He was tempted to sweep her up in his arms and carry her up the front steps—whether on account of her scraped knees or his newly awakened caveman tendencies, he couldn’t have said. Instead, he took her arm and steered her toward the house. It was time the lady learned to let someone take care of her. He was going to have a devilish time trying to convince her of it, though.
After putting a pot of coffee on to brew, he sat her down at the table, lifted her voluminous skirt and folded it back over her lap. “Hell of a thing to be working in,” he grumbled, careful to keep the concern he was feeling from his voice. “Climbing up on stools, you could have—”
“But I didn’t, all right?”
He grunted. “Okay, let’s see how much damage you’ve managed to inflict on yourself.”
It was a mark of how exhausted she was that she didn’t protest. Beckett took full responsibility for some of her tiredness: he hadn’t let her get a whole lot of rest lately.
The damage was mostly superficial, but just to be on the safe side, he bathed her injuries. When tears sprang to her eyes, he said, “Oh, hell.” Laying aside the towel, he reached for her, toppling her forward. Holding her, he did his best to soothe away the fresh pain, drawing from dim memories of the way his mother had held and comforted him back when he was a brat in short pants, daring the devil and quite convinced he was invincible.
“I know, I know—hurts like hell, doesn’t it? Let me pat it dry, and we’ll put some more of that gunk on it. Seems to be doing the trick.”
Liza took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded. He smeared antibiotic ointment on her knees and the heels of her hands. Digging into the sack of groceries, he produced a big box of gauze and proceeded to bind her wounds with yards of the stuff.
“I feel like a mummy,” Liza said, feeling shaky all over again. Not from any great pain, other than the pain of seeing Beckett kneeling before her, and knowing this was probably the last hour she would ever spend with him. In which case, she would much rather have been wearing something filmy and romantic.
Or at the very least something clean.
Candles would have been a nice touch, too, although candles in a kitchen at high noon might be overdoing it. Still, a woman could dream, couldn’t she?
“Poor Uncle Fred,” she said, making a determined effort to shift her mind away from the mess she’d made of things. “At his age he shouldn’t have to come home and find everything all torn up. He can’t do much of anything himself, and he probably knows we can’t afford to hire anyone. Although he’s not real good when it comes to managing money. Maybe I can convince him—”
“Liza, about Uncle Fred.”
“Oh, I know, I know, he’s a lot tougher than he looks, but all the same, I wish—”
“Liza, listen to me. Your uncle’s been through a lot worse than the little blow we had last night. He might not be good at handling money, but he’s handled more than most men—wars, depressions, grief.”
“I know that. I’m whining on his behalf because he won’t. All the same…”
“All the same, there comes a time in a man’s life when he wants to shed a few responsibilities, settle back and enjoy the things he can still enjoy, preferably with friends.”
“Didn’t I just say that? That’s why I want to get everything all cleaned up here. Then maybe I’ll suggest he invite a few friends over for baseball and supper. Or maybe we’ll drive down to Manteo and watch The Lost Colony. He told me he hasn’t seen a performance since his wife died.”
Rising, Beckett shoved aside the first-aid materials just as the coffee gurgled its last gurgle. He took down two cups. Liza watched him, but made no effort to interfere. Good, he thought. He was going to need a docile Liza to get through what he had to tell her.
Over barbecue sandwiches, he brought up the first topic under consideration. “About Fred…Liza, you do know he has a nephew, don’t you?”
She reached for a French fry. He snagged his lower lip with his teeth, trying to think how best to break the news. “Well, sure. I know his wife had—has—a nephew,” she said. “I told you that, remember? I’ve never actually met him, but he calls to talk to Uncle Fred whenever he’s in port. I think he works on one of those big container ships, I’m not sure.”
“You’re right. But he’s thinking of retiring as soon as he can get on with his plans here.”
“Here where?” She took a big bite of her barbecue sandwich, closed her eyes and sighed. “Heavenly. It’s even better than Texas barbecue, and if that sounds traitorous, Texas can sue me.”
“The lot next door?” Beckett indicated the east-facing window. To the west and north of the Grant house were cornfields. On the east side was a cleared lot surrounded by several hundred acres of soybeans.
“What about it?” she asked with her mouth full.
Leaning across the table, he brushed a streak of barbecue sauce from beside her mouth, then licked it from his thumb. “Yeah, well, the thing is, all that belongs to Fred’s nephew.”
“Fred’s wife’s nephew,” she corrected. “I’m his only blood kin.”
“Dammit, Liza, I’m trying to tell you that this place—the house, the lot next door—they belong to Solon Pugh. The nephew.”
“In-law,” she supplied, frowning.
“Right. The thing is, they don’t belong to Fred.”
She stopped chewing. Her eyes went round, narrowed, then widened again as she absorbed the full impact. “You mean this Pugh fellow—he’s just letting Uncle Fred live here?”
