Thirty Days to Win His Wife

by Andrea Laurence

  Her dark gaze flicked over his face for a moment, and she looked intently into his eyes. “I’m not in love with you, Tyler.”

  She was lying. He could tell she was lying. Her fingers were rubbing anxiously at the blanket, the same way she used to fidget with a pencil or pen in class. But why would she lie about something like that? About something so important?

  Tyler took a deep breath and sighed, the fight draining out of him. Even if she did love him, for whatever reason, she didn’t want him. Nothing had changed over the years. She hadn’t wanted him when they were sixteen and she didn’t really want him now. The last thing Tyler wanted to do was force himself on a woman who didn’t want to be with him. This wasn’t the first time he’d fallen short where a woman was concerned. If she wanted him gone, he’d go. He had work in New York. A life there. An apartment. If there wasn’t a reason to be in Nashville, he didn’t want to stay another minute.

  “Okay,” he said with a sigh of resignation. “If that’s what you want. I’ll let the real estate agent know we’ll be out in a week or so and arrange the movers.”

  “I’ve called Natalie to come pick me up.”

  Tyler looked up at her. She didn’t even want him to drive her home? “Okay. Well, then, if there’s nothing else I can do for you, I won’t subject you to my presence any longer.”

  “Tyler...” Amelia began with a coddling tone he wasn’t in the mood to hear.

  “No, it’s fine. You want me gone. I’m gone.” He reached down and squeezed her hand, his eyes not able to meet hers. He didn’t want to see conflict there. That might give him hope, and if he knew Amelia well enough, he knew there was no hope. “Have your lawyer draw up the divorce paperwork and send it on when you’re ready. Feel better.”

  With those last words hanging in the air between them, he slipped into the hallway and let the door shut behind him. There, he slumped against the wall and dropped his head back, hard. His chest was so tight he could barely breathe, his hands aching to reach out for her and pull her into his arms. But he wouldn’t. He would forfeit for the first time in his life, because that was what she wanted.

  And in that moment, he realized it was because he loved her enough to give her what she wanted, even if it killed him to do it.

  * * *

  Amelia had thought their house was large with the two of them in it. Tyler had taken his personal things, some clothes and his laptop before she came home from the hospital. The rest, she assumed, the movers would pack up. The house had hardly been full before, but Tyler’s absence made it just that much emptier. When she was alone, it was like being locked in the Metropolitan Museum of Art at night. Room after room surrounded by eerie silence and unfamiliar shadows.

  The first night there alone hadn’t bothered her as much, but she hadn’t really been alone. Natalie had picked her up from the hospital and all the girls had met her at the house with reinforcements. They’d piled up in the bed and had pizza, wine and copious amounts of chocolate while watching a couple of sappy chick movies. It was an excellent distraction, and crying during the movies had been a much-needed outlet for all the emotions she hadn’t allowed herself to process yet.

  Tonight was her first night by herself. Gretchen had offered to come by, but Amelia had shooed her away. She could use some time by herself, and really, she was used to being alone. She’d always lived on her own. She wasn’t sure how living with Tyler for only a few weeks could make it feel as though somehow he’d always been there.

  He was back in New York now. He had texted her that much. Other than that, he had thankfully left her in peace. When she’d told him to leave, she hadn’t been sure he was going to. She’d seen the resistance in his pale blue eyes, the curl of his hands into fists at his sides. He’d wanted to fight, and for a moment, deep inside, she’d hoped he would. She’d lied when she said she didn’t love him, but she wasn’t about to admit to something like that when he wouldn’t do the same. If Tyler truly cared about her, and hadn’t just been sticking it out for the baby’s sake, he would’ve told her no. He would’ve proclaimed that he loved her and he wasn’t going anywhere no matter what.

  But he’d just walked away, confirming her worst fear. And breaking her heart.

