by Zoe Chant
Dropping the apple but keeping the knife, he scrambled for the front door, and paused on the front porch.
Andrea was standing at her front gate with her arms wrapped around Tawny. An open envelope was crumpled in one hand, a small stack of papers in the other. At the sight of Shaun, she released the dazed-looking Tawny.
“I did it!” she cried, waving the papers. “I did it!!”
As Tawny continued on her mail delivery route, Andrea scampered up Shaun’s front walk, and threw her arms around him with no care for the knife he was holding. “I did it!!”
Careful not to accidentally decapitate her, Shaun hugged her back. “Did you sell your book?” he guessed wildly.
Andrea shook her head, dark hair spilling back from her happy face as she stepped back and hugged the papers to her chest. “Even better! I sent Midwestern House Living Magazine a few sample articles about home repair—the ones I wrote for you, actually— and they want me to do a monthly article! With illustrations! For money!”
“You talented vixen!” Shaun said, unable to help laughing with her. “Were you going to tell me you submitted to them?”
“I’d forgotten,” Andrea confessed. “I submitted them online months ago. When... when you told me you weren’t my mate and I was stupid enough to believe you.”
Shaun was grateful to see that the humor and joy didn’t leave her face. She had forgiven him the unforgivable. He had to bite his tongue from the impulse again to tell her what he and Trevor had planned and was grateful when Patricia pulled up in the car and got out to open the door and unstrap Trevor from the back seat.
“Is it now?” Trevor asked eagerly, pelting up the front walk. “Is it now?”
“Is what now?” Andrea asked, still bouncing on her toes and hugging the contract to her chest.
“Hang on,” Shaun told Trevor. “I don’t want to do this wielding a kitchen knife at her.”
Trevor giggled.
Andrea gave him a curious look, then looked down the walk to where Patricia and Clara were standing by the car, not leaving, but not offering to walk up to the house. “What’s up your sleeve?”
Trevor chortled and made a show of looking up his short sleeves. “Nothing here!” he said, and he looked at Shaun expectantly.
“Be right back,” Shaun said. He took the knife to the kitchen and put it down with a deep breath. Then he reached into his pocket, where the small box had been burning a hole since the morning and took a deep breath. Several times, Andrea had nearly discovered it, one of several reasons he had rushed out of his pants earlier.
In the quiet house alone for a brief moment, he paused and looked around.
He had walked into this place ready to hate it, ready to hate everything about this small town and his too-close neighbor.
The uncomfortable furniture was all gone now, the space waiting for the new pieces he had ordered — with Andrea’s input. He knew more now about how a house was built and put together than he had ever expected, thanks to her.
And it wasn’t just a house anymore, it was a home.
His home, and Trevor’s, and Andrea’s.
He curled his fingers around the box and walked back out onto the porch to make it official.
ANDREA EYED TREVOR suspiciously. “You and your dad are up to something,” she accused. “And you told Clara.” She glared down the walkway at Patricia, who grinned and waved, but didn’t approach.
But she also didn’t leave.
Trevor squirmed. “It’s a secret!” he protested, much as Shaun had earlier.
Then the front screen door squeaked and Shaun came out onto the porch. He filled up the space, his height not just impressive in comparison to Andrea’s short stature.
He is a fine mate, her hawk said smugly.
We could have done worse, Andrea agreed.
Then Shaun smiled at her, and, as it always did, her heart lifted in anticipation. She wasn’t sure what they were up to, but she had a suspicion.
It was a suspicion that was confirmed when Shaun knelt at her feet and opened a tiny box with a sparkling ring inside. “Will you marry m—” he started.
Before he could finish, Trevor was throwing his arms around her. “Will you be my mom?” he demanded.
There was sometimes a moment in flight when a gust of wind caught under Andrea’s wings, when all she had to do was glide and all the air beneath her lifted her straight for the sun.
This was like that moment: all the love she had ever wanted concentrated in a shot of joy so intense it brought tears to her eyes.
“Oh,” she said helplessly. “Oh.”
Her faint suspicion had not prepared her for how it would feel, Shaun looking up at her with love, Trevor pressing himself into her side.
“Is she going to say yes?” Trevor asked anxiously.
“I’m hoping so,” Shaun told him.
“Why hasn’t she yet?”
“I’m getting there,” Andrea said, choked. “Give me a minute.”
Trevor’s voice was thin and uncertain. “Doesn’t she want to be my mom?”
“I’m right here,” Andrea reminded him. “And yes, I want to be your mom. Yes, I will marry your dad.”
Trevor released her to go to the edge of the porch and holler down the walkway. “She said yes!”
As Patricia and Clara exclaimed and applauded, Shaun stood, gathering her into his arms as he kissed her. He lifted her easily up onto the railing of the porch and bruised her lips with his demanding mouth.
It didn’t matter who saw them, it didn’t matter who else was there.
Only his arms mattered, and his love, and the fact that she had come home at last.
Right next door.
Dandelion Season
By Zoe Chant
© Zoe Chant 2019
All Rights Reserved
Chapter 1
Tawny Summers eased the mail truck to the curb in front of Shaun Powell’s house, wincing and smiling at the squeal of the touchy brakes that broke the peaceful quiet of the small town of Green Valley.
