by Nora Roberts
“I got some things to finish up here.” Brody pushed his hair back. And just looked at her.
He’d been doing that quite a bit, Kate thought, since they’d come back from New York. Looking at her—and looking at her differently somehow.
Differently enough to have frogs leaping in her belly again.
“An hour okay with you?” he asked.
“Perfect. Do you mind if I steal your helper here? I want to go tell my mother. We can give Mike a little exercise on the way.”
“Yeah, sure. Jack? No wheedling.”
“He means I can’t ask for toys. I’ll get Mike’s leash. Dad, can I—” He broke off then ran over to whisper in Brody’s ear.
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“We’ll be back in an hour.”
“Great.” Brody waited until they’d chased Mike downstairs, then sat back on his heels.
He was going to have to make some decisions. And soon. It was bad enough he was stuck on Kate, but Jack was crazy about her.
A man could risk a few bumps and bruises on his own heart, but he couldn’t risk his child’s. The only thing to do was to sit down and have a talk with Kate. It was time they spelled out what was going on between them.
More, he was going to have to have a talk with Jack. He had to know what the boy was thinking, what he was feeling.
Jack first, Brody decided. Could be, could very well be, his son looked at Kate as nothing more than a friend and would be upset at the idea of her being a more permanent, more important part of their lives. It had been the two of them as long as Jack could remember.
He looked over with a little jolt as a movement caught the corner of his eye.
“You turn that noise down,” Bob O’Connell said, “you wouldn’t get taken by surprise.”
“I like music on the job.” But Brody rose, shut off the radio. “Something you need?”
They hadn’t spoken since the scene in the Kimball kitchen. Both men eyed each other warily.
“I got something to say,” Bob stated.
“Then say it.”
“I did my best by you. It ain’t right for you to say different, when I did my best by you. Maybe I was hard on you, but you had a wild streak and you needed hard. I had a family to support, and I did it the only way I knew how. Maybe you think I didn’t spend enough time with you—” Bob broke off, jammed his hands into his pockets. “Maybe I didn’t. I don’t have the knack for it, not the way you do with your boy. Fact is, you weren’t the same pleasure to be around Jack is. He’s a credit to you. Maybe I should’ve said so before, but I’m saying so now.”
Brody said nothing for a long moment, adjusting to the shock even as his father glared at him. “You know, I’m pretty sure that’s about the longest speech you ever aimed in my direction.”
Bob’s face hardened. “I’m done with it,” he said and turned.
“Dad.” Brody set his drill aside. “I appreciate it.”
Bob let out a breath, the way a man might as the trapdoor opened under his feet. “Well.” He turned back, fought with the words in his head. “Might as well finish it off then. Probably I shouldn’t have jumped on you the other day, not in front of your boy and your…the Kimball girl. Your mother lit into me over it.”
Brody could only stare. “Mom?”
“Yeah.” With a look of frustrated disgust, Bob kicked lightly at the doorjamb. “She don’t do it often, but when she does, she can peel the skin off your ass. Hardly speaking to me yet. Says I embarrassed her.”
“I got the same line from Kate—she did some peeling of her own.”
“Didn’t much care having her claw at me the way she did. But I gotta say, she’s got spine. Keep you straight.”
“It’s my job to keep myself straight.”
Bob nodded. The weight that had been pressing on his chest for days eased. “Guess I figure you’ve been doing your job there. You do good work. For a carpenter.”
For the first time in a long while, Brody was able to smile at his father and mean it. “You do good work. For a plumber.”
“Didn’t have any problem firing me.”
“You pissed me off.”
“Hell, boy, you fire every man who pisses you off, how are you going to put a crew together? How’s the hand?”
Brody lifted it, flexed his fingers. “Good enough.”
“Since you’ve got no permanent damage, maybe you can use that hand to dial the phone. Call your ma and let her know we cleared the air some. She might not take my word on it, given her current state of mind.”
“I’ll do that. I know I was a disappointment to you.”
