“Sure. Okay,” Marti agreed, looking forward to spending some more time with Noah, one-on-one.
She unlocked the car door but before she could open it, he maneuvered himself between her and the SUV, leaning back against it so she couldn’t open the door.
“You aren’t ready to run for the hills, are you?”
That confused her.
“Run for the hills?” she repeated.
“Did I scare you off by telling you I was basically a thug as a kid?”
Marti couldn’t help smiling. “You’re not still a thug, are you? Or have I just overlooked it?”
“Hand to God, I am not,” he swore, actually holding up his hand.
“Then no, I won’t run for the hills.”
“Good,” he said. “Because I’m a good guy.”
Marti laughed. “Yeah, I think you just might be.”
“Do you? Is that why you came tonight or was it only to get the full picture of just how rotten I was?”
Marti could hear in Noah’s voice, see in his expression that it was important to him to know. And while she felt as if she were exposing herself, she opted not to joke or give him a hard time.
“I came because I do think you’re a good guy.”
It was hardly kudos or a declaration of undying love but it made him flash a cocky and very sexy grin. “And you like me,” he added himself.
“Oh, now you’re pushing it,” she said. But he’d made her smile, too, so the chastisement was hardly believable.
“It’s just a beginning,” he said as if he were trying to keep her from shying away. “I’m happy to know you can stand me, is all.”
“Barely,” she said airily because she’d already shown him enough.
He was undaunted, though, still grinning down at her. “I like you, too,” he confided. “And if you weren’t pregnant…”
And then the joking stopped. Something different heated the air between them. In the glow of the street lights she saw Noah’s eyes soften, and there was something else reflected in his handsome face—something that didn’t make her feel at all like an untouchable pregnant woman, something that made her feel the way she had when Jack was focused intently—and appreciatively—on her.
But this was Noah and she was very, very aware of that.
And somehow okay with it…
Then, in a deep, intimate voice, Noah said, “Thanks for coming tonight.”
“I’m sorry I missed your game.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m just glad you came to Adz afterward.”
“Me, too,” she admitted in a hushed voice.
For a moment he merely went on looking at her, into her eyes. Then he raised a hand to the side of her face, his palm following the curve of her jaw to hold it, to tip it enough so that his mouth could meet hers.
There was a moment of déjà vu for Marti—not exactly a memory of that night they’d spent together but a sense of familiarity.
Noah deepened the kiss. His breath was warm against her skin and sweet with the mint he’d had after his beer. His hand was strong and gentle, his touch drawing her to him, holding her there, making it impossible to be aware of anything but Noah.
And even though this kiss lasted long enough for every detail to register, to brand itself on her brain as Noah’s kiss and only Noah’s kiss, it still ended much, much too soon.
Now there was cool evening air where there had been the heat of him and she opened her eyes to find his lids slowly rising, too.
“Better?” he asked, harking back to her remark that afternoon that she’d had kisses that were better than those little pecks he’d given earlier.
“Better. And I couldn’t even tell you were trying harder,” she goaded, also referencing what had been said before.
“Smooth as ice—that’s me,” he countered with a satisfied smile before he kissed her again—shorter, lighter, more playfully and certainly not picking up where he’d left off. Unfortunately…
He slipped out from between her and the car and opened the door for her. And since she couldn’t very well ignore it, she got behind the wheel.
“I have some materials to pick up tomorrow and a bid to work on for the Home-Max that those new people are opening up,” he said, teasing her. “So I won’t be at your grandmother’s house during the day. I’ll just come by and get you about a quarter to seven to go to Emmalina’s.”
Marti nodded. “I’ll be ready,” she said as she started the engine.
They exchanged good-nights and Noah closed the door, leaving Marti to back away from the curb. He waved as she put the car in gear and she returned the wave before heading down Main toward South Street, looking for him again in her rearview mirror, finding him still there, watching her go.
She thought back to that first flashback to their night in Denver. How she’d wondered if she’d liked the way Noah kissed as much as she’d liked the way Jack had.
And now she knew.
They didn’t kiss anything alike. They were as distinctly different at that as they were in everything else.
But she had been right—she liked Noah’s kiss as much as she’d liked Jack’s. Noah Perry definitely had a power all his own.
And she was feeling the impact.
Chapter Eight
“S o where does Emmalina Dewell live?” Marti asked on Thursday evening as they drove to see the former minister’s wife.
Noah kept his eyes on the road as he answered. “Emmalina is eighty-nine now. She has a small house on the very edge of town, right next door to her daughter’s house. Lila keeps an eye on her, but Emmalina does all right for herself.”
“Is Lila her only child?”
“Nooo, Lila and three others are the kids Emmalina had with her first husband—the minister. A year after he died, Emmalina married Harvey Forester and had two more kids. She married at least two more times over the next thirty years or so.”
“So after all that, do you think she’ll remember as far back as my grandmother?”
