The Bowen Bride

by Nicole Burnham

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure how you two worked together.” She waved a hand at the sheet. “You’re giving me a great discount on the labor. I appreciate it and all the time you’ve put in on this already. I’m impressed.”

  ‘‘It’s nothing.” A smile played in his eyes, and Katie’s heart did a slow flip inside her chest. “I usually work on bigger projects,” he explained, “doing all the trim and cabinets in a brand-new house. A smaller job like this is fun for me. Gives me a bit of a break. Plus I almost never get to work in town. I don’t have to bag my lunch for once.”

  “It’s a lot healthier to bag it. I usually grab my lunch from upstairs, since I live above the shop, but it’s tempting to toss my salad in the trash when practically everyone who walks by my store window between the hours of eleven and two is carrying something from Montfort’s.”

  “You seem like the type who could eat all the Montfort’s you want, fixings included.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. Though the place I really want to try is Celestino’s, that new pizzeria over in Herman. Been there?”

  “Nope, but Mandy has. She really liked it. Said it’s run by a young Italian couple who moved up from Omaha. Apparently they’re very friendly and have adjusted well to life in Herman. Even started going to the bingo games at the vet’s lodge. I’ve been wanting to go there for a while, myself. Celestino’s, that is. Not bingo.”

  “Bingo’s probably fun. On the other hand, I visited Celestino’s in Omaha once. The guy’s parents run that location. It’s fabulous.”

  He swiveled the notebook so he had the drawings facing him again. He tapped his pen against it and opened his mouth to say something, then stopped short.

  Katie frowned. “What?”

  “So let’s go.”

  Did he just ask her out? “To bingo? Or Celestino’s?”

  “Celestino’s. You busy on Friday?”

  She tried not to grin at the way he suddenly stopped tapping his pen, or at the faint blush that tinged his cheeks. She suspected it had nothing to do with crouching on the floor to double-check his measurements. Jared Porter, a buff, masculine, I-own-every-tool-known-to-man type, had a wicked case of nerves.

  “You’re asking me for a date?”

  “I guess I am. Yes.”

  At his embarrassed smile, she wanted to melt. Jared Porter was the perfect man for her, on paper, at least. Nonjudgmental, unlike Brett, the last guy she’d dated in Boston. Jared was a hard worker, creative, funny, and definitely easy on the eyes. The man had a firm, full mouth that screamed to be kissed.

  She really wanted to go. She wanted to see if Jared could relax and have fun, if he could forget for an hour or two that he had a teenage daughter. She wanted to see if he put red pepper flakes on his pizza or if he was a parmesan cheese kind of guy.

  The idea of spending an evening letting herself kick back at Celestino’s, laughing about town events and not worrying about whether or not she’d exercised bad judgment simply by saying yes to a date seemed possible with Jared. She could even picture him pulling his truck into the parking lot, then walking around to open the door for her, just because it was the sort of thing she suspected he’d do.

  And that was the frightening part. It was all too easy to imagine.

  She looked to where his fingers rested near the edge of the notebook and imagined his hand moving over the page, sketching out the various options for her cabinets, his brow furrowing as he considered each stroke of his pencil, assessing what features would be the best.

  She’d do the same for Mandy—assuming Mandy and Kevin went forward with their plans to marry—settling down to assemble all the components of a perfect wedding gown. But if what her grandmother told her about the thread was true, then what? Should she stitch in that final, enchanted length of thread?

  Or was she being silly to even think about it? The thread couldn’t really have any special power, could it?

  “I’m sorry, Jared, but I probably shouldn’t.” She felt her color rising as she added, “And not because of you. I mean that. It’s just...there are other things—”

  “No explanation necessary.” He shot her an amused look. “But, hey, you can’t blame a guy for asking. It might be awkward, anyway, with me working on your cabinets. I want you to be able to tell me straight out what you do and don’t want without thinking, ‘Gee, I can’t tell him I don’t like that beveled edge, especially after he spilled his soda all over me at dinner and felt so bad about it. I might hurt his feelings.’”

  Katie couldn’t help but laugh in response. “I’d never hold a soda spill against you.”

  He tore the pages out of the notebook, then passed them to her. “Look these over and take a day or two to think about what you want. Then give me a call.”

  “Sure. And thank you.” She already knew what she wanted. She wanted to give him a call despite the fact he hadn’t even left the shop, but the call had nothing to do with cabinets.

  The glass door shut behind him, leaving behind the echoing jingle of bells, then he gave her one last wave as he backed his pickup out of one of the diagonal spaces that fronted her shop. Katie released a long, ragged breath, wondering if she’d ever be able to trust in herself enough to date a man again.

  He’d been completely, one hundred percent insane to ask her. He should’ve known it’d go badly when he decided to accept dating advice from his own daughter. What adult in his right mind did that?

  But even though he’d been turned down flat, he didn’t regret having asked. She’d wanted to say yes. He wasn’t an expert on women, not by a long shot, but he knew it with every fiber of his being.