This was going to be painful. He figured it was best to get it over with quickly and let the healing begin. “Fred’s wife’s folks built the house. It belonged to her, and when she died, it went to her nephew, with Fred retaining a lifetime right.”
“So?” She had carefully laid her sandwich on the napkin. Her freshly bandaged hands were resting on her lap. “I don’t see that that changes anything.”
“It doesn’t. You did.”
“I don’t think I want to hear this. If you don’t mind, I’m going to go back out to the stand and—”
He caught her by the arm before she could leave. “You’re going to have to hear it. Honey, Fred was all ready to move into Bay View with his friends when you turned up one day, needing a place to stay. Needing someone to help you get started again. Fred recognized that. His hearing might not be what it once was, but his mind is as sharp as ever. He called Pugh and told him he’d changed his mind and was going to stay on awhile longer. As he told me this morning, you needed something to latch on to to get you back on your feet, and he didn’t mind helping you out.”
“Helping me out?” Liza repeated, a stricken look on her face. “But I’m the one who was helping him. He couldn’t have stayed here without me—without someone…”
He came around the table and knelt beside her, holding her while she sucked in great gulps of air. “I’m not going to cry, don’t worry,” she said. “Just give me a minute, will you?”
“All the time in the world, sugar babe. Go ahead and cry, if you need to, sweetheart.”
That got her attention. Rearing back, she glared at him, her elegant, patrician features no less beautiful for the smear of grime across her forehead.
“What, I can’t call you sweetheart?” he challenged.
“Sugar babe?”
“Hey, it’s what the men in my family call the women—and the women call them that right back. It means ‘I love you.’ Don’t people in Texas talk that way?”
“Not the people I knew.”
He waited for her to pick up on what he’d said. It might come as something of a shock. It had shocked the hell out of him, but once he’d realized it had happened, he’d accepted it. Felt pretty damned good about it, matter of fact. No more running away. This was it—this was what he’d been running toward all these years.
Now all he had to do was convince Liza.
“You see where I’m going with this, right?”
“Uncle Fred wants to stay on a
t Bay View so that his nephew can move in here.” She nodded slowly. “I understand.”
Beckett’s reputation as a negotiator had never been in question. He was among the best. But negotiating with hijackers—modern-day pirates—was one thing. Reaching a mutually satisfying agreement with a woman who was both proud and needy…that called for an altogether different set of skills.
For a guy who had commitment avoidance down to a fine art, he was digging his own grave here. Never had a grave been dug more willingly. “You heard what I said, then?”
She nodded. Her fingers, which were the only parts of her hands not swathed in gauze, walked their way up his chest and latched on to his collar. She still refused to meet his eyes.
“All of it?” he pressed.
“All of what?” She lifted her face then, and he caught a glimmer of what was going on behind those whiskey-colored eyes. Satisfaction began to glow inside him like banked coals.
Emboldened, he said, “You want the full, complete translation? Hon and honey—now those can mean either one of two things, depending on who’s saying it to whom. It can mean either ‘I love you,’ or ‘I’m content with who I am and hope you’re lucky enough to be the same.’ As for the rest—sweetheart—that’s pretty self-evident.”
“And sugar babe?” She was getting into the swing of things.
“Ah, yes…well now, that can mean a couple of things, too. There’s the sugar babe that means, ‘Wow, I’d sure like to get in your pants!’ Then, there’s the sugar babe that means, ‘Me and you, hon—better or worse, thick or thin—side meat or sirloin, we stick together.’”
“I’m afraid to ask,” she said, and darned if he didn’t believe her. How the hell could she still have doubts? Hadn’t he just told her he loved her? Maybe he’d circled around it a time or two, but then, he hadn’t had any practice in the past couple of decades.
“Look, how about we pack up what Uncle Fred wants to keep, take it to him, then we come back here and pack up everything you need, and then we’ll lock up and head south. You need to meet PawPaw, you need to meet all my folks, and then, if you’ll still have me….”
Liza thought, Oh, Lord, don’t let me hyperventilate. “I think I’ve just been proposed to. If not, you’d better set me straight real fast.”
“Hey, I’m down on my bended knee, aren’t I?” It was hard to tell under his deep suntan, but she could almost swear he was blushing.
“If you’re waiting for me to get down on mine to accept, then you’re going to have to give me more time.”
“Sorry, time’s up. What about we both get horizontal and continue this conversation?”
Liza had to laugh at that. So did Beckett, because they both knew there would be little conversation in the near future. “Know what? I can hardly wait to take you home to show PawPaw. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’d set this whole thing up on purpose.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0067-8
BECKETT’S CINDERELLA
Copyright © 2002 by Dixie Browning
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*Outer Banks
†Tall, Dark and Handsome
‡The Lawless Heirs
§The Passionate Powers
**Beckett’s Fortune
Beckett's Cinderella Page 14