beneath. She was the first to see Brooklyn arrive.

  “Ms. Harvey!
Ms. Harvey! We’re over here!”

  “So I see,” Brooklyn said, shifting her grocery bags between her hands and nudging the car door shut with her hip. From the corner of her eye she saw Callum approach, and she offered him the bag with the perishables. “The ice cream needs to be put in the freezer asap.”

  “I can do that,” said the older man with the same burnt sienna hair who’d walked up behind him. He offered her his hand, his eyes behind his wire frames as green as his son’s. “It’s good to see you again, Ms. Harvey.”

  “Mr. Drake. Hello. Please call me Brooklyn.”

  “As long as you’ll call me Vaughn.”

  “Can I call you Vaughn, too, PopPop?” Addy asked, running up beside them.

  “No you may not,” Callum said, swinging her up onto his hip, and taking the second bag Brooklyn held. “You can call him PopPop. You can call Ms. Harvey Ms. Harvey. And you can call me Weird Beard McGee.”

  “Daddy!” She giggled out the word. “Don’t be so silly!”

  “What? You don’t think my beard is weird?” he asked, glancing over her shoulder to where Brooklyn was shaking her head as Addy grabbed at his whiskers.

  “That one’s something, isn’t she?” Vaughn asked from her other side, as Addy said something to her father.

  Brooklyn started to respond as a teacher, telling Vaughn that kids Addy’s age shared similar personality traits, but this was the girl’s grandfather, and really, she didn’t have to be such a stick-in-the-mud. Besides, she agreed completely. “She definitely is.”

  “I know Cal’s hated leaving her with me and his mother as often as he’s had to, but we’ve sure enjoyed the extra time with her. We didn’t get to see her as a baby. Didn’t even get to meet her until she was already a year old. But I know he couldn’t help that, either.”

  Not knowing what else to say, Brooklyn smiled and offered, “I imagine Addy enjoys your company just as much. She’s lucky to have family close. Callum, too.”