by Lauren Dane
He laughed and the dog yipped, clearly pleased to be part of whatever made her human so happy.
He tried so hard to be gruff, but all that was a front. You only had to look at what a sucker this man was for his animals to know he was compassionate and kind.
“I warned them not to run under our feet tonight.”
“Or—” still touched by what a sweet, soft center Ezra had, Tuesday gave in and nuzzled his neck for a brief moment before brushing her cheek against his beard as she straightened “—if they make us fall down in the hallway, you can take me right there.”
He got very still, his arm around her waist tightened and she fought the urge to offer him whatever it was he wanted whenever it was he wanted it.
“It wasn’t a thing to move you to my bed. It’s soft there. I didn’t want you to get rug burns or whatever.”
“What if I like rug burns?”
He sucked in a breath. “Do you?”
She wasn’t sure. But it really seemed to make him hot and she believed he’d make her love it. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever had any. But how can I know until I try?”
“That’s a good point. I’ll keep it in mind.”
He ran a fingertip over the hollow of her throat. “Want something to drink?” he asked after he kissed her again.
She nodded.
“Sit and look pretty. I’ve got this part handled. I’ll steam the green beans when I take the chicken out.” He turned to the fridge and she hopped up onto a stool. “Juice okay? I have fresh-squeezed orange but also some lemonade. Soda water. Ginger beer.”
“Juice is great.” She liked to watch him in his kitchen. Big as he was, he still managed to be graceful as he poured them both a glass of juice and then went back to food prep.
“Anything exciting happen to you this week?” he asked as he scooped the cucumbers he’d been slicing into a bowl.
“It’s coming up on a busy time of year for me. My focus is pretty much making lots and lots of pieces so I can sell them in the various places the good weather brings. I think I mentioned to you before that I’d finally got a spot I’ve been on a wait list for two years for. In Portland. I’m hoping it’s a good way to build a base for my work. I’m carrying more in the shop, too. Experimenting with inventory.” Maybe finally accept that what she wanted was to run a gallery. “Which is a really long way to answer your simple question.”
“I asked because I want to know. How did you end up making jewelry? Is that what you did before you moved to Hood River?”
“No. I worked at a design firm in Seattle for several years. When I was married, I mean. I planned events for our clients’ rollouts.”
“How did jewelry come into it? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I used to make jewelry back in college. A hobby. It started out that way because I had no money for gifts. So I’d head up to campus, toss out a blanket on a sunny spot on the grass and sell the earrings and bracelets I’d made. Paid for those presents and even kept me in ramen.” She took a deep breath and said it. “And then Eric got sick and I needed to do something with my hands. To keep busy in all the hours spent in doctors’ offices, hospitals and hospice.” She shrugged. “It kept me busy.”
He looked at her across the kitchen island. “I’m sorry you lost him.”
Tuesday licked her lips. “Thank you. I’m sorry, too.”
“Do you mind talking about it?”
“I’ll tell you if I can’t. Or don’t want to. It’s like any other terrible moment in a life. Everyone has them. It was the worst thing I’d ever experienced and it remains that to this day. Eric was part of my life for a long time. To never speak of him means I can’t draw on all that life. I choose not to live that way anymore.”
“But you did stop talking about him?”
“For about eighteen months after I scattered his ashes I didn’t. I never spoke of him.”
He nodded. “I get that.”
“My friends let me sleep in their guest rooms and I stayed with my siblings and other assorted family while I pretended I was someone else.” Someone who hadn’t lost a husband.
“Did it work?”
“Does it ever?”
He didn’t respond, but he didn’t have to.
“After about a year and a half, Natalie asked me to come and stay in her new house with her for a while. And I ended up staying. I’m leaning toward shifting my emphasis and running a gallery. I want to make my jewelry and sell it, and art, in my shop. I may. It’s a multiple-year plan.” She shrugged, pretending nonchalance, but in reality that had been the first time she’d said it out loud like a definite plan instead of cloud talk.
“I do that,” he said as he tipped the green beans into a steamer.
“What?”
“Have multiple-year plans. I like to spread it all out and break it down into component parts.”
“It doesn’t seem as insurmountable when you break it down.” And so that’s how she’d taken each day. Task by task, hour by bour.
Their gazes locked as this depth of knowing passed between them. Ezra hadn’t lost a spouse, but he’d lost part of himself for a long time. He got her situation in ways very few others ever could. And yet she knew he wasn’t ready to see that right then.
He turned his attention back to the food. “Some days, checking stuff off a list was the high point. Hell, it’s still that way sometimes.”
While he finished the prep, she set the table and then went to the windows nearest his dining room table.
The cat, Goldfish, she remembered, hopped up onto the windowsill and walked back and forth, tickling her face with his tail until she picked him up. His purrs were loud as he drooled all over her arm.