  She’d lain in her hospital bed and sobbed after he’d left, only pulling herself together when she’d heard the nurse coming. Amelia had managed to hold the fragile pieces of herself together since then, but it was hard. In one day, she’d lost the man she loved, her best friend, her husband and their child. Despite the promises they’d made, Natalie was right. She really didn’t think their friendship would survive this, and that was what hurt the most. She had never felt so alone in her whole life.

  Amelia was standing in the kitchen, attempting to replicate Tyler’s hot cocoa, when she heard the buzzer on the gate. She made her way over to the panel by the door, where the screen showed a fuzzy image of her grandmother waiting impatiently to be let in.

  She had made the obligatory call to her parents and her sister the day before to tell them what was going on. One of them must have passed along the information to her grandmother and had dispatched her from Knoxville as soon as she could finish curling her hair.

  Amelia swallowed hard and pressed the button that would open the gates. She unlocked the front door and left it ajar as she ran back to the kitchen and pulled the milk off the stove before it boiled over. By the time she got back to the foyer, her paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Kennedy, was standing in the doorway.

  The woman had recently celebrated her eightieth birthday, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her. Amelia was a clone of her grandmother. Elizabeth’s flame-red hair was as bright as Amelia’s, but maintained now by a fine salon in Knoxville. Her dark eyes saw everything, with the thin curl of her lips giving away her wry sense of humor. She was sharp as a tack, as nimble as ever and drove her old Buick around like an Indy driver.

  The moment her grandmother saw her, she opened her arms up and waited. In an instant, whatever threads that were holding Amelia together snapped. She rushed into her grandmother’s arms and fell into hysterical tears.

  “I know, I know,” Elizabeth soothed, stroking Amelia’s hair and letting her tears soak through her sweater. When Amelia finally calmed down, her grandmother patted her back and said, “Let’s go to the kitchen, shall we? I think a time like this calls for a warm drink and something sweet. I, uh...” She looked through the various doorways. “Where is the kitchen? This place is enormous.”

  Amelia chuckled for the first time in a long while and took her grandmother’s hand, leading her through the maze of halls and rooms to the kitchen. Elizabeth’s eyes lit up when she saw the kitchen, reminding Amelia of her first day in the house. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Her grandmother nodded. “It’s amazing.” She went around opening drawers and investigating. “If this is any indication of the rest of the house, I’m moving in.”

  “It’s available for rent,” Amelia said with a sad tone in her voice. “The current occupants will be out by the end of the week.”

  Elizabeth spied the pot of cocoa on the stove. “You sit down. I’m going to finish this cocoa and you’re going to tell me what’s going on.”

  Amelia did as she was told, climbing gingerly onto a stool and watching her grandmother cook the way she had as a child. Her grandmother had passed along her love of cooking to Amelia. Most of her childhood they lived apart, but she had looked forward to summers spent with her grandparents and visits at Christmas. It was her favorite time of year.

  Elizabeth restarted the cocoa, stirring it with a spoon before going into the pantry. She came out a moment later with peanut butter, cornflakes and Karo Syrup, making Amelia’s eyes light up with delight.

  “Cornflake cookies?”

  Her grandmother smiled. “Of course, baby. Now, what is this I hear from your father about you
getting married to that little boy you used to run around with?”

  Amelia took a deep breath and started at the beginning. She told about the elopement in Vegas, the pregnancy and the whirlwind romance that followed. She ended the tale with its new, sad conclusion. “And now he’s gone, and once I’m out of this house, it will be like none of it ever happened.”

  Her grandmother placed a steaming mug of cocoa and a plate of still warm and gooey cornflake cookies on the counter in front of her. “I doubt that,” she said. “From the sound of things, nothing is ever going to be the way it was before.” She pushed up her sleeves and started scrubbing the pans in the sink.

  “Just leave those, Grandma. We have a lady for that.”

  Elizabeth scoffed at the suggestion. “I think better when I’m working in the kitchen. So what are you going to do now? Move back to your apartment?”