“Now, hold on—”
“I was,” Brody continued. “Maybe I was a disappointment to myself, too. But I think I made up for it. I did it for Connie, and for Jack. For myself, too. And I did it, partly anyway, for you. So I could show you I was worth something.”
“You showed me.” Bob wasn’t good at taking first steps, but he took this one. He crossed the room, held out his hand. “I guess I’m proud of how you turned out.”
“Thanks.” He took his father’s hand in a firm grip. “I’ve a kitchen remodel coming up. Needs some plumbing work. Interested?”
Bob’s lips twitched. “Could be.”
Chapter Twelve
While father and son were closing a gap, Kate strolled with the third generation of O’Connell male.
“I didn’t wheedle, right?”
“Wheedle?” She sent him a shocked stare. “Why Handsome Jack, Mama and I had to practically force that plane on you. We had to beg you to accept it.”
Jack grinned up at her. “You’ll tell Dad?”
“Of course. He’s going to want to play with it, you know. It’s a very cool plane.”
Jack swirled it through the air. “It’s like the one I got to fly on, all the way to New York and back again. It was fun. I told everybody thanks in the cards I sent. Did you like your card? I did it almost all by myself.”
“I loved my card.” Kate patted her pocket where the thank-you note, painstakingly printed, resided. “It was very polite and gentlemanly of you to write one to me, and to Freddie and Nick and to my grandparents.”
“They said I could come back. Papa Yuri said I could sometime spend the night at his house.”
“You’d like that?”
“Yeah. He can wiggle his ears.”
“I know.”
“Kate?”
“Hmm.” She bent to untangle Mike from his leash, then glanced up to see Jack studying her. So serious, she thought, so intent. Just like his father. “What is it, Handsome Jack?”
“Can we…can we sit on the wall so we can talk about stuff?”
“Sure.” Very serious, Kate realized as she boosted him up on the wall in front of the college. She passed Mike up to him, then hopped up beside them. “What kind of stuff?”
“I was wondering…” He trailed off again while Mike scrambled off to sniff at the grass behind them.
He’d talked it all over with his best friends. Max in New York, and then Rod at school. It was a secret. They’d spit on their palms to seal it. “You like my dad, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I like him very much.”
“And you like kids. Like me?”
“I like kids. I especially like you.” She draped an arm around him, rubbed his shoulder. “We’re friends.”
“Dad and I like you, too. A whole lot. So I was wondering…” He looked up at her, his eyes so young, so earnest. “Will you marry us?”
“Oh.” Her heart stumbled, then fell with a splat. “Oh, Jack.”
“If you did, you could come live in our house. Dad’s fixing it up good. And we have a yard and everything, and we’re going to plant a garden soon. In the mornings you could have breakfast with us, then drive to your school and teach people how to dance. Then you could drive home. It’s not real far.”
Staggered, she laid her cheek on the top of his head. “Oh, boy.”
“Dad’s really nice,” Jack rushed on. “He hardly ever yells. He doesn’t have a wife anymore, because she had to go to heaven. I wish she didn’t, but she did.”
“I know. Oh, baby.”
“Maybe Dad’s afraid to ask you in case you go to heaven, too. That’s what Rod thinks. Maybe. But you won’t, will you?”
“Jack.” She fought back tears and cupped his face. “I plan to stay here for a very long time. Have you talked to your father about this?”
“Nuh-uh, ’cause you’re supposed to ask the girl. That’s what Max said. The boy has to ask the girl. Me and Dad’ll buy you a ring, ’cause girls need to have one. I won’t mind if you kiss me, and I’ll be really good. You and Dad can make babies like people do when they get married. I’d rather have a brother, but if it’s a sister, that’s okay. We’ll love each other and everything. So will you please marry us?”
In all her dreams and fantasies, she’d never imagined being proposed to by a six-year-old boy, while sitting on a wall on an afternoon in early spring. Nothing could have been more touching, she thought. More lovely.