“Oh shit, sorry. I should have warned you he’s a drooler.” Ezra handed her a paper towel she wiped her arm with.
“It’s okay. I’ll wash off.” She balled the paper towel and went to wash her hands before she settled at the table with him.
The food was really good and she said as much, complimenting his skills. “Did you once have a chef for a girlfriend or something?” she teased.
He laughed. “No. One of the women who was a counselor at the sober house I lived in after I left rehab. We all had to take turns making dinner. She taught me how to make this and a few other things. It gave me something to do.”
She’d been curious, but hesitant to ask too many questions about his experience with heroin and the recovery after he’d crashed and burned so hard.
“How long were you there?”
“I went to detox first. The place I went uses this process where you’re pretty much unconscious through the worst parts of withdrawal. They monitor your physical state, keeping you hydrated, watching your vital signs so that by the time the worst of it is burned from your system, you wake up. Then I went for another hundred and twenty days and after that into sober living for five months.”
“Wow.”
He tore off a piece of bread. “I had to learn how to cope again. I’d built my life around handling things a certain way and I couldn’t ever do that again.”
“Did you go straight there? From rehab to sober living? Is that how it works?”
“Not for everyone. They gave me the option of sober living once I’d finished rehab. My counselor recommended it. But I’d been out of pocket for four months at that point. Longer if you consider how useless I’d been for a year or so before that. I had shit to do and I was used to just doing it. I thought it would be easy since I no longer had any heroin in my system.” He laughed but there was no mirth there.
“They told me my addiction was way more than just a substance but I wasn’t going to listen to that bullshit. I kicked. I’d avoid the people I used with, which wasn’t hard because my family wasn’t going to let any of them near me. I was ready to get on with my life. And I walked into my house and the stress of it all hit me. It hit me as I stood in the powder room I’d been dope sick in. I’d be sleeping in a bed I’d used in.
The whole house had echoes of that Ezra all through it, right to the studs in the walls. I wanted to use so badly right then I locked myself in a closet until it passed. Once I’d got past the craving, I realized I couldn’t live in that house. So I jotted down notes about what I wanted, I discussed it with my parents, who agreed to handle the demolition and construction while I was away and I got on a plane that afternoon and headed to sober living. By the time I got back I had a new house I could start over in and the tools to live with the consequences of the decisions I had to make, like leaving the band.”
He looked back to her, his gaze coming back from the past where he’d been dwelling a little as he told her the story.
“I guess it’s self-indulgent to demolish a house because I’d made bad choices there.”
There was enough self-loathing in his tone that she spoke again.
“The day Eric died I stayed at the hospice long enough to fill out all the paperwork. It’s weird. He was there and then he wasn’t.” She shook her head to resist dwelling on that part. “So they made me leave for a while and then I went back into his room to get his things. I sat next to an empty bed with a kitchen trash bag, which pretty much encompassed the entirety of my husband’s life by that point. My parents had shown up and my mother drove me back to my house.” Her mother had touched her as if Tuesday was going to fly apart any moment. For years she felt like an unexploded bomb, fragile and dangerous.
“She pulled up and I froze with my hand on the door handle. I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t go in. I couldn’t see our bed and smell him in our bathroom. I stayed in a hotel that night and three days later I put the place on the market. I was inside it only once more after he died and that was to pack up to move. I’ve never seen it again.” She didn’t even get off the freeway at that exit or go to any of their old restaurants and favorite places. “I know what it means to have to destroy something to keep going forward.”
They were both quiet awhile as she remembered their house with the front garden Eric had created so carefully, mapping out exactly what went where.
“It doesn’t gross you out that I was a junkie?”
Not only was the question unexpected, she heard the shame in his words and it cut her to the bone. “I hurt that you suffered so much, but no, I’m not grossed out at all. In case it’s escaped your notice when you look in a mirror, you’re beautiful, Ezra. You’re strong and your heart was forged by fire. It makes you a lion. With some scars, yes, but all warriors have scars.”
“I failed a whole lot of people.”
“I bet. I also bet you haven’t failed anyone since.”
“I fail people all the time.”
“Why is that? Because you’re human? Tell me of your horrible crimes, Ezra.” She had no idea why she was doing and saying all this to him. Provoking. Heat banked in his gaze and she kept poking.
No. That was a lie. She knew why.
Because she didn’t want him carrying all the weight he should have cast off long before then.
“A man is worth nothing if those he cares about can’t trust him.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
He sighed, shifting in his seat.
“Look, we can change the subject. All I’m saying is, you’re a good man and the people around you know it. You take care of them. You guide them. When you and Paddy weren’t talking last month, Nat freaked out. She was worried about Paddy not so much because they’d been apart, but because she knows how much Paddy relies on you. All of them do. It’s okay to cut yourself a break from time to time. Now, I’d like more of the green beans, please.”
