It wasn't possible to talk to any of the Graces for more than thirty seconds without the phone abruptly changing hands, so Laney wasn't surprised when she heard a little grunt and a murmured entreaty followed by an exasperated sigh.
"Hi, Laney! We're having the time of our lives!"
"Millie," Laney said with relief. Her youngest great-aunt was usually the most reliable when it came to delivering a straight answer. "Please tell me what—" She gave up when she heard another scuffle for phone domination.
"We were planning to call you as soon as we got settled here in the room so you wouldn't worry," Caroline said.
"Just tell me where you're going," Laney pleaded.
"We're having an adventure," Caroline said. "You know how much we like driving. And Ollie Lincoln checked out the Buick before we left. So we're as safe as can be, and we don't plan to be gone more than four days. Now please let me go before Aggie and Millie claim the best bed."
"But Caroline, it's the middle of winter!"
"Laney, we're going to be just fine. And so are you. Go make yourself a nice cup of tea."
"But Caroline—"
"Oh, and we don't need you to feed Frankie Five. He's with us. Bye now!"
"Bye!" Aggie and Millie chorused.
Caroline hung up.
Still holding the phone against her ear, Laney stared out her windows at the falling snow and wondered just how she was supposed to stop herself from worrying about her elderly great-aunts taking an impromptu road trip to heaven-knew-where in the middle of winter.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sitting on a high stool in the recording studio's vocal booth, Jeb clipped his lyrics sheet to the music stand in front of him and adjusted his microphone. Looking through the glass wall separating him from the control room, he met the sound engineer's questioning gaze and nodded.
Through his headphones, he heard the first notes of the intro to the album's title track. "Yours If You Want Me" was a love song he'd written for Laney, but it was also a message of surrender to God. Jeb believed it was the best thing he had ever written.
The guys had finished tracking their background vocals yesterday, and had already gone home to their families, but Jeb had one last bit of recording to do. On this special song, he was singing his own backup.
After he laid down a good track, they'd be finished recording the album. The next items on the agenda were the mixing and mastering: They'd drop in an embellishment here and there, and then they'd tweak the sound levels to add a final layer of polish to the record. But they'd have a two-week break before tackling those jobs because Justin Kramer had a commitment elsewhere.
So tomorrow, Jeb was going home. And as he'd told Justin, he intended to be an engaged man when he returned to Nashville to finish the record.
The intro to "Yours If You Want Me" built layer by layer. After several bars, the solo piano was joined by the bass guitar, then the drums, and then Jeb's lead guitar. Finally, he heard his own recorded voice singing melody on the first verse.
It sounded amazing. Laney was going to be so proud.
He'd decided against calling her to say he was coming home. Since he had already gone so long without talking to her—and it had not been easy—he thought it would be a sweeter thrill if he just showed up and surprised her.
Justin said he was making a mistake. But Laney was used to not hearing from Jeb for a couple of months at a stretch, so this wouldn't seem strange to her. Besides, hadn't the Graces advised him to give her plenty of time and space?
He would explain everything when he got home, and Laney would understand, just like always. Although from now on, he'd stay in daily contact with her, and he'd consult her before agreeing to any concert tour or recording session that would take him away from her side.
He had just pulled in a deep breath to begin singing harmony on the last two lines of the verse when the music abruptly stopped.
"Sorry, Jeb." The engineer jerked his head sideways, indicating that the interruption had been ordered by Justin, who was talking on a phone and frowning.
Jeb tugged off his headphones. "What's wrong?"
Justin pulled the phone away from his ear. "Jeb, Reception has three women causing a disturbance and demanding to see you."
Jeb couldn't imagine how any of his old fans could have found him here, but the bigger question was why a security guard wasn't already showing them the door.
"Little old ladies," Justin continued, looking both puzzled and amused. "They say they've come to take you home."
The Graces? Panic pushed Jeb off of the stool and onto his feet, but in the next instant, he relaxed. If anything had happened to Laney, the Graces would have called him, not driven all the way to Nashville.