  “Yes,” Amelia answered. “Until my lease is up. Then I think I might buy a townhouse, something with a little more space, although not as much as we have here.”

  “And what about you and Tyler?”

  Amelia shrugged and shoved a cornflake cookie in her mouth to avoid the question awhile longer. “I’m hoping we can still be friends. Obviously we’re not meant to be together romantically. I knew from the beginning he wasn’t my big love. I was just hoping I was wrong.”

  “Big love?” her grandmother said with a frown drawing her wrinkled brow together. “What kind of nonsense is that?”

  “The big, grand love. The kind of romance that you and Grandpa have. The kind that moves mountains and lifts spirits and makes you certain that you can weather anything with that person at your side. The love that makes you happy to wake up to that person every day. I should’ve known I couldn’t achieve that in thirty days. I mean...how long did you and Grandpa date before you got married?”

  Elizabeth considered the question for longer than Amelia expected her to. Her lips twisted together in thought before she finally planted her palms on the counter. “A week.”

  Amelia sat bolt upright in her chair. “What?”

  “Now, don’t you go running around telling people that. No one knows. Your granddaddy and I met when I was working at the university bookstore. He was there studying to be a lawyer. I thought he was so handsome, but I was too shy to speak to him. One day, he asked if I would join him for the football game on Saturday. We went for ice cream. We went out for breakfast,” she said with a naughty smile, “and the following Friday, we ditched classes to elope at the courthouse.”

  This was not the story Amelia had been told all her life. “What about the big church wedding? I’ve seen the pictures!”

  “That happened a year later. We kept our marriage a secret and told our families and friends we were dating. Months down the road, we announced that he had proposed, and we set the wedding day for our first anniversary. No one but your grandpa and I ever knew the truth until now.”

  Amelia didn’t even know what to say. How was it even possible? “But you and Grandpa have the perfect love! The great romance I’ve always strived for. How could you have possibly known he was the right man for you, your soul mate, in just a week?”

  Elizabeth sighed and made her way around the counter to sit at a bar stool beside her. “There is no such thing as a perfect love, Amelia, just like there is no such thing as a perfect person. Your grandpa and I had to work very hard on our relationship. Maybe even harder than other people, because we wed so quickly. There were times I wanted to hit him with a frying pan because he kept leaving his slippers where I could trip over them. There were times I’m certain your grandpa wished he’d taken me on a couple more dates before he proposed. But we made our decisions and we made the best of it.”

  The cornflake cookies felt like lead in her stomach. It was as if she’d just been told the truth about the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa all over again.

  “In the end, yes, marrying your grandfather was one of the best decisions I ever made. I acted on instinct, on passion, and I was right. If I had overthought it, we probably never would’ve married. We had ups and downs like any couple, but I don’t regret a minute of the time we’ve spent together.”

  Tyler’s words popped into her mind. We might end up being totally incompatible, and if we are, we end it and you can go back to your quest for the White Buffalo. The White Buffalo. Magical. Rare. A fantasy. She’d spent the past ten years of her life chasing a myth and she was the last to realize it.

  “I think part of this is my fault,” Elizabeth admitted. “When you were little, I filled your head with romantic stories, treating our marriage like one of your fairy-tale books. When you were older, I never thought to go back and tell you differently. I guess I imagined you’d grow up and shelve those fantasies with Cinderella and her glass slipper.”

  “No,” Amelia spoke at last. “No, it isn’t your fault. You were right, you were telling a little girl stories. When I grew up, I should’ve realized that there’s no such thing as perfection. When I think about all the men I’ve driven out of my life because they weren’t just so... I feel awful.”

  “Honey, it’s possible that none of those men would’ve been right for you anyway. But I wonder about this last one. It sounds to me as if he loves you very much.”

  Amelia perked up in her seat. “What makes you say that?”