Even squeaky brakes couldn’t dampen the day.
It was spring, and it was gloriously spring as if to make up for the late winter. Blue sky spread above trees glittering with early shades of green and lawns that were springing emerald from the ugly, dull brown that had covered them for so many months.
Cheerful birds sang love songs for each other from every corner, and somewhere not far away, children in the park were hollering happily about their new freedom from the indoors.
Best of all, it was Tawny’s last day of work. This was her very last delivery, in fact.
She would never have to drive the clunky mail truck again, or dread Christmas, or get trapped talking to Stanley for three hours about how badly the mail service had gone down since that new-fangled Internet started causing diabetes or whatever he had last read.
It was an ending without fanfare. Her replacement had been training for two weeks, and everyone kindly said they would miss her on her route, but otherwise, it had been a day like any other.
Tawny opened the sticky truck door and swung down to the pavement.
It even smelled like spring, and Tawny inhaled happily.
Starting tomorrow, she would be wrist-deep in soil, planting the greatest garden she had ever had. She’d spent every evening for the last month planning every inch of her little plot, ordering seeds and researching varieties. Several trays of tiny green sprouts were crowded on her kitchen table and the piano under desk lamps, waiting for their new homes in the ground.
The only work she had to continue to do was teach piano on weekends to help stretch the retirement checks a little bit further.
The last package was strapped in the very back of the truck, and Tawny’s knees protested climbing up to get it.
The last package, she reminded her knees.
Tawny frowned down at the address label. There was no return address, but the postage cancellation was from right here in Green Valley.
It was unusual for someone to ship something within the town. If it had been a different address, Tawny might have assumed one of the town seniors had gotten confused and accidentally shipped a gift to themselves.
But Shaun Powell, and his wife Andrea, were young and Andrea was not that much of an airhead.
It was Express mail, too, with a guaranteed date and time of delivery. Who would blow that kind of money to ship a box a few blocks?
It was a light box, for the size, and Tawny carried it easily down the path and up the porch to the house. She knocked on the door, and was surprised when it swung open under her knuckles.
“Shaun?” she called hesitantly into the dark house. All of the curtains were drawn and It smelled like fresh sweet rolls. That would be Shaun’s handiwork.
“Andrea?” Tawny called. After a moment, she added, “Trevor?” At six years old, it was most likely that Trevor had left the door open.
It disturbed her sense of order to have to leave her last package without a signature, but Tawny sighed and reached for her scanner, setting the box down just inside the door.
As she was bending over to scan it as delivered, the lights in the house suddenly flicked on, and a chorus of voices shouted, “Surprise!”
Tawny jolted upright and put a hand to her throat. “What?!”
“Happy retirement!” a familiar voice congratulated. Patricia, belly round with pregnancy, was sitting on the couch, and dozens of Green Valley residents crowded forward to draw Tawny into the streamer-strewn house as the curtains were flung open.
“We’re going to miss you!”
“Thank you for your service!”
“I’ve got big shoes to fill.” That was her replacement, an earnest young man with red hair.
“You never lost a single one of my letters!”
“Christmas deliveries won’t be the same without you!”
“You won’t miss the catalogs!”
She was buffeted with hugs, and Tawny had to blink back tears of emotional joy as Trevor came forward to lead her to a cake, frosted like a canceled postage stamp. The sweet rolls she had smelled were just one of the offerings on the loaded table; an entire neighborhood potluck had been laid out.
“You folks didn’t have to do this,” she protested as a paper plate of cake was pressed into her hands. “It’s not like I’m moving away or going anywhere.”
“You’ll always be an establishment of Green Valley,” Patricia told her, rising awkwardly to give her own encumbered hug. “We’re just celebrating how much we’ve appreciated you. And how happy we are that you’ll be enjoying a well-earned retirement.”
Someone put a paper crown on her, and there were gifts, to Tawny’s flustered pleasure. A ribbon-adorned wheelbarrow to replace her rusted one was filled with wrapped packages—most of them in official post office packaging.
She sighed theatrically. “You know it’s a federal offense to use this packaging for purposes other than its intended application,” she teased them.
She was sitting on the broad couch, carefully unwrapping what was clearly a spade covered in post office shipping bags from Shaun and Andrea, when the sound of a throat clearing made her look up at the doorway with an automatic smile.
A finely dressed stranger stood there at the door no one had bothered to close. He was a large older man, with broad shoulders under an expensive looking button-down shirt, and he had a close-cropped beard that was a much white as it was blond.
Even as Tawny had a naughty moment to wonder if they had hired a good-looking stripper for her party, he caught sight of her, and the glare melted from his face into soft astonishment.
Chapter 2
Damien Powell glowered at the mail truck parked in front of his son’s house. There was no sign of the mailman, despite the fact that the boxy thing was idling. He had to park across the street, and although he could not so much as hear any traffic in any direction, he still found himself practicing the rant that he wanted to deliver to the careless driver.
“Waste of taxpayer money,” he growled, approaching the door to Shaun’s house. “No wonder stamps cost so much.”