“I wouldn’t be wasting your time if I didn’t think so. Emmalina is as sharp as you or I. And when I called her and told her you were Theresa Hobbs’s granddaughter, that you wanted to talk about Theresa from before she left Northbridge, Emmalina didn’t even need reminding who Theresa might be. Of course there’s been a lot of talk about Theresa since she showed up in Northbridge, so I’m sure my call wasn’t the first Emmalina has heard about Theresa being back. But yeah, I trust her memory.”
He made a U-turn then and parked at the curb in front of the second to the last house on South Street, before open road and cornfields marked the beginning of the farm-and ranchland that also made up Northbridge. The house was no bigger than a double garage, painted bright pink with white trim.
Noah must have seen Marti’s shock at the color because he laughed. “Yep, this is Emmalina’s place,” he said as he got out of the truck and came around to the curbside to open Marti’s door. “But don’t let the color of her house or the number of husbands she’s had fool you. Emmalina is a little old grandma through and through.”
Marti wasn’t sure what that meant but she stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the pristine white picket fence that surrounded the front yard of the flamboyantly painted residence anyway.
Noah opened the gate and waited for Marti to go ahead of him, closing the gate behind them once they were both within the perimeter. Then they went side by side up onto the porch.
The front door was open so he knocked on the frame of the screen door and called, “Emmalina? It’s Noah.”
“Come in, sweetheart! Come in! I’m in the kitchen,” a lilting voice called back.
Noah opened the screen door for Marti and she entered a tiny living room decorated in dated furniture that didn’t at all reflect the bold color choice on the outside of the house. He led Marti to the tiny kitchen.
“What do I smell?” he asked, smiling.
“You know…” was the answer from the woman who turned to them when t
hey joined her.
Emmalina was tiny. At least three inches under five feet tall, she was roly-poly, her well-lined face was made-up with slightly too much blush, her white hair was styled like a cotton-candy bubble around her head and she was dressed in sky blue knit pants and a flowered blouse of the same hue, with an apron protecting the front of her.
“Tamales!” Noah said when she held up a platter of them to show him what was causing the delicious aroma they’d walked into. Then to Marti he said, “Emmalina’s homemade tamales are straight from heaven.”
“And all for you today, for coming to see me.”
Noah bent over and kissed the chubby cheek of the elderly woman.
Then he said, “This is Marti Grayson, Emmalina, Theresa’s granddaughter.”
“Oh, so pretty! Make this one share his tamales with you.”
“I will,” Marti assured her with a laugh.
“Let’s you and me sit while I wrap them up,” Emmalina suggested to Marti, motioning to the small kitchen table pushed against one wall. “But you, Noah, I need a favor from.”
“Anything.”
“My big spoon fell behind the stove yesterday. Can you move it out and get it for me?”
“I think I can do that,” he said.
Emmalina went to the kitchen table and set the platter of tamales there, pulling out a vinyl chair for Marti to sit on one side of the table with her back to the wall, while Emmalina sat just around the corner with her back to Noah, meticulously wrapping each tamale in foil.
It made it impossible for Marti to look at Emmalina without Noah also being in her line of vision.
He was dressed in jeans and a red polo shirt that accentuated his broad shoulders and muscular arms. Marti had been aware of every detail since the minute she’d opened the door to greet him tonight, but when all of those well-toned muscles began to flex to work the heavy stove away from the facing wall, she couldn’t tear her gaze away.
Oh, what this guy did to her! She couldn’t keep from thinking about him. And since he’d kissed her again, she hadn’t been able to stop reliving it and daydreaming about it. And now the mere sight of him doing something as simple as moving a stove was making her temperature rise about twenty degrees. Forget about concentrating on anything else—she just couldn’t do it…
Finally he finished and joined them at the table. As he pulled his chair over it occurred to Marti that this kind of…obsession, she supposed, had never happened with Jack.
Certainly she’d thought he was great-looking. But she’d never found herself lost in nothing but the sight of him the way she so frequently did with Noah.
Even though she hadn’t actually been conscious of it, this must have been what was going on in Denver, she thought, and why she’d been susceptible enough to Noah to spend that night with him at the Expo.
But why did he have this effect on her?
Maybe it was because she’d grown up with Jack. She’d known him as a boy, as a teenager, then as a man. They’d been so familiar with each other that nothing about it had ever struck her dumb the way everything about Noah seemed to. Maybe it was just the novelty of Noah. It was the only explanation she could come up with.
“Isn’t that right, Marti?”
She had absolutely no idea what Noah had said that he wanted confirmation for. None.
“Uh-huh,” she muttered. Neither Noah nor Emmalina seemed to find fault with her mumbled response, but Marti knew she had to get with the program and put concerted effort into focusing her wayward attention.
“I wanted to talk to you about my grandmother,” she said as soon as there was a lull in the chitchat between Noah and Emmalina. “Noah said you remembered her?”
“Young Theresa—I remember her well. She needed someone to take her in—just a teenager with no one to look after her, her only living relative too ill to help her right away. My Charles and I talked and talked about her coming to stay with us.”
“But she didn’t,” Marti said.