  Jared slowed to a stop, then cut the truck’s engine and unlatched his seat belt. It’d been a week since he’d last set foot inside The Bowen Bride, yet Katie had never been far from his thoughts. Even when he’d been working on the Klein family’s kitchen, his thoughts had drifted to the gorgeous blond dressmaker. At first he’d told himself it was because he was working on her new counter. They’d sent messages back and forth about the design and pricing, and he’d located a granite remnant that suited her needs and budget. But he knew it was more than that.

  If Katie had been a curiosity to him before, now she’d become a mystery he wanted to solve, despite common sense telling him to leave it alone.

  Jared unloaded his toolbox from the back of his truck, watching as Katie stood in the next parking space, helping Amy Cranders position her new wedding gown across the back seat of her silver sedan.

  Once Amy pulled away, Katie turned to Jared and rested her hands on her denim-clad hips. “Great timing. Unless I have a drop-in, the store will be empty the rest of the afternoon.”

  Leaving the two of them alone, in other words. Jared secured the truck’s tailgate, then gestured for Katie to lead the way back inside. “How about tomorrow?”

  “No appointments scheduled. You can hammer and saw to your heart’s content.” She opened the door wide so he could carry in his tools, standing just far enough back to keep him from accidentally brushing against her. “You really think this’ll only take a couple days? That’s hard to believe.”

  “I’ll rip out the old counter this morning. It may take a while, since I want to protect the floor. After that, I’ll disassemble everything and recycle what I can. By tomorrow I should be able to haul everything away, then I’ll need to go back to my place to get the components for the new unit. Stewart will help me load it up and deliver it here. Then I’ll install it and put on the doors. The trim will be the day after that—I’m almost finished with it—and the countertop will be last. The installer hopes to be here Friday or Saturday, if that works for you. Probably Friday.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  They were dancing, he could tell. Each of them testing out the other to check their comfort levels. And no wonder. You generally didn’t ask a woman out, get turned down, then proceed to spend several days alone with her, especially when you were both adult enough to understand t
hat an attraction existed.

  “So you do a lot of your woodworking in your house?”

  “My basement is one big wood shop. Plenty of room for my equipment and whatever pieces I’m working on, so I don’t need to be on job sites all the time. It’s perfect when I need to be home for Mandy. I love working down there, but Mandy calls it my hole,” he said with a wry smile. “She doesn’t enter the basement unless she has to.”

  “I can relate.” Katie pulled the glass door shut, then watched him as he unloaded his tools and cleared space around the old cabinet so he’d have room to work. “My Oma—my grandmother—used to run this shop. When I was a kid I visited all the time, but I never wanted to go into her workroom in the back. I called it The Pit. It was perfectly clean and organized, but it was her space. Her fabrics, her sewing machine. I could even smell her hand lotion when I was here. I felt like I was intruding. Now I love it and come downstairs at all hours to work. It’s relaxing to me.”

  “Somehow I don’t picture Mandy or her children taking over my basement workroom,” he replied, though even as he said it, it made him wonder how far off grandchildren would be. At thirty-six, he wasn’t anywhere near ready to be a grandfather. Then again, he hadn’t been anywhere near ready to be a father at eighteen.

  “You never know, though,” Katie argued. “I had to go away for a while first. If you’d asked me when I was a teenager whether I wanted to run The Bowen Bride, I’d have either shuddered or laughed in your face.”

  Jared set his crowbar on the Formica countertop. “Going away made you appreciate it?”

  “Believe it or not, it did. And Mandy will appreciate what you do, too. Though you’re right—I can’t picture her wanting to spend an afternoon sanding or finishing someone’s built-in cabinetry.” One side of Katie’s mouth curved. “But when she’s older, she’ll go to the basement and picture you there, working. It’ll be a great memory for her. Bet she even tells her children about it.”

  Jared nodded, unsure he wanted to discuss Mandy—or the possibility of Mandy being a mother someday—with Katie, though he found himself reassured by her words.

  “No matter what she does now, she’ll find her way home, Jared. Mandy’s that type.”

  “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

  “I am.” This time it was Katie who seemed unsure she wanted to continue the conversation. She stepped to the front window where the two mannequins stood, and fingered the fabric on one of the gowns. “I assume you’re going to kick up a lot of dust. If you could help me move these to the back, I’d appreciate it.”

  “No problem.” He lifted one of the mannequins from the raised area by the window, then carefully walked it to the back, holding it high so he wouldn’t accidentally step on the train with his work boots. He ducked through the curtain, looked around until he spied an empty corner of the workroom off to his right, then set down the mannequin. “This all right?”

  “Perfect,” Katie said as she entered behind him and set the second mannequin beside the first.

  “There shouldn’t be too much dust today or tomorrow,” Jared told her. “Any dust will come when I finish the trim. I’ll vacuum and wipe everything down when I’m done, but you might want to keep the workroom curtain drawn to protect all this fabric.”

  “There’s a sliding door I can use to close off this area,” she said, pointing. “I hardly ever close it, but if the dust gets really bad, I will.”