“Jack, I’m going to tell you a secret. I already love you.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I do. I already love your dad, too. I’m going to think really hard about everything you said. Really hard. That way, if I say yes, you’re going to know, absolutely, that it’s what I want more than anything else in the whole world. If I say yes you wouldn’t just be your dad’s little boy anymore. You’d be mine, too. Do you understand that?”
He nodded, all eyes. “You’d be my mom, right?”
“Yes, I’d be your mom.”
“Okay. Would you?”
“I’m going to think about it.” She pressed her lips to his forehead, then hopped down.
“Will it take a long time to think?”
She reached up for him. “Not this time.” She held him close before she set him on his feet. “But let’s keep this a secret, a little while longer, while I do.”
She gave it almost twenty-four hours. After all she was a woman who knew her own mind. Maybe the timing wasn’t quite perfect, but it couldn’t be helped.
Certainly the way things were tumbling weren’t in the nice, neat logical row she’d have preferred. But she could be flexible. When she wanted something badly enough, she could be very flexible.
She considered asking Brody out for a romantic dinner for two. Rejected it. A proposal in a public restaurant would make it too difficult to pin him down, should it become necessary.
She toyed with the idea of waiting for the weekend, planning that romantic dinner for two at Brody’s house. Candlelight, wine, seductive music.
That was her next rejection. If Jack hadn’t spilled the beans by then, she very likely would herself.
It wouldn’t be exactly the way she’d pictured it. There wouldn’t be moonlight and music, with Brody looking deep into her eyes as he told her he loved her, asked her to spend her life loving him.
Maybe it wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be right. Atmosphere didn’t matter at this point, she told herself. Results did. So why wait?
She started upstairs. It was good timing after all, she realized. He was just finishing the job that had brought them together. Why not propose marriage in the space they had, in a very real way, made together? It was perfect.
Convinced of it, Kate was very displeased to find the rooms over the school empty.
“Well, where the hell did you go?” She fisted her hands on her hips and paced.
School bus, she remembered, spinning for the door. It was one of his days to pick up Jack. She glanced at her watch as she sprinted down the stairs. He couldn’t have been gone more than a few minutes.
“Hey! Where’s the fire.” Spence caught her as she leaped down the last steps.
“Dad. Sorry. Gotta run. I need to catch Brody.”
“Something wrong?”
“No, no.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and wiggled free. “I need to ask him to marry me.”
“Oh, well…whoa.” She was younger, faster, but parental shock shot him to the door in time to snag her. “What did you say?”
“I’m going to ask Brody to marry me. I’ve got it all worked out.”
“Katie.”
“I love him. I love Jack. Dad, I don’t have time to explain it all, but I’ve thought it through. Trust me.”
“Just catch your breath and let me…” But he looked at her face, into her eyes. Stars, he thought. His little girl had stars in her eyes. “He hasn’t got a prayer.”
“Thanks.” She threw her arms around her father’s neck. “Wish me luck anyway.”
“Good luck.” He let her go, then watched her run. “Bye, baby,” he murmured.
Brody made a stop for milk, bread and eggs. Jack had developed an obsession with French Toast. As he turned into his lane, he checked his watch. A good ten minutes before the bus, he noted. He’d mistimed it a bit.
Resigned to the wait, he climbed out, let Mike race up the hill and back. Spring was coming on fine, he thought. Greening the leaves, teasing the early flowers into tight buds. It brought something into the air, he mused.
Maybe it was hope.
The house, the ramble of it, was looking like a home. Soon he’d stick a hammock in the yard, maybe a rocker on the porch. Maybe a porch swing. He’d get Jack a little splash pool.
Jack and Mike could play in the yard, roll around on the grass on those long, hot summer evenings. He’d sit on the porch swing and watch. Sit on the swing with Kate.
Funny, he couldn’t put a real picture into his head anymore, unless Kate was in it.
And didn’t want to.