“No. Times were hard and a clergyman’s pay was a pittance to feed and support our family on, so we waited, hoping someone closer to her would be able to help. Then, just when it seemed that we should offer, Hector Tyson and his wife Gloria invited her to live with them until she could go to her sick aunt.”
The elderly woman frowned and shook her head. “In retrospect, Charles and I regretted that we hadn’t offered her our home. In fact, it tormented Charles.”
“Why?” Marti asked.
Emmalina didn’t answer that and Marti could see that she was hesitant. She thought that some background on her grandmother might persuade her, so she said, “Gram mentioned that she went to see you and your first husband—the minister in Northbridge at the time. That’s why I asked Noah to bring me to meet you. Whatever you and your husband said to her made a big impression.”
“Oh, dear…” Emmalina muttered as if it disturbed her to discover that.
Marti went on. “Gram is scattered in her thinking—she has emotional problems and some dementia on top of it, so it’s hard to get a clear picture of what it is from her past that has her tied up in knots now. But it seems to have something to do with whatever it was she went to you and your husband to talk about. It has to do with Hector Tyson. But Gram said he told her she couldn’t tell anyone and that you and your husband said the same thing, that your husband told her she had to do what was right even if it wasn’t what was right for her. We want to help Gram—she keeps saying she wants us to get back what Hector took from her—but we haven’t been able to figure out what that is and we wondered if you could fill us in.”
Emmalina wrapped the last two tamales before she said, “I suppose I can tell you what Theresa told me.” But there was obvious reluctance in her tone. “The afternoon she came to see Charles he was on an errand and while Theresa waited for him I sat with her, gave her tea and tried to just comfort her—she was so upset my heart went out to her—”
“When exactly was this?” Marti interrupted. “Was it soon after her parents died or later?”
“Later,” Emmalina said, going to a cupboard for a paper sack, which she brought back to the table. As she put the tamales into the sack, she said, “This was a few months before she left town—it was in early autumn, a warm day, but Theresa was wearing a big jacket, holding it closed around her as if she was cold, and I couldn’t get her to take it off.”
“So she’d been with the Tysons for several months.”
“Oh, yes. Since just after the holidays—she was staying with a friend’s family through Christmas and Charles and I said that if she didn’t have another place to go when the first of the year had come and gone, we’d try to make room for her. But that was when Hector stepped in. So yes, she’d been with the Tysons for several months.”
“And she was upset the day she came to see your husband? The day you talked to her…” Marti said to remind the elderly woman what she’d been saying when Marti had interrupted her to get the timeline straight.
“Fidgety, weepy, nervous, distraught—that kind of upset, not just crying for her parents.”
“What was she upset over?” Marti asked, noting that Noah was listening but letting her do the talking.
“I don’t know for sure,” Emmalina hedged. “She didn’t tell me specifics and whatever Theresa told my husband later was between the two of them—what his flock came to him with Charles held in confidence even from me. But what Theresa did say to me before she spoke to Charles was that she was in love with someone she shouldn’t be. That the man she was in love with was married.”
“Hector Tyson?” Marti asked.
“She didn’t tell me that,” Emmalina hedged again, clearly not wanting to name the man when she didn’t know for sure that was who Theresa had been in love with.
“But that’s who you thought it was,” Marti persisted.
The older woman didn’t deny it, she merely continued, “Whoever it was, Theresa said that he wanted her to do something she didn’t
want to do, that he was telling her it was best for her to take the money he was offering her and use it to go away and start fresh. I told her that maybe that was best. That in my opinion she should do whatever she needed to in order not to break up a marriage. Then Charles came home and took her into his office and that’s all I know.”
Marti had the sense that there was more despite Emmalina’s conclusion. So she said, “And after that?”
Emmalina shrugged and shook her head again, sadly. “Poor Theresa came running from Charles’s office after about an hour, crying her little heart out. Charles found me in the kitchen and said he thought we should have Theresa move in with us right away—that day. By that point, he was as agitated as Theresa had been, so even without him giving me a reason, I agreed. I said I’d get a bed ready in Lila’s room, and Charles went to get Theresa. But when he came home, he was alone. He said he couldn’t convince her.”
“And was that it?” Marti queried.
“Charles didn’t give up. For more than a week he went every day to see Theresa at the Tysons. He was determined that she shouldn’t go on staying with them. He even tried to get the nurse in town to have Theresa stay with her since she didn’t want to stay with us. But Theresa never would go anywhere else, and finally Hector Tyson banned Charles from going to see Theresa—or even speaking to her—anymore.”
“And then she left Northbridge,” Marti said.
“In a few months. But without ever coming to either Charles or me again. The whole thing left my Charles tormented by guilt. He didn’t say it, but I knew it was because we hadn’t taken Theresa in from the start. Then, the day she left Northbridge, Charles said that he hoped the Lord didn’t hold us responsible for ruining that girl’s life.”
Chapter Nine
E mmalina’s tamales looked and smelled so good that by the time Marti and Noah left the elderly woman’s house nothing sounded better for their dinner. It was Noah’s suggestion that they use them as the main course for a picnic in the Town Square.
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