So they'd come to escort him home, had they? Jeb thrust his hands into his pockets and just stood there grinning.
He didn't bother to wonder how they'd found him. Knowing the Graces, they'd probably been tipped off to his whereabouts by the brother of somebody's cousin's next-door neighbor.
Justin had the phone back against his ear, and was looking at Jeb and shaking his head in wonder. "They brought three pies," he reported. "They started out with four, but they gave one to the nice man who changed their flat tire in Clarksville."
Pies? Jeb's stomach squirmed in happy anticipation. "I hope they brought a strawberry-rhubarb," he said to nobody in particular.
As he listened again to whoever was on the phone, Justin's eyes widened in alarm. "Jeb, Reception says they have a cardboard box with something alive in it."
Jeb snorted. Of course they'd brought the cat. He threw back his head and laughed.
"Jeb, who are these people?"
Jeb wiped a tear from his eye. "Brace yourselves," he said to the men in the control booth. "You're about to meet the Three Graces and Frankie Five."
"The Three Graces and Frankie Five?" Justin scratched his bald head and then shook it. "Never heard of 'em. Are they a gospel band?"
Jeb laughed again. "No, the Graces are a force of nature. They make amazing pies, though, so if they'll swear they're not carrying a pink rabbit suit, invite them to join us. And have somebody start a fresh pot of coffee. We'll want it with the pie."
Was that someone at the kitchen door? In her basement, where she'd just transferred a load of wet clothes from her washing machine to the dryer, Laney paused to listen.
Five sharp knocks.
The Graces were back! Laney thundered up the stairs and tore into the kitchen just as Aggie, snugly zipped into a down coat and wearing a fuchsia knitted hat with matching mittens, opened the door and stepped inside.
"Where have you been?" Laney demanded, ignoring the open door and the cold air tumbling into her house. "I've been so worried!"
"Oh, Laney, we had the best time!" Aggie's wrinkled, cold-pinked face wore a brilliant smile. "Come out to the car and see what we brought you."
Laney couldn't have been less interested in souvenirs. She was too busy processing her relief that the Graces were finally home. She moved past Aggie to look out the door for her other two renegade relatives.
The overcast day was slipping toward twilight, and while there was no wind to speak of, the temperature would soon sink into the single digits. Just an hour earlier, Laney had finished clearing six inches of fresh snow off her driveway and sidewalks. When she saw Millie barreling toward her, she was glad she had also taken the time to sprinkle deicer on the walk to prevent dangerous slips.
"Laney, come see!" Millie called. "We caught you a man!"
"Well, you can just throw him back," Laney said sharply. "I don't want a man." Not unless she could have Jeb.
"But this one's a keeper!" Millie insisted. "Get your coat on and come see him!"
Had they actually bullied some poor guy into coming here to meet her? They knew how she felt about their matchmaking. And wherever had they gotten the idea that she'd given up on Jeb?
She was worried about him, sure. Annoyed with him, absolutely. But she had
n't given up on him. Not yet.
Aggie grabbed Laney's parka off its peg by the door and held it out to her. "Come on!" she urged.
"Okay, okay." Laney shoved her arms into the coat's sleeves and yanked the zipper up. Then she stomped down the steps and started toward the driveway.
There had better be a good explanation for this. The Graces had been gone for four whole days and had worried her half to death. For crying out loud, they were old, and they'd left on their crazy road trip in the middle of February! What if they'd driven into a snowstorm and slid into a ditch and ended up freezing to death?
Caroline peeked around the corner of the house. "Come and see our surprise!" Her voice was muffled by a vivid blue scarf wound around her neck and covering the lower half of her face.
Laney sighed and shook her head and braced herself for a very awkward introduction. And then she rounded the corner and stopped abruptly, her breath catching in her throat.
"Hey, princess." Lounging against the driver's door of the Buick, his long legs crossed at the ankles and Frankie Five cradled in his arms, Jeb regarded her with transparent hope and a hint of wariness. "Happy Valentine's Day."
