by Liz Isaacson
“They already know,” she said.
“What?” He hadn’t heard anything, but Boone wasn’t really a regular in the gossip circles around Three Rivers.
“Joanne knew the morning we went to the pancake house.”
Ah, the pancake house. Sandy. He’d forgotten about that, as they hadn’t spent any more mornings eating breakfast together. They had been at the dog park, holding hands, and church together too.
“Does that bother you?” she asked.
“Why would it bother me?” He went with her as she moved toward the patio furniture on a bricked in area. “You’re the one who wanted to keep everything separate.”
“I thought it would make things at the clinic awkward.” She shrugged and sat on a bench covered in blue and orange pillows.
He settled next to her and lifted her wrist to his lips. “But it hasn’t.”
They gazed into her backyard, with its tall, private fences, until she said, “Do you ever worry about what other people think of you?”
“Sure,” he said, wondering where this line of thought had come from. “I think everyone does.”
“You seem really confident. I wish I felt like that.”
“Is this about Pastor Scott pressuring you to sing in the choir?” He couldn’t think of much else she needed to worry about in that department.
“I just don’t think I can do it.”
“Maybe you could try singing for me,” he said.
“That’s absolutely not going to happen.” She pulled her hand away and stood. “I need to get the dogs.”
“Nicole.”
She paused at the French doors, half-twisted back to him, but didn’t fully look at him. “I’ve already heard you sing at the clinic, remember?”
“That’s not really singing.” She entered the house, her decision obviously final.
Boone sighed and appreciated the beauty of this oasis. But he wanted more than external beauty. He liked Nicole—at least as much as he knew about her. But he wanted her to open up to him, really be with him.
“Well,” he said to the garden. “Maybe turkey chili will do the trick.”
Chapter Twelve
Nicole puttered around the house on Saturday morning, vacuuming and picking up clothes and shoes she’d left out all week. She’d finally invited Boone over, finally had him enter her quaint cottage. He’d filled it with his broad shoulders and tall frame, his hearty laugher and quick wit.
He’d kissed her in the kitchen after she fed him, in the living room before saying good-night. He seemed genuinely interested in her, and that was the real problem.
No one had ever seemed interested in her.
“There’s definitely something wrong with him,” she muttered as she ran a duster across her entertainment center. But what it was, she hadn’t been able to figure out yet. And she’d been trying, digging up anything she could about him. She’d come up with nothing.
He really did go fishing or horseback riding on the weekends sometimes. He hung out with Dylan and they watched sports. He was a great veterinarian. Everyone in Three Rivers seemed to love him, even the motel manager who had a reputation for not liking anyone.
He had no criminal record, and the only flaw she could find was some speeding tickets—which he’d paid—from years ago down in Hill Country.
“That’s it,” she said to the silent house. Taz lifted his head like she was talking to him. “He’s too perfect. How am I supposed to live with that?”
Her prior opinion of his arrogance had vanished the more she’d gotten to know him—and the more she’d realized how much her attitude toward him wasn’t warranted, that it should be directed at her siblings who’d abandoned her in Three Rivers. Or to her situation in caring for her mother. Or to her own lack of training and financial ability to buy the animal hospital.
She shook her head and started singing the song that had been in her head that morning. “Somewhere, over the rainbow….” She really let herself belt out the lyrics, singing in the clear, contained voice she never let loose, never let anyone else hear.
A measure of joy infused her soul as she freed herself from the box where everything got held so tightly. The song finished, and some of her happiness ebbed away with the last note still hanging in the air.
Why can’t I sing like that in front of people? she wondered. Pastor Scott had cautioned her about not using her talents. Not sharing them with the world. Nicole felt like she’d never shared anything of worth with the world.
“Do you think God gave you this gift only to hide it?” the pastor had asked.
Nicole had been thinking about his words ever since. She’d been going to choir practice every Wednesday night and every Sunday morning. But she simply could not get herself up to the choir seats when it was time to sing in church, with real people sitting in the rows, listening.
One reason was because Boone had been attending church with her for the past few weeks. She still sat in the third row, sometimes with her father, sometimes not. Boone didn’t come early, and he slipped onto the end of the bench beside her like a phantom.
Afterward, he always wanted to go to the park, hold her hand, and talk about what Pastor Scott had said.
She stepped onto the back patio and breathed in the fragrance from her fruit trees, everything simple in the yard. She could brace tree limbs, no problem. She could fertilize a spot of earth where nothing grew. She could look at a rose bush and see what was wrong with it.
Why couldn’t she diagnose her own ailments and fix them? She sat on the bench where she and Boone had eaten turkey chili on Thursday night, trying to find the scent of his cologne in the cushions next to her. It wasn’t there, but his challenge to sing for him still lingered in her ears.
Help me to trust him, she prayed, her eyes drifting closed. She couldn’t conjure up any more words to add to the prayer, but she didn’t need more.
She knew what she needed to do. Now she just needed to do it.