  “The way you described him. The way he did so much for you, even when you didn’t want him to. I know that sort of thing can make a girl like you crazy, but you have to understand why he does it. Moving here on a dime, getting this house, doing everything in his power to make you happy, comfortable and safe... Those aren’t the actions of a man who feels obligated because of the child. Those are the actions of a man so desperately in love with a woman that he will do anything and everything to see her smile.”

  Amelia shook her head. She wished her grandmother was right, but it just couldn’t be true. “He’s not in love with me, Grandma. He left. He wouldn’t have walked out if he’d loved me.”

  “I thought you loved all the fairy tales with the big romantic gestures? The Little Mermaid, The Gift of the Magi, Beauty and the Beast... In each of those stories, the character sacrifices the most valued thing in their life for the one they love. If you think Tyler left because he didn’t care, you’re a fool. He left, and gave you up, because he thought that was what you wanted.”

  Amelia felt the dull ache of regret start to pool in her stomach. Was it possible she had driven away the man who loved her, the man she loved, because she was too blind to see the truth?

  And more important...would he ever forgive her?

  Twelve

  Tyler hesitated only a moment before turning the knob and opening the front door of the home he used to share with Amelia. He could see the lights on in the kitchen, but the rest of the house was dark and empty. “Amelia?” he called, hoping not to startle her. “Hello?”

  No one answered, so he traveled down the corridor to the kitchen. Amelia was standing at the counter, her wary eyes watching him as he came in. Apparently she’d heard him but hadn’t had anything to say. Or didn’t know what to say. Either way, she wasn’t about to leap into his arms and kiss him. That was disappointing. At the same time, she hadn’t immediately thrown him out either, so he’d count his blessings.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  She looked better than she had at the hospital. Her color was vastly improved and she didn’t look nearly as tired. Her hair was pulled up into a ponytail, a casual look that went well with her little T-shirt and jeans. The rest of her was anything but casual. Her whole body was stiff. She had a bottle of wine clutched with white-knuckled intensity in one hand, the opener in the other.

  “Would you like some wine?” she offered. “I was just about to open it.”

  “Sure, thanks. Let me—” he s
tarted, and then stopped. His instinct was to offer to open it, but that was the wrong tactic with Amelia. She hadn’t wanted to be helped with everything when she was pregnant; she certainly wouldn’t want to be coddled when she wasn’t. “I’ll get some glasses,” he said instead.

  He went to the cabinet and fetched two glasses. By the time he returned, Amelia had the bottle open. He held them by the stems as she poured them each a healthy serving.

  “Would you like to go sit outside?” she asked. “It’s been a pretty warm day. It would be a shame to move out of here without at least taking advantage of the backyard once.”

  “Okay.” Tyler followed her through the door to the backyard he hadn’t set foot in since he toured the home with the real estate agent. There was a kidney-shaped pool and hot tub with a waterfall to one side. A fire pit was surrounded by stone benches just off the patio. To the right was a large stretch of lawn that would’ve been perfect for a swing set someday.

  The thought brought a painful pang to the back of his mind. Since he’d left the hospital, he’d done the same thing Amelia accused him of doing after his breakup with Christine—he’d thrown himself into his work so he didn’t have to think about everything he’d lost. He’d grabbed his computer and a suitcase full of clothes and toiletries and hopped the first plane back to New York. He’d bypassed his empty apartment and gone straight to the offices, where he’d worked until he was blurry eyed and hallucinating at his computer screen. The next morning, he got up and did it again.

  Today, he’d woken up missing the warmth of her body only inches away on the mattress beside him. He’d wanted to make her a smoothie and kiss her as she headed out the door. Then he’d realized he was a bigger coward than he’d accused her of being. He got back on a plane to Nashville and came straight to the house to tell Amelia how he felt. Which he would do. Any second now. If he could just figure out how to tell Amelia how he felt.

  She’d already rejected him once. He wasn’t too excited to stick his neck back out again and get his head chopped off, but he knew he had to. He’d regret this for the rest of his life if he didn’t.