Laney was too stunned to speak.
"Sorry I had to be away for so long." His raspy voice deepened. "Believe me, I missed you every single day."
Oh, really? Then why hadn't he called?
She raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm not sure I do believe you."
He studied her face for a moment, and then his uncertainty vanished and he grinned, awakening the dimple in his left cheek. Settling Frankie in the crook of his left arm, he extended his right hand to Laney, beckoning. "Then come here, and let's see if I can persuade you."
No, he was going to have to do some explaining first. Laney slid her hands into her coat pockets and stayed right where she was, a good ten feet away from him.
His smile faded. "I have a new band, Laney. A Christian band. We just recorded our first album. Then the Graces showed up in Nashville and I hitched a ride home."
So that was the reason for the Graces' road trip. Somehow they'd discovered where Jeb was, and they'd gone after him.
That rankled.
"I'm not so desperate for a man that I need my great-aunts to drag one home and throw him at my feet," she said loudly enough for the Graces, who were no doubt hovering just around the corner, to hear.
Jeb coughed into his gloved fist, covering up a laugh.
The wretch.
Laney tried to give him a severe look, but failed because his hair had gotten long again and the wind was blowing it over his left eye and she ached to smooth it back and press her lips against his dear face.
"I was ready to come home," he said, serious again. "The Graces just happened to show up in Nashville the afternoon before I was planning to leave." Frankie squirmed in his arms, and without looking down, Jeb stroked the cat's head with two long fingers encased in a leather driving glove. "I already had a plane ticket. For yesterday. I would have been here last night, but I didn't want the Graces driving home by themselves."
"We would have been perfectly safe by ourselves!" Caroline huffed from somewhere nearby.
Laney rolled her eyes, and then she mouthed an emphatic Thank you to Jeb. When he grinned in perfect understanding, she felt an answering smile tug at her own lips. But then she remembered she still had a bone to pick with him.
"You didn't call me." Inside her coat pockets, she squeezed her hands into fists. "All these weeks, Jeb, and you didn't even . . ." As her voice faded to nothing, she shook her head.
"Yes, but when I called you that day from the airport, you said we were okay. And then I said I'd be busy for a while. Remember?"
"Jeb, that was three and a half months ago!" He'd sent her a lovely Christmas gift, but he hadn't called, not once in all that time.
"I know what you're thinking." His gaze remained locked on her even as Millie approached and relieved him of his feline burden. "You're thinking that if I loved you, I wouldn't have stayed away so long. But there were some things I needed to do, Laney. Some things I needed to figure out. And I think you needed time, too. And I was afraid that if I broke down and called you, I'd end up on the next flight home because I do love you, more than you'll ever—"
"You love me?" she interrupted, breathless with hope.
"Well, of course I love you," he said almost irritably. "I've loved you forever."
"Would you kids mind hurrying this up?" Caroline inquired pleasantly. "It's fifteen degrees out here, and we want our supper."
Jeb flung her an exasperated look, then turned and opened the Buick's front door with a flourish. "Don't let us keep you. I'm sure Frankie Five's hungry, too."
He walked over to Laney and pulled her into his arms.
Maybe she should have resisted, made him suffer until he realized how much he'd hurt her. But there had been too much suffering in Jeb's life already, so her hands came out of her coat pockets and she melted against him like butter on a warm scone.
"That's more like it," he said gruffly.
"Oh, Jeb," she sighed against his coat. She loved him too much to stay mad at him, but she had to make him understand what he'd done. "You've been stupid again."
"That's what I've been hearing all the way home." He squeezed her harder. "I wanted to call you, but I wouldn't let myself. In the last couple of years that got to be a habit—seeing how long I could go without calling you—and I guess I just kind of fell back into it. But you needed to hear from me, didn't you?"
"Yes." She nodded against him. "I really did. And I know I could have called you to ask what was going on, but I was afraid."