“After I check on Mama.” She sighed, stood, and left her backyard to the summer sunshine, the thought of trusting her singing to Boone almost more than she could bear.
Another Sunday passed. Another choir practice. Two more Wednesdays. Everything in her life seemed plugged up. She liked holding Boone’s hand, and kissing him, and spending time with him and his dogs.
But things felt like they’d gone as far as they were going to go. She felt stalled, like maybe his interest in her had waned now that he’d spent quite a bit of time with her.
Thursday came again, their longest day. Boone leaned in her doorway, knocking against the frame. “Dinner tonight? My place?”
She glanced up, shock traveling through her that he’d blatantly asked in front of Joanne, who sat no less than six feet from where he stood, a clipboard at his side. She needed to get over her phobia of other people knowing about their relationship. She wasn’t embarrassed about it, and the entire town knew anyway.
“Your place?” She stood and came around her desk, this invitation to his personal space new. “You don’t cook.”
“No, I don’t. But I checked on that new open oven pizza place, and they’re open late. I know you like pepperoni with extra cheese.” He singsonged the last two words, a smile making his good looks downright delicious.
She returned it and pressed one palm against his chest. “Sounds great.”
He leaned forward and jerked back. “Great. When’s your lunch?”
“Half an hour?”
He looked at his clipboard. “No can do. An hour?”
“I can wait another hour to eat.”
He grinned, brushed her hair back in a tender gesture, and left her office. Joanne met her eye, a knowing smile on her face. Nicole returned it, the song in her head now louder than ever.
When a man loves a woman….
But Boone did not love her. She knew, like she knew the sky was blue.
She was still struggling to believe he liked her, but all the signs pointed to the fac
t that he did.
One step at a time, she told herself and went back to work.
She pulled into Boone’s driveway on the north end of town, her stomach a knotted mess. She’d always thought him way out of her league, and this house proved it. Sure, she’d been here before, but she’d been distracted by the huge trucks and the other blonde woman.
The house had a stone and stucco exterior only found in the newer, nicest houses in Three Rivers. A double-car garage, and a yard he clearly paid someone else to maintain. She knew, because it held no personal touch in the mound of flowers in the front yard and the single birch tree near the back fence.
Go on, she told herself when Boone opened the front door and stepped onto the stoop. She’d been coaching herself a lot lately, trying to do things she’d never done before, because she’d never dated a man like Boone before.
She got out of the car and put a smile on her face. “I’m so nervous,” she admitted as she went up the four steps and entered his arms.
“Why?”
“This feels like a big step,” she said. “Coming to your place.”
“I’m not going to bite,” he teased. “And the pizza’s already here.”
She stepped back and smoothed down her scrubs. “I want to do something.” She swallowed, her throat as dry as the Sahara. When had she swallowed cotton?
But she needed to do this, do something. She wanted things to move forward with Boone, and she felt like she was the one holding them back.
“Should we eat first?” He gestured toward the house and turned to enter it.
She went with him, trying not to notice the tile, the hardwood floors, the granite, the clean, crisp, contemporary lines.
“No,” she said, her tongue so thick in her mouth. “If we eat first, I won’t do it.”
Boone leaned against the counter next to two pizza boxes. “All right.”
She blinked at him, the song she’d chosen to sing for him rebounding from one side of her mind to the other.
He folded his arms and smiled. “Should I keep waiting?”
“Yes,” she snapped, her nerves and her hunger making her patience thin. “Do you have any water?”
He pushed away from the counter and retrieved a water bottle from the fridge. He passed it to her with a sexy look on his face that nearly undid her resolve.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do,” he said. “But I’m intrigued.”
She took a couple of gulps and set the water bottle next to him. “There.” It tipped but didn’t fall over and she withdrew from him a few paces. Drew a deep breath. Kept her back to him.
And started singing.
Chapter Thirteen
Boone couldn’t believe the beautiful sound that flowed from Nicole’s body. She didn’t even seem to be trying, and he knew he’d never truly heard her sing around the clinic. That had been muttering. Maybe even just her normal speaking voice compared to the joy pouring from her.
He moved to stand in front of her, and he found the happiest expression in her eyes he’d ever seen on a human being. She finished the song, the last note still bouncing around his fourteen-foot ceilings.
He sucked in a breath, swept into her personal space, and took her face in his hands. He had no words to express how he was feeling in that moment. So he didn’t speak. He just kissed her, kissed her, kissed her.
As he did, he fell a little bit more in love with her. He embraced the emotions, because he’d never truly felt them before, and he liked the way they made him feel warm, and happy, and like he didn’t have to win a marathon or save an entire herd of cattle to be worthwhile.
“You are magnificent,” he whispered when he pulled away. He smiled down at her, letting everything he felt for her stream from him.
“I have terrible stage fright.” Her words barely reached his ears.
Boone stepped back and around her to the pizza. He flipped open the box and lifted out a piece of all-meat pizza. “You know, I don’t think you do.”
