by Liz Isaacson
He’d texted at five minutes past midnight, and Bree smiled at her device. A rush of love moved through her, and she almost couldn’t believe it. It was the almost that surprised her the most, because even a couple of weeks ago, she wouldn’t have believed it at all.
She got up and padded to the door, opening it and startling as a bunch of blue balloons came into the room with her as she pulled the door toward her. “Oh.” The balloons had been tied to her doorknob, and they all had variations of “happy birthday” printed on them.
A laugh started low in her throat, because she knew who was behind this. Wes.
A card flapped on the strings of the balloons, and she reached for it. A couple of dogs sat on the front of the card, and Wes had written inside, I’m glad you were born, Bree. You make me so happy. Happy birthday.
She pressed the card to her chest, because she wasn’t sure she’d ever made anyone happy. At least not long term. Maybe she made Colton happy when she made chocolate cake. Or maybe she made the guests at the lodge happy when she did an amazing horseback riding tour. But to be the actual cause of true happiness for someone? Bree had never been told that before.
She went down the hallway to the kitchen, where she found a silver tray sitting on the table. It held a giant-sized box of her favorite cold cereal, a bag of her favorite coffee, a new mug with a red bow tied around it, and a bowl big enough to hold the whole box of cereal.
She giggled again when she picked up a little card that said, Milk’s in the fridge, sweetheart. Enjoy your birthday breakfast. ~Wes
“That man has got it bad for you,” Elise said as she entered the kitchen.
“Yeah,” Bree said, not even bothering to deny it. She smiled at her best friend. “Did you let him in the cabin?”
“Yes,” she said. “And it was late, too, so he owes me big time.”
Bree laughed as she stepped over to the fridge to get her milk. “What are you going to have him do to pay you back?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” Elise started making coffee with their regular grounds. “But it’s going to be something huge.” She grinned at Bree and set the coffee pot in its place before she hugged Bree. “Happy birthday, my friend.”
“Thanks, Elise.” She held tightly to her friend, hoping with everything in her that today would be the best birthday of her life.
That darkness teemed inside her, and she decided maybe she’d let a little bit of it out. “Have you gotten the mail in the past couple of days?”
“Yeah, I got it yesterday,” she said, nodding toward the living room through the doorway. “It’s on the table where we always put it.”
“Thanks.” Bree sat down to eat her cereal, the call of the mail intensifying with every minute that went by. But she wanted to see if she had a birthday card from her parents without Elise in the cabin, and Elise took her time nursing her cup of coffee.
Finally, she said, “I’ll see you later. I have to run to the nursery for some new shrubs this morning.”
“Good luck,” Bree said, and she waited until Elise closed the front door behind her before she practically leapt from her chair and strode into the living room. Sure enough, a pile of mail sat on the table where they usually put packages and bills and receipts.
Bree started sifting through it, though she spotted the dull rose-colored envelope in the stack poking above the other legal-sized mail. She got to it eventually, and she saw her mother’s handwriting.
Her heart squeezed tight, and her lungs tightened. She flipped the envelope over and slid her fingernail under the flap. It popped open easily, and she pulled out the card. Flowers covered the front, and Bree’s emotions knotted.
Still, she flipped open the card. The first tears appeared in her eyes when she saw more of her mother’s handwriting. The familiar cash, placed there from her father. She sucked in a breath and set the card on the table, as if she’d display it for the foreseeable future for all who came to the cabin to see.
She wouldn’t, and she picked up the card and took it to her bedroom, opening the drawer in her dresser where she kept anything that had come from Vermont. She lovingly placed the card on top of last year’s and looked down at everything that represented a sliver of herself she didn’t allow to bloom. After a few moments, she closed the drawer and contained the darkness.
She wanted this birthday to be amazing, and she couldn’t deal with twenty years of emotions in a single morning. She knew she needed to deal with it soon, though, as the turmoil inside her had been boiling for weeks now.
But not on her birthday.
Chapter Twenty
Wes put his fingers on the strings where his instructor had shown him. “I can’t hear it,” he said, strumming the guitar.
“You feel it,” Gentry said. “Your fingers will know it’s right.”
Wes wanted to be able to hear that it was right, though. He kept strumming, and he hummed along with the song she’d given him for homework last week. When he got to the riff, his fingers stumbled, and Gentry held up her hand.
“Here, you have to pick the strings,” she said. “You can’t just slide along the strings.”
“I need to learn how to do that.”
Gentry picked up her guitar and showed him, but Wes didn’t think his thick fingers could do what her more slender ones could. He tried, and he realized he was going to need a lot more practice in order to pick like that.
“You’ll get it,” she said, smiling at him. “Remember, you’re two months into lessons. You’ve made a lot of great progress, Wes.” She set her guitar in the stand and stood up. “I’m going to keep you on this song for the week, and I want you to review last week’s pages too.” She wrote in her notebook, and then added, “I’m giving four more pages in your book too. You should be able to do them, since there’s no new notes. Just trickier rhythms.”
“All right,” Wes said. He laid his guitar in its case and buckled it closed. He accepted his notebook from Gentry, thanked for her lesson, and headed outside. The leaves had started to turn into glorious shades of red, orange, and yellow, and Wes absolutely adored autumn.
