Home Again with You

by Liza Kendall

  Once Jean-Paul had departed for the cellar, she looked at Rhett point-blank. “What are we celebrating?”

  “We’ll get to that,” he said, trotting out his most blinding smile . . . and then winced because it hurt his face so much.

  She definitely noticed, and he retired the smile immediately.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “No, no, not at all.” He couldn’t stop drinking her in. “You look incredible.”

  “But not like me,” she said, fidgeting with her silverware.

  “You look like you with a lot of frosting on top,” Rhett said. There, that was a good line, wasn’t it?

  “Frosting,” Jules repeated darkly. “You mean hair gel and hair spray and hair dryers and hair torment? Amelie dressed me and then dragged me to A Cut Above. And then to Glam Gal.” She pronounced the last two words as if they were the names of revolting insects. “Where GiGi also spackled me with a bunch of makeup. And for some weird reason, Monty ran over and draped this borrowed ice around my neck at the last possible second.”

  “Interesting,” Rhett said. “I like it. Do you?”

  “I think it’s . . . really sparkly. Way too sparkly.”

  “Hmm.” Rhett shrugged. “Monty will be disappointed.”

  “Don’t tell him!” she said, scandalized. “It’ll hurt his feelings. He was being nice.”

  “I won’t say a word.” Rhett didn’t have the heart to tell her that Monty was angling for another high-dollar sale and wasn’t just being nice. “Do you like your hair, at least?”

  Jules frowned. She put a hand up and felt around. “It’s crunchy,” she said.

  “Crunchy like lettuce, or crunchy like walnuts?”

  “You’re laughing at me again.” Jules squinted at him.

  “Not at all.”

  “It’s like . . . they all ganged up on me to glam me up. So weird.”

  Jean-Paul appeared with the champagne, a white cloth napkin draped over his arm, and a silver ice bucket on a stand.

  “That would make such a great horse feeder if it were a little bigger,” Jules mused.

  “Oui, vraiment,” Jean-Paul agreed, with an utterly straight face. He got down to the serious business of opening and pouring the champagne.

  Rhett tried not to fidget while he did so. He wished him gone, and then when he was, wished for him to come back again. Because he, the billionaire deal maker, had no idea what to say next or how to transition the conversation into a proposal of marriage.

  So he just dove in. “Jules, among other things that I’m hoping we celebrate, I’d like to raise a toast to our baby.”

  “Okay . . .” she said cautiously. “But it’s kind of weird and unexpected.”

  “So is your turning up pregnant. But it’s also a beautiful, wonderful thing. So can we drink to it?”

  She looked away from him and at the bubbles rising and popping in her glass. “Okay.”

  He raised his glass.

  She raised hers.

  They clinked them together and drank.

  From across the restaurant, Jean-Paul beamed and then picked up the phone at the maître d’ stand.

  Jules savored the taste and then set down her flute. “I have no clue what exactly that is, but it does taste like liquid gold. Too bad, since that’s my last sip.”

  He hoped not. “I’m glad you like it.”

  “So . . . things are going to get complicated,” she said.

  “They don’t have to. Jules—” Rhett got up and then dropped to one knee.

  She looked alarmed. “What are you—”

  He fished the box out of his pocket with his left hand and attempted to take hers in his right one. But the box caught on his pocket lining, which threw him off-balance, and suddenly Rhett had to brace himself on the table. This is going all wrong . . .

  “Will you marry me?” He succeeded in getting the box out of his pocket and regained his balance.

  Only then did he realize that his proposal had landed in the middle of the table like a stale ham sandwich.

  Jules stared at Rhett. Carefully, she said, “That’s . . . that’s very . . . um. Appreciated. But . . .”

  But? She wasn’t supposed to say but. That was a word that didn’t belong anywhere in this carefully orchestrated evening. Half the town had helped him stage it. They were probably all ready to cheer . . .

  “Rhett.” She smoothed her napkin. “This isn’t . . . necessary.”