She sidled up next to him and glared. “Oh yeah? You know how I feel now?”
He took a bite of his pizza, the conversation he’d had just before she arrived bouncing around in his brain. He needed to tell her about it, but this seemed more important. “Of course not,” he said. “But I think you’re so used to being overlooked that you think you deserve it.”
He bit off the corner of his pizza and chewed while she gaped at him. He didn’t want to drive her away, and heaven knew he didn’t like it when his father tried to tell him how he felt, as if Boone couldn’t make sense of his own emotions.
He leaned closer, hoping she heard what he was going to say. “But I see you, Nicole. I always have, even when you weren’t very nice to me.” He took another piece of pizza, put it on his plate, and parked himself on the couch in front of the TV.
He’d left the conversation open for her to really tell him why she had treated him badly in the beginning, but she didn’t. She’d pushed through one door, but expecting her to throw open two was probably too much for a single evening.
He sighed and said, “You deserve to be up in that choir stand, singing the solos.” He bypassed the sports channels in favor of the cooking show he knew Nicole liked.
Nicole joined him, way down at the other end of the couch from where he wanted her. “I don’t think you know me as well as you think you do.”
“I know how you like your coffee in the morning, and that it’s not the same in the afternoon. I know you eat a chicken chop salad for lunch every Tuesday. I know you’re worried about your mama and feel absolutely worthless to help her or your dad. Should I go on?”
She gestured for him to do so, as if the things he knew about her were easily obtained. But Boone had probed, observed, and listened to learn everything he had about Nicole.
“I know you have a short temper, but hardly anyone gets to see it. I know—”
“Stop it.” She put her pizza on the end table next to the couch and picked up the throw pillow his designer had matched with the furniture. “Stop—it—right—now.” She punctuated each word with a whack from the pillow, a huge smile on her face.
“I’m apparently the only one on the receiving end of the temper.” He grabbed the pillow on her next swing and laughed, pulling her onto his lap. “I’ll admit, I kinda like it.”
She squirmed in his arms, but he held her fast. “You do?”
The moment lengthened, and Boone didn’t know how to make her believe that he liked her. Kissing her didn’t seem to do it. Maybe saying it outright would.
“Yes, Nicole. I like you.”
A smile bloomed on her face slowly, like one of her midnight orchids she’d told him about. He saw each ray of happiness as it touched her face, and he ran his fingers through her hair.
Her eyes closed, and Boone touched his lips to hers for only a moment. “I got a phone call a few minutes ago I wanted to talk to you about.” His stomach rejected the food though he hadn’t eaten for hours, and he forced himself to lay very still.
Nicole opened her eyes and looked at him, a hint of anxiety in her expression and her voice when she asked, “Who called?”
“A veterinary friend of mine—Doctor Drew. He’s starting a veterinary practice in Amarillo, and he wants me to be his partner.”
Her beautiful eyes rounded and her earlier emotion bled into shock. Her hands stilled on his shoulders. “What are you going to do?”
He exhaled. “Two months ago, I would’ve been packed by now and on the road in the morning.”
“You don’t like your job here?”
“I love my job here.” He kissed her quick on the lips. “Before though, the office administrator would’ve helped me pack in the blink of an eye, glad to be rid of me.”
Regret lanced through her expression. “I thought you were making my job more difficult on purpose.”
“Why would I do that?” he asked as she relaxed into his embrace, thinking he was finally going to get some answers.
“I could barely read what you wrote half the time.”
“That’s because I have dyslexia.” Boone had been wondering when he’d tell her, and the words had just appeared, the conversation easier than he’d thought.
She straightened again, her eyes searching his. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
“You’re the only person outside of my family who knows.” He stroked her hair away from her face again, and then again. “Do you want to help me pack and boot me to Amarillo?”
He prayed with everything inside him that she’d say no. For the first time in his life, he felt like he’d found somewhere he wanted to stay, with someone he wanted to stay with.
She shook her head, which sent relief cascading through him. “No.” She slipped off his lap but stayed next to him on the couch. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He sighed and picked up the discarded pillow, replacing it on the end of the couch where Nicole had originally sat. “It’s a good opportunity, but I’m—I think I’m finally happy here.”
“You weren’t before?”
“There was this Nazi office administrator who—”
“All right.” She looked at him and laughed. “I was really awful, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, you were.” He finished his first slice of pizza. “And I think there’s more to it than just transferred anger from your siblings, for the official record.”
“You think you’re so smart. That’s one reason for my attitude right there.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so. I’ve never seen you give anyone as hard of a time as me.”
“That’s because you took my job.”
All the air rushed out of the Boone’s lungs. “What? How? There wasn’t a veterinarian in town before I came here. The clinic was going to close.”
She folded her hands in her lap and looked at them. “Exactly. I’d been taking online business classes, and I was going to buy the animal hospital.”
Boone had no idea what to say. “No one told me that. There wasn’t another offer on the table when I offered on the clinic.”