But he didn’t have time to admire the beauty of it today. He had dinner to pick up, and a table-for-two to set, and an obsessive need to lay out Bree’s presents exactly right. He went home first and scrubbed the kitchen from top to bottom, loaded his dishwasher and started it, and draped a white cloth over the dining room table he’d bought when he moved into this house.
He set silverware and plates, put unlit candles on the table that he’d light later, and a couple of blood-red napkins. A vase of red roses went in the middle of the table, and he’d move those once he and Bree sat down to eat, because he wouldn’t be able to see her past them.
With that done, he got out the things he’d bought for her birthday. The pickle jar full of his tip money got a bright purple Christmas bow stuck to the top of it, and he set it at Bree’s place at the table.
The other gift was definitely smaller than a shoebox, and Wes cracked open the jewelry box to look at the pendant one more time. The silver chain held a teardrop-shaped gem in a gloriously bright pink—a pink sapphire. He’d paid a lot for it, but he’d already removed the price tag from the chain so Bree wouldn’t see it.
She loved pink, and he couldn’t wait to see this gem resting against her collarbone.
He closed the box and put the black velvet into a bigger box, taped it closed, and wrapped that one in silver paper. He tied a pink bow around it, wondering why his fingers were so clumsy.
After far too long, he got the bow to lay semi-decently, and he put the box on Bree’s plate on the table.
“Time to get the food.” Wes drove to town to do just that, taking the foil trays back to his house and sliding them into the oven at the temperature he’d been instructed to use. Then, though he’d showered that morning, he jumped in again to be his freshest for Bree.
As he washed his hair, he couldn’t believe the lengths he was going to for this woman. He’d
like to think he treated all of his girlfriends with as much care and thought, but he knew that would be somewhat of a lie.
Bree was special, and Wes had been praying for the past few days to know precisely how he felt about her, and that he’d be able to act on those feelings. She wouldn’t allow him to drive up the canyon to pick her up, and instead, she was coming to his house at six.
Freshly showered, shaved, deodorized, and in his best jeans and a dark blue polo, Wes reached for his cowboy hat. Bree had told him on Sunday that she loved him in his cowboy hat.
Loved him.
But then she’d said that she sure did like seeing his hair too. So he hesitated before putting on the hat, then decided he wanted to wear it, at least in the beginning. He could take it off to kiss her hello and then hang it by the front door.
Satisfied with his plan, he went down the hall to the kitchen, where everything seemed to be ready. He pulled the food out of the oven and set it on the stovetop, then turned around, searching for the next thing to be done.
But there was nothing to be done. So he went out to the front porch and sat in a chair he’d put there. Actually, Cindi, his interior designer had put the patio set on the front porch, and Wes couldn’t say he hated it. He’d sat there plenty of times in the month he’d lived in the house, as it had quickly become one of his favorite places to think.
Bree’s car pulled into his driveway a few minutes before six, and Wes couldn’t help the smile in his whole soul. He knew in that moment that he was all the way in love with her, and that knowledge kept him solidly in his seat.
She primped for a moment, then turned off the car and got out. “I see you up there,” she called to him, and Wes chuckled as he stood.
“I wasn’t trying to hide.”
“Yeah, okay.” She came toward him, and he simply drank her in. She wore a cute dress with a bright, splashy floral pattern in pink, purple, and blue against a white background. She wore a tight, white shirt under the spaghetti straps of the dress to cover her shoulders, and Wes mourned that.
He met her at the top of the steps and took her face in both of his hands. “Oh, you are exactly what my soul needed today.” He took off the cowboy hat and handed it to her. “I think you liked me without this.”
She took the hat. “Is that your gift to me?” She grinned at the hat and then him, plenty of flirtatiousness coming through in those pretty eyes.
“Not even close,” he said, lowering his head so he could kiss her. He poured everything he had into this kiss, and he hoped she could feel it. “Happy birthday, baby,” he whispered.
“Thank you,” she said, her mouth very close to his still. “But not baby, okay? That’s not a good endearment for me. I mean, I’m thirty-seven today. Not anywhere near a baby.”
Wes chuckled and drew her into his chest, wondering if he could tell her now that he loved her. “How about gorgeous?”
“Yes, I think we’ve established that I like that one.” She stepped out of his arms. “Are we going to dinner?”
“Nope,” he said, leading her toward the front door. “I brought dinner to us.” He opened the door and let her go inside first.
“Ooh, fancy,” she said in a false accent as she went inside. “Something smells good.”
“It’s your favorite,” he said. “Italian.” He followed her through the living room, thinking he’d follow her anywhere. “But let’s do presents first. They’re on the table there. I think you’ll know your spot.”
She stopped a few feet away from the table, and Wes sidled up beside her. “What’s in the jar?” she asked.
“My tips,” he said. “From the lodge.”
“Wes, I said—”
“You said no car, no house, and no vacuum cleaner.” He leaned closer to her. “I’ve been planning that one for months, Bree. You can’t refuse it. I’ve been keeping it in a pickle jar, for crying out loud.”