  “Necessary,” he repeated, a yawning pit growing in his stomach.

  “It’s not the eighteenth century, and I’m not ‘ruined’ or ‘spoiled goods’ because I’m going to have a baby without being married—despite what my mom may think.”

  Her words hurt more than Grady’s fist had. How to recover? “She’s on board with this, just so you know.”

  “You talked to my mother first? That’s not a point in your favor.”

  “No—not exactly. I asked your father for permission. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “And here you are, trying to do another right thing,” she said in mechanical tones.

  This was not going well.

  “Because you think you’ve wronged me,” she added.

  He’d forgotten to even open the box. He was making such a hash out of this. He flipped the lid open and slid the box toward her while she examined the ring, her face now completely blank.

  Rhett got to his feet.

  “Wow,” she said. “Wow. That is . . . that’s huge.”

  “You like it?” he asked cautiously.

  “It’s beautiful. How could a girl not like it?” She fidgeted with her napkin again.

  She didn’t pounce on the ring, crying out with delight, or throw herself into his arms.

  This was killing him. Just killing him. And he couldn’t let her see it.

  “So we’ll get married,” he said. “Right away.”

  “Rhett. Listen to me. We are not going to get married. It’s a really bad idea. We will handle this another way.”

  He just blinked at her. “You’re turning me down? No, no, no . . . you can’t do that, Jules. You’ve gotta let me make this right.”

  “Make it right for whom? Your guilty conscience? Grady? My parents? The town gossips?”

  “For you,” he said. “You, Jules.”

  “I don’t need you to do that,” she said gently. “Thank you, though.”

  “Thank you? Thank you?! Are you kidding me?”

  “Marriage is hard enough,” Jules said carefully, “when two people love each other. That’s not the case here.”

  “Julianna. I—I care deeply about you. We’ve known each other since we were little kids, and—”

  “Stop.” She squeezed her eyes shut and held up a hand.

  “I even own the stables now. We’re practically family!”

  She shook her head. “Family members don’t usually sleep with each other and then scram in the morning so fast that they leave tire tracks.”

  “You’re still angry about that, and I can’t blame you. But please don’t let a grudge stand in the way of giving our baby a home and two parents under the same roof.”

  “Rhett, this isn’t about some grudge! If I ever get married, it will be for love. Not for any other reason. Not for a pregnancy, not for security, not for money. Love.”

  “We can learn to love each other,” he insisted.

  She gave him the saddest look he’d ever seen. In fact, she looked like a kicked puppy.

  It wrenched something deep inside him; it physically hurt.

  Jules shook her head.

  Jean-Paul set down the phone, rubbed his hands, and turned toward them. His face fell when he took in the less-than-joyous tableau. He picked up the phone again. Really?

  Rhett le
aned on the table with both hands, partly to catch his breath; recover his equilibrium. He pushed the box toward her. “Please . . . would you just try it on?”

  She hesitated.

  And he took advantage of that. He plucked the ring from its black velvet nest and slid it onto her finger. It was a little tight, and he realized with a pang that it was probably because of the pregnancy. Once on her finger, it sparkled madly, overcompensating for something—he didn’t know what.

  Her lips trembled.

  “Think about it?” he asked.

  Reluctantly she nodded, and he felt a tiny, dishonest spark of triumph. “Keep the ring. Let’s talk again in a few days.”

  “Okay,” Jules whispered. “Will you . . . I’m sorry, Rhett, I really am. But will you excuse me?” And she ran for the ladies’ room.

  He knew she wouldn’t return to the table.

  * * *

  Teetering on the stupid heels, Jules careened into the ladies’ room at Jean-Paul’s, didn’t even recognize herself in the candlelit, gilt-edged mirror, and hurtled into a stall. She braced herself with a hand on either side of it, hanging over the toilet and panting.

  The diamond around her neck glittered weirdly in the water below her, which made her turn and look at the colossus on her left hand. It was gorgeous. It was stunning. It was perfect . . . too perfect for someone as imperfect as she was.