  He looked around at the bolts of fabric, each on its own giant spindle. Most were in shades of white and cream, but there were a few in pastel and jewel tones, presumably for bridesmaids’ dresses. Beyond the fabric, a large black file cabinet stood next to a set of shelves holding what appeared to be financial books. A large worktable and two sewing machines stood in the center of the room, and a large pegboard with row upon row of thread dominated the far wall. Everything was neat and organized, just as he’d suspected. The room reflected Katie perfectly. Anyone could walk in and find whatever they needed in an instant. No bride who saw this room would have a second thought about a gown being delayed or worry that she’d get anything other than exactly what she wanted. No one this organized failed to keep her promises.

  “You’ve made this area very professional,” Jared commented. “Much nicer than I imagine most workrooms are. It’s obvious you enjoy running your own shop.”

  “I do.” She bent to adjust the train on one of the mannequins’ gowns so it was out of the way. Without looking up, she asked, “How about you? You enjoy working with your brother?”

  He wondered if that was part of what stopped her from accepting his invitation to dinner. Did she view him as a working-class guy, someone without the same level of education she’d obtained, and therefore maybe not the best person for her to date? As someone less sophisticated and rough around the edges?

  Corey had certainly seen him that way. She’d wanted gloss, not grit.

  “Stewart’s great,” he replied. Though if things went well, he might not be working for Stewart much longer. He’d saved up almost enough to open his own shop, doing what he really loved—refinishing and repairing furniture—a real feat, considering he’d also been saving for Mandy’s college tuition since the day she was born and had set aside enough to cover it, assuming no major hikes in the next four years. He just had to go about the transition in such a way that Stewart wasn’t stuck without a good finish carpenter.

  He wondered if knowing his future plans would have made a difference in Katie’s response to his dinner invitation. If it did, he didn’t want to know. Being picky was fine and dandy, but being picky without reason wasn’t. It was a shade of Corey he never wanted to see in another woman, even if Corey’d only been a confused teenager at the time.

  He was about to return to the front room when an out-of-place object caught his eye. Without thinking, he strode to the opposite side of the workroom for a better look.

  “Was this thread your grandmother’s?”

  Katie started to answer, then hesitated. “What made you ask that?”

  “It’s older. Miles older. Rougher texture, and the spool is aged wood.” He couldn’t help but grin as he looked at her over his shoulder. “I’m a detail person. Didn’t mean to ask anything intrusive.”

  It was probably intrusive enough just to be standing in her workroom. Not only had she said it was her special space, but from where they were standing in relation to the curtain, no one could see them back here. If someone walked in the front door and the two of them walked out, there’d be gossip.

  “It’s not intrusive. You’re just observant.’’ Katie moved to stand beside him. “And you’re right, it was my grandmother’s.”

  “Something sentimental, then?”

  “I suppose.” She was only inches off his elbow in the narrow space between the worktable and the pegboard. If he wanted to, he could wrap an arm around her, as he so often did with Mandy. Tuck the stray hair back behind her ear or kiss the top of her head.

  But it would be nothing like with his daughter. That was comforting, the act of a loving father. Katie stirred entirely different emotions. Emotions that would have him kissing a lot more than the top of her head.

  “We’re a lot alike, I think,” Katie said, looking at him sideways. Her hazel eyes had a glint in the corners, reflecting the light streaming in from the front room.

  “I never went to college, like you did. Never lived anywhere but Bowen,” he commented. “And I doubt you have a teenage child sitting in a literature class over at Bowen High.”

  “No, but that’s not what I meant. That’s all cosmetic.”

  He turned slightly, just enough to meet her gaze. They were treading dangerous ground now, and he wasn’t sure it was his place to push ahead. She’d been the one to turn him down, not the other way around. “Not as much as you might think.”

  “I disagree.” Her gaze fell on the old spool of thread, then back again. “And I’ve been thinking, maybe I was wrong.”

>   What did that mean? “About us being alike?”

  “No. Last week.”

  He suddenly grasped that she meant about declining his dinner invitation, but he had to hear the words from her.

  If she said it, though, then what? His stomach clenched as she flexed her fingers and exhaled. Was he ready for this? After all the years of halfhearted relationships, of focusing on his daughter first and himself second, was this finally the right person and the right time?

  Because more than anything, he wanted to kiss Katie Schmidt. To hell with cabinets and wedding gowns and what Mandy might or might not think.

  “What were you wrong about last week?” he asked, his throat constricting against his will, even as the question left his lips.

  She tipped her head, then tucked a loose blond strand behind one ear. “I think I was wrong about Celestino’s.”

  Chapter 5

  “I should have said yes.”

  Katie held her breath, partially because she couldn’t believe she’d admitted it aloud, partially out of embarrassment at reversing herself.

  And partially because she thought Jared had the expression of a man about to kiss the woman in front of him.

  Despite the mixture of fear and desire that coursed through her at the sight of him standing less than two feet from her in a clean white T-shirt with his work-hardened hands resting casually at his waist, and despite common sense telling her that, given the bad judgment she’d exercised in the past, she was better off not getting involved with anyone—let alone someone like Jared, who probably had a truck bed loaded with emotional baggage and needed to find a woman more perfect than she could ever be—she wanted him to kiss her.

  Who in their right mind could resist someone as dark and handsome as Jared? A man who not only loved his family, but who had a chest perfect for leaning into and smiling against, with powerful arms capable of making even her feel secure?