She looked at him, but he kept his focus on the purple bow on top of the jar. “How much is in it?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “Whatever people gave me for carrying their suitcases. Since you said that’s all you’ve seen of my hard work, that should tell you how hardworking I am.”
“Wes, that’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” He grinned. “It’s yours. Don’t you want to open the box?”
She did, he could tell. She walked toward the table and picked up the silver-wrapped package. “I love pink,” she said, untying the pink bow in only a few seconds. He watched his hard work disintegrate into a ribbon, and then delight spread through him as she tore the paper off the box and found a bland, shipping container.
She glanced at him, and Wes inched closer so he could see her better. She un-taped the top of the box and then giggled. “You disguised a jewelry box.”
“Guilty,” he said.
She pulled out the black velvet box and shot him a nervous look. She didn’t ask what it was though, and she cracked the lid. She sucked in a breath and held it. “Wes.”
“It’s pink,” he said, enjoying the delight in her eyes. She looked at him, a bit of shock in her expression too. “A pink sapphire, in fact. They’re very rare.” He took the box gently from her. “Like you.” He removed the pendant and said, “It’ll look great with this dress. You want to put it on?”
“Yes, please,” she said, brushing her hair off the back of her neck. Wes gently lifted the gem over her head, his pulse hammering as his thick fingers worked the clasp at the back of her neck.
He finally got it, and relief streamed through him. “Got it.”
She turned, and Wes looked at the pretty gem resting against her chest. She reached up and touched it. “I love it.”
“It’s beautiful,” he said.
“Thank you, Wes.” Bree’s voice held so much emotion, and he lifted his eyes to hers.
“Happy birthday.”
“This is the best birthday I’ve ever had.”
“Is it?”
She nodded and embraced him, holding him so tightly that Wes felt loved and cherished and needed. And Wes hadn’t really been needed for a while now, and it sure did feel nice to be useful again.
“Okay, dinner,” she said, stepping back and brushing at her eyes. “I could use some pasta about now.”
“There’s garlic bread too,” Wes said, covering over his own emotions with wit. He spun toward the stove and got the food uncovered. “You wanna bring over the plates?”
“Yes,” Bree said, and she appeared at his side a few seconds later. “You got fettuccini Alfredo.”
“With a side of marinara,” he said. “Because you like the half and half mix.” He served her what he knew she liked, and she took the plate from him. But she didn’t go back to the table.
“Wes, I think you’re as close to perfect as a man can get.”
He put a piece of garlic bread on his plate. “That’s because I’ve been hiding all my flaws from you.” He grinned at her and added another meatball to his spaghetti.
“You told me you wouldn’t hide things from me,” she teased as they walked back to the table together. He put his plate down and turned back for the matches. He lit the candles and turned out most of the other lights to set the mood.
“You know my real name,” he said. “And everything worth knowing about me. So I’ve kept it a secret that I don’t do my dishes every day. Trust me, this is stuff you don’t want to know until you’re helplessly in love with me.” He laughed. “Then the dirty dishes won’t matter as much.”
Bree shook her head as she laughed with him. They started eating, and Wes asked her what else she’d done for her birthday, if she liked her cereal he’d left for her, and why this birthday had been better than the others.
She’d sent him pictures of her with the cereal and with the balloons, so he already knew she’d liked them and appreciated them. In fact, he’d never seen her so happy before.
She talked about the cupcakes Willie had brought in to the employment office, and
that they’d gone to ChixPix for lunch before she went up to the lodge. Sophia had made a cake for Bree, and everyone at the lodge had sung to her and given her gifts too.
“You have a good support system here,” Wes said. “I’m glad about that.” He really wanted to ask her about her family, and maybe now was the time. She certainly seemed like she was in a good mood and might actually answer him.
“It’s nice to have friends,” she said.
“And what about your family?” he asked. “Do they, uh, send anything for your birthday?”
Bree’s expression flashed with alarm, but she barely hesitated before saying, “My parents sent a card.”
“That’s great,” he said. “Siblings?”
She shook her head, but her mouth had tightened into a very tight line. She hadn’t lied to him in the past, which meant Wes had never seen this look on her face before. Something stung deep in Wes’s heart, and it grew and pulsed.
Did he push this?
Help me, he prayed, and he immediately knew it was time to get some answers from Bree. He’d fallen in love with her. Was he going to live the rest of his life with lies about her family, never knowing the truth?
“Bree,” he said as gently as he could. “I feel like you just lied to me.”
“I—I can’t.”
“Sweetheart,” he said, laying down his fork. “It’s just me. Remember how I said I wanted to know all the good, the bad, and the ugly? I still do. I’m not going to judge you.” He took a deep breath, ready to lay it all on the line. “I’m in love with you, Bree Richards. Whatever you say isn’t going to change that.”
Panic ran through her expression and she lifted her napkin from her lap and put it on her plate. He hadn’t served the cake Annie had made for her yet. He hadn’t held her close and danced with her in his kitchen. There was so much more he wanted this birthday to be for her, and he felt it and saw it all slipping away from him.
Bree was retreating from him, and Wes felt his whole chest start to cave in.
“Bree,” he said again. “Please. You can trust me.”