  This was a ring for someone like Bridget. Bridget could wear this, and wear it well. But not Jules.

  And yet there it was, winking back at the glamour lighting in the ladies’ room.

  It was hard not to be mesmerized by the diamond and its two sidekicks.

  Harder still not to be mesmerized by Rhett, trying to pull off her dream proposal and absolutely crashing and burning. He had tried so hard to salvage it, over and over again—as if he couldn’t believe that he, Rhett Braddock, big shot, was flailing and floundering so miserably.

  She knew he wasn’t used to that, and it was oddly and horribly endearing.

  He still looked pretty rough, thanks to Grady. She had scanned his poor, battered face for signs of confusion or insanity. All she saw was the fierceness of intent in his one Bimini blue eye, and the squareness of his jaw—well, the side that hadn’t swelled to the size of a watermelon. He was lucky Grady hadn’t broken his nose.

  Will you marry me? The words she’d waited to hear from him since she was eleven years old.

  But there was no joy in his face. No joy in the words.

  Awful enough without him reminding her of her ridiculous crush on him, the silly torch she’d carried since childhood. Still did, if she stopped lying to herself. Which made it all so much worse.

  She’d tried to keep her voice gentle and swallow the rising hysteria that had started that now-familiar spiral in her stomach. She’d done her very best to stick with a pragmatic no. And yet somehow she found herself now bent over the barrel of maybe. How?

  This felt wrong on every level.

  Jules stood upright and left the stall. She walked to the oval gold mirror and took in her reflection with a mixture of amusement and disgust. What had they all thought this was, prom night? They’d all known or guessed or checked in with one another—Amelie, Edwynna, GiGi at Glam Girl . . . and she’d known they knew, deep down. But she’d not only been in denial, she’d needed the help. Needed to pretend that she could get out of her Cinderella costume, her Cinderella life, and go to the ball. Dance with the prince.

  Well, she was done playing dress-up like a little kid. Jules turned on the water faucet, bent forward, and splashed her face. She used the fragrant, French-milled, pear-scented soap that Jean-Paul ordered from Paris to scrub her face totally clean of the gunk that had lent itself to the fantasy.

  And when she looked back into the mirror, dripping, she saw herself again. Mostly. She dried her face with one of the chichi hand towels provided, took off the diamond necklace, and dropped it into the evening bag that Amelie had loaned her.

  A large clump of mascara adorned the monster rock on her finger. She rinsed it off, idly wondering what it had cost Rhett, and deciding she didn’t want to know.

  A soft knock came at the door. “Mademoiselle Julianna?” Jean-Paul made her name sound so exotic. Zhulyanna.

  And she was about as exotic as a cactus in a ceramic cowboy boot planter. “Yes?”

  “Ah . . . M’sieur Rhett . . . he wish to know you are okay?”

  “I’m fine. Thank you, Jean-Paul.”

  “There is, ah, anysing I may get for you?”

  She thought for a moment. “If you have a take-out bag, that would be great.”

  “Tout de suite, mademoiselle.”

  When she stepped out of the ladies’ room a couple of minutes later, he handed it to her, looking almost comically mournful that the evening had been such a debacle.

  The bag held something solid. “What’s in here?”

  “Gâteau au chocolat,” he said with a small bow. “Sometimes chocolat is better than man, eh?”

  “Thank you,” Jules said. She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. Then she pulled the box of cake out of the bag, slipped off her high heels, and tossed them inside instead.

  He eyed the ring, clearly perplexed, and lifted an eyebrow.

  She shrugged. “You know as much as I do,” she said before slipping out the back door and padding barefoot to her familiar, beat-up truck. At least it wouldn’t turn into a pumpkin on the way home.

  Chapter 31

  Fool Fest, directed by a manic Lila, was in full swing. Rhett felt the irony as he sat in Schweitz’s, taking refuge from the chaos with his brother Jake and a whole lot of other townsfolk.