He’d have to take his time, Brody mused. Get a sense of where Jack stood in all of it. After that, it would be a matter of seeing if Kate was willing to take everything to the next level.
Maybe it was time to give her a little nudge in that direction. Nothing was ever perfect, was it? Everything in life was a work in progress.
It was like building a house. He figured they had a good, solid foundation. He had the design in his head—him, Kate, Jack and the kids who came along after. A house needed kids. So it was time to start putting up the frame, making it solid.
Maybe she wouldn’t be ready for marriage yet—with her school just getting off the ground. She might need some time to adjust to the idea of being a mother to a six-year-old. He could give her some time.
He stood, looking over his land, studying the house on the hill that just seemed to be waiting.
Not a lot of time, he decided. Once he started building, he liked to keep right on building. And he wanted Kate working on this, the most important project of his life, with him.
The first thing to do, he decided as he walked to the mailbox, was to talk to Jack about it. His son had to feel secure, comfortable and happy. Jack was crazy about Kate. Maybe Jack would be a little worried about the changes marrying her would bring, but Brody could reassure his son.
They’d talk about it tonight, he decided, after dinner.
He just couldn’t wait any longer than that to start things moving.
When he and Jack were square, he’d figure out what to say to Kate, what to do, to move everybody along to the next stage of the floor plan.
He got the mail out of the box, and was sifting through it on the way back to the truck when Kate pulled in beside him.
“Hey.” Surprised, he tossed the mail into the cab of his truck. “Didn’t expect to see you out this way today.”
After she got out of the car, she picked up the mangled hunk of rope Mike spit at her feet, engaged him in a brief bout of tug-of-war, then threw it—she had a damn good arm—far enough to keep him busy awhile.
Watching her playing with the dog, all Brody could think about was that he couldn’t wait very long.
“I just missed you at the school,” she told him.
“Problem there?”
“No, not at all. No problem anywhere.” She
walked to him and slid her hands up his chest, a habit that never failed to pump up his heart rate. “You didn’t kiss me goodbye.”
“Your office door was closed. I figured you were busy.”
“Kiss me goodbye now.” She brushed her lips over his, arched a brow when he kept it light and started to ease back. “Do better.”
“Kate, the bus is going to come along in a couple minutes.”
“Do better,” she murmured, and melting against him shifted the mood.
He fisted a hand in the back of her shirt, another in her hair. And indulged both of them.
“Mmmm. That’s more like it. It’s spring,” she added, tipping back so that she could see his face. “Do you know what a young man’s fancy turns to in spring? Besides baseball.”
He grinned at her. “Plowing?”
She laughed, linking her fingers behind his neck. Yeah, the frogs were still jumping. But she liked it. “All right, do you know what a young woman’s fancy turns to? What this young woman’s fancy turns to?”
“Is that what you came out here to tell me?”
“Yes. More or less. Brody…” She nibbled her bottom lip, then just blurted it out, “I want you to marry me.”
He jerked, froze. There was a buzzing in his ears—a hive of wild bees. He had to be hearing things, he decided. Had to. She couldn’t have just asked him to marry her when he’d spent the last five minutes trying to figure out how and when to ask her.
To get his bearings, he retreated a step.
“It’s not very flattering for you to gape at me as though I’d just hit you over the head with a two-by-four.”
“Where did this come from?” Maybe he was just dreaming.
But she looked real. She’d tasted real. And the thundering of his own heart wasn’t the least bit dreamlike. Besides, in his dreams, he asked her. Damn it. “A woman doesn’t just walk up to a man in the middle of the day and ask him to marry her.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” How was he supposed to think of reasons with all those bees in his head? “Because she doesn’t.”
“Well, I just did.” She felt her temper sizzle into her throat and managed to swallow it. Her fingers shook slightly as she lifted them to begin ticking off points. “We’ve been seeing each other exclusively for months. We’re not children. We enjoy each other, we respect each other. It’s a natural and perfectly logical progression to consider marriage.”