It was wide open, to his surprise, and the house was humming with celebratory people. A banner trimmed in official post office tape declared, “Happy Retirement, Tawny!” Another waste of federal money.
He cleared his throat crossly just as his gaze fell on the subject of the banner—and the subject of his rant—sitting on the couch in a post office uniform.
The woman was unwrapping a gift with long, careful fingers, and her beautiful face was carved with affectionate lines of humor and flushed with joy and embarrassment. A ridiculous paper crown was perched on her soft waves of silver hair, and her eyes were warm and brown.
Everything about her was utterly perfect, and every word of Damien’s carefully composed tirade vanished.
Inside, Damien’s lion gave a contented sigh. There she is, he said firmly.
Who? Damien demanded. He wasn’t used to feeling out of the loop.
Before his lion could answer, there was a boyish shriek of joy.
“Grandpa Powell!”
Trevor streaked from the crowd to throw himself at Damien, who caught him automatically and tossed him into the air.
“Oh, Dad! We forgot you were coming today.”
“I can see that,” Damien said gruffly.
Shaun was carrying a tray of warm cookies from the kitchen and Damien had a moment of sudden, irrational jealousy.
He was the one who ought to be bringing food for his mate.
Wait, what?
Our mate, his lion agreed.
How utterly unexpected.
“What did you bring me Grandpa?” Trevor was investigating every pocket that he could reach, little fingers tickling. “Do I get a present?”
“Is this your party?” Damien asked Trevor archly.
“They’re my cookies,” Trevor said slyly.
“Only very good grandsons who mind their manners get presents,” Damien said severely. He then slipped the electronic toy from an unmolested pocket and palmed it to Trevor, who squealed in delight and disappeared to unlock its mysteries.
He turned back to consider the woman holding court on couch. She was looking away now, talking earnestly with a little girl holding a paper plate of sweets in two careful hands.
Her profile was elegant, her posture perfect.
“I can introduce you around,” Shaun said dubiously, having added his platter of cookies to the spread.
Damien understood the tone.
These were not his type of people, with their country clothes and their noisy children underfoot. This was not his type of party, a potluck with paper plates. The party soundtrack was a child playing Chopsticks on an upright piano—but they had started on the wrong keys, and rather than finding the right notes, they were simply playing it over and over again incorrectly.
But watching his mate soberly take an offered sweet roll from the giggling girl made Damien unexpectedly want this to be his type of party.
“I’d like that,” he said gruffly.
Shaun raised a skeptical eyebrow.
Shaun looked like this was his sort of event. Gone were the business suits that he had worn for so long. Now he wore jeans and a t-shirt, and an apron from his bakery, emblazoned with a red stylized cinnamon roll. He needed a haircut, Damien thought critically. He was dangerously close to hairnet territory.
“Alright, then,” Shaun said agreeably, smothering his surprise. “This is Stanley.”
Damien regretted taking Shaun’s offer within five sweaty handshakes, three endless conversations about the price of farm supplies and pork, one skeptical child, and two giggling housewives who didn’t seem to care about the wedding rings they were wearing.
Shaun peeled one of the women off of him and finally led him to the distasteful potluck table where Damien’s mate was piling a plate with questionable offerings.
“Sorry about that. Gillian’s sha
meless,” Shaun was saying, but Damien had eyes only for Tawny.
She turned to look at them with a smile crinkling around her eyes as Shaun introduced him. “Tawny, this is my Dad, Damien Powell. Dad, this is...”
Damien moved smoothly forward and took her free hand in his own. “This is the lady of the hour,” he said, with all the practiced charm at his disposal. “Let me add my congratulations.”
Her hand was gentle and unexpectedly strong as she hesitantly accepted his handshake, and Damien didn’t want to let it go.
For a long moment, the chaos of the party around them seemed to be distant and unimportant. The only thing that mattered was here, in the most beautiful brown eyes that Damien had ever gazed into.
“Thank you,” she said, and her slow smile was friendly and shy at the same time. The color of her blush made her complexion look youthful, and there was a garden of life and energy in her eyes.
Then a playful scream and running footsteps penetrated Damien’s attention, and a small, unexpected form ricocheted off the back of his knees, driving him a step forward into Tawny and sending the plate of her potluck food spilling down her uniform blouse.
Damien stared at her, aghast and mortified, as he regained his balance.
She was covered in red meatball sauce, pieces of vegetable, a small puddle of ranch dressing, a selection chocolate-covered cookies, and an unidentifiable salad that appeared to be mostly composed of mayonnaise.
A child shrieked in laughter and Damien turned with a humiliated snarl.
“Enough roughhousing!”
It was a voice he usually reserved for boardroom conflicts and employees who failed him, all of his lion’s power and authority behind it.
It utterly silenced the party.
Damien turned back to his mate, and registered her blooming frown of disapproval just as a child somewhere behind him burst into noisy tears.
Chapter 3
Shaun’s father was the most gorgeous man that Tawny had ever seen, and she had to work very hard at not staring at him as Shaun led him around the house introducing him to half the town of Green Valley.