  Outside, the little garden gnome did his very best to retain what dignity he’d ever had, holding his pint aloft like the Statue of Liberty held her torch. The problem was that someone had dressed him in a ballerina tutu and a yellow lace bra. That someone had also stuffed the bra full of succulents, which looked a lot like the ones from Aunt Sue’s garden. They erupted, ridiculous, from the cleavage, and waved in the breeze. The gnome stood stoic, doing his best to ignore them even as they clustered at the bottom of his beard.

  A band with limited talent was playing anything with fool in the title. “Fool for Love,” “The Fool on the Hill,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again” . . . and similar songs played on a track inside Schweitz’s.

  Outside there was controlled pandemonium: kids with face paint running amok with turkey legs and cotton candy; adults with plastic cups of beer and wine; at least five identical jesters doing magic tricks, turning cartwheels, and playing jokes on people.

  There was Kristina from Piece A Cake, her long, blond braid hanging over her shoulder as she deftly dished up her baked goods on paper plates while her cousin took people’s money. Ray Delgado, the butcher, did the same from his booth with smoked brisket and sausage and the turkey legs. Schweitzie himself was out there, slinging beer and wine. A group of church ladies sold cookies by the dozen.

  “Looks like you just might beat me to the altar after all,” Jake said, slapping Rhett on the back. “That’s good, right? She didn’t say no.”

  Rhett lifted a shoulder, let it drop, and poured some more beer down his throat. “Word has it that she’s still wearing the ring, anyway.”

  His optimism had waned as time passed and there was no text, much less a phone call or the sight of Jules driving up next to him with her window rolled down and a smile on her face.

  “Thinking about it” is a maybe on its way to a yes, isn’t it?

  Or no. Maybe it was a no. Maybe it was a I’m-gonna-let-you-down-easy-by-pretending-this-is-a-tough-choice no.

  Or maybe it means I’m overthinking this whole thing.

  “That’s good, man. She’s just getting used to it, that’s all.” Jake clinked his Shiner against Rhett’s.

  Rhett managed a sm
ile. “I thought if I ever proposed to a girl, she’d look a sight happier than Julianna Holt did.” He was feeling a little shell-shocked. Even if she did get to yes, the look on her face made him wonder if it would stick.

  “Let’s get you another beer,” Jake said, waving Otto over.

  “To the Braddock boys!” a girlish voice called from across the bar. Bridget stood up, hoisting what appeared to be a water glass. “Never boring!” She made her way over, leaving behind a table with her laptop and a hot pink leather portfolio full of papers, to come say hi.

  “You’re working in the bar?” Jake asked.

  “It’s just the billing. I wanted a good view for the Fool Fest parade, and I’m not a coffee shop girl,” she said. “Otto says he put in Wi-Fi just for me.” She batted her eyelashes and they all had a laugh.

  “Nice to run into you again,” Rhett said. “Although I see you more in Dallas than I do my own family here.”

  “That’s on you, buddy,” she said. Her manicured hand slipped over Jake’s shoulder. Jake smiled but stiffened slightly and Rhett shot him a commiserating look. She wasn’t over him yet? How long would it take?

  You’re one to talk. Mooning over Jules all this time after one night. Begging her to marry you. Begging. Rhett pressed the heel of his hand to his pounding temple. He thought it would feel better than this. He thought he’d feel relief, hope for the future . . . happiness.

  He gulped back his drink. I should be happier. Jules and I are gonna get married and have a baby and she’s going to learn to love me and I’ll have a home in Silverlake again and it’s all gonna be okay . . .

  “Rhett!”

  Rhett focused on his brother. Jake and Bridget exchanged glances. “You all right?” Bridget asked. “I never pegged you for one to give a crap about what other people say about you. But I guess it turned out well for everybody. I’ll expect to be a bridesmaid at the wedding, of course, ha ha.”

  It was Rhett’s and Jake’s turn to share a look. “Where’d you get this from?” Jake asked.