"I understand now. And I'm sorry." He sighed against her hair. "Laney, I think some parts of my brain are still screwed up. So please just tell me whenever I do something stupid and I'll try really hard to make it right."
"Deal," she said, snuggling closer.
"Jeb?" Aggie spoke from immediately behind Laney. "Now would be a good time to pop the question."
Laney groaned against his coat. "Make them go away."
"Ladies," he said over Laney's head, "I'm grateful for all of your help. But I've got this now, so just beat it, okay?" He found Laney's bare hands and pressed them against his chest, covering them with his gloved ones.
"Our work here is done," Caroline informed her sisters with smug satisfaction. "And it's my turn to drive."
"Shotgun!" Aggie yelled, pumping a mittened fist into the air.
Millie chuckled. "Happy Valentine's Day, lovebirds!"
Laney looked up at Jeb. "I can't believe you let them drive you all the way home from Nashville."
"Give me credit for having a brain," he said. "I drove. And this morning when they argued over whose turn it was to ride shotgun, I ordered them all into the back seat and let their cat-in-a-box sit up front with me. Frankie Five's not so bad."
By the time the Buick rumbled past them and backed out of the driveway, Laney was being thoroughly kissed. She wondered briefly if Mrs. Lindstrom was enjoying the show from one of Mrs. Schultz's windows, but then Jeb changed the angle of his head to deepen their kiss and Laney forgot all about Mrs. Lindstrom and absolutely everything else.
"I love you," Jeb said when they came up for air. "Marry me, Laney. Come live in my house and make it a home. We'll have fourteen children and grow old together."
She shivered. "Fourteen children?"
"Well, maybe not all at once." He dragged her hands away from his chest so he could unzip his jacket and open it to share his warmth.
She immediately pushed her arms beneath the jacket and around his lean waist. Flattening her palms against his back, she gloried in the warmth radiating from beneath his flannel shirt.
"Marry me," he urged in a low voice as he nuzzled the curls just behind her ear. "Please."
"Kiss me some more and I'll think about it."
He chuckled. "Sweetheart, if you can think when I kiss you, then I'm not doing it right."
She huffed
out a breath. "I meant I would think about it after the kiss."
"Think about it . . . right . . . now," he said between nibbles on the tip of her frozen ear. "It's Valentine's Day, princess. Be mine."
Gently catching her jaw in his gloved hand, he turned her face up to his and waited.
"Oh, all right," she said, grinning.
"Thank you." He kissed the tip of her nose. "Now let's go inside where it's warm."
They walked arm-in-arm to her kitchen door.
"A Christian band?" Laney asked as they climbed the steps.
"Yeah." He opened the door for her and followed her inside. "I have to go back in two weeks to mix the tracks and master the album, but that won't take long. You could come. You could see some new sights and meet everyone I've been working with. They're all Christians, Laney. We even pray together."
"I'll come," she said happily. She shut the door and they removed their coats. "I'm jobless at the moment. Did the Graces tell you?"
"They told me everything." Jeb tossed his gloves on the counter and hung his coat beside Laney's. Then he pulled her into his arms. "I'm sorry things have been so hard for you." He smoothed back her hair with one broad palm. "And I'm sorry for adding to your troubles. I was just so excited and so focused on what you'd think when I came home that I never dreamed you might not be sure about me." He leaned his forehead against hers. "But how could you not know? How could you not feel my love? Laney, you know me."
"I was afraid to believe it," she admitted. "I've fooled myself before, remember?"
"Stop beating yourself up over those other guys." His forehead lightly rubbed hers as he shook his head. "This is me, Laney. You know it's different with us. It always has been."
"Yes," she whispered.
"In one way or another," he went on, "I've been yours since the day I saw you in that blue dress and the tiara."
She raised her head, offering her mouth for another kiss.
"Wait." He touched a finger to her lips. "I have a present for you." His hand went to his pocket, and then he grinned and said, "Not an engagement ring. We'll go shopping for that tomorrow. But I think you'll like this." He withdrew his hand and brought it between them before slowly uncurling his fingers.
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