He handed her the bowl, catching her gaze. They remained there, looking straight into one another for long moments until he broke away and pretended he needed to look at his glass just then.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EZRA PAUSED IN the doorway, watching her play with the cats. Loopy was lying across Tuesday’s feet as she danced a string out of reach of two furry, excited felines. Tuesday laughed, talking to them, pausing to include the dog from time to time.
“I warned them not to cockblock me again and look what I happen upon.”
She turned to him with a smile. “With this dog around, I bet your feet never get cold.”
“True. Then again, I’m always covered in dog hair. Come on.” He held out a hand. “I promised Violet I’d bring you to meet her and if I don’t she’ll get her revenge somehow.”
Loopy groaned but moved as Tuesday stepped over her. Ezra took her hand to keep her steady as the cats shot from the room.
“Those cats are very sweet, but wow, all that energy exhausts me.”
“They were worse when they were tiny. They climbed up my curtains and they’d get on top of the fridge so if I went to get something in the middle of the night they’d jump on my head. I nearly had a heart attack a time or two.”
He took her hand and led her out back and around to where Violet was.
“I never imagined you as the kitten type. Or the pig type, either.”
Ha. Neither had he, but there he was. “It all started with Loopy. Vaughan and I were out on a ride. Vaughan’s horse got spooked and when we got down to see what was wrong, we found her and her sister as puppies, barely hours old.”
His mouth hardened as he remembered how small and helpless both animals had been.
“They’d been tossed in a ditch. At first I wasn’t sure if either puppy would survive. But they did. Loopy stayed with me and her sister lives with my foreman. He’s just down the road so he brings Loopy’s sister with him to work all the time.”
Tuesday cocked her head as she looked up at him. “I know your secret.”
He made an annoyed sound, but that didn’t deter her at all. Which made him like her even more.
“Anyway, I think the people down at the vet clinic in town figured that since I took in a dog I’d probably take in other animals. So they asked me to foster. Big Hoss was the first but he never left.” Ezra pointed to the massive black-and-white pig happily munching away on some of the apples and sweet potatoes he’d put in their enclosure earlier.
“Oh my god.” She leaned over the fence and he jumped, moving quickly to yank her back from Big Hoss, who hated anyone near his bed or his food. Instead Big gave her a grunt and kept on eating.
Okay then.
“Sometimes pigs can be mean. Just a warning,” he said to her, brushing a curl back from her face. “I like you in one piece. Hoss will cut a bitch in defense of his bed.”
She smiled at him. “Protector of all things living, apparently. Thank you. I do know better, but he’s so big and adorable and I lost my mind for a moment. I love pigs. I guess I should have told you that.”
He laughed, kissing her quickly before setting her back. He couldn’t defend against that. At all. It was fucking adorable that she was so exited over his pigs.
Still grinning, Tuesday turned back to the enclosure. “And you’re Violet. I’ve heard all about you from Mary.”
At the sound of Mary’s name, Violet gave a squeal and trotted over, grunting a little.
Tuesday made an excited little eeee as she laughed. “You are indeed a very fine pig. You’re both very smart to have come to live with Ezra. I bet he’s a big giant softy who gives you apples and all the things you like.”
“I beat them with nettles and I’m going to make Big Hoss into bacon.” Ezra frowned and Tuesday snorted, rolling her eyes.
“Sure you do.” Tuesday looked at him over her shoulder for a moment and then turned back to Violet. “Between you and me, Violet, I love pigs. When I was a little girl I had a necklace with a pig pendant on it. I loved that necklace. I had pig stuffed animals, too. And maybe a few dozen ceramic pigs people bring me back from trips they take. Oh, and some salt and pepper shakers.”
Damn, he’d known she was unexpected. Funny. Heartbreaking. Strong. But he was partial to silly. He’d not noticed the salt and pepper shakers but he did remember seeing a red-and-white ceramic pig in her be
droom.
Violet made her little grunts and squeals to Tuesday, who nodded and spoke back to the pig. Violet let off one of her little satisfied squeaks and gave Ezra a look.
“She approves of me, huh?” Tuesday straightened with one last pat to Violet’s head.
“She can be vicious if she chooses. If she hadn’t liked you, she’d have found a way to make you sorry. She’s a vexing female.” He watched his pig trot over to get herself some more apples before she settled in for a nap.
“I’m glad not to be a victim of suspicious pig gang activity. I’d have some story to tell about how I lost my eye—probably get me lots of free drinks in bars.”
He barked a surprise laugh. “Maybe next time. She loves bad influences. Look how much she digs Mary.”
“Can I come back to see them? Really?”
The idea of Tuesday being around more was one he liked a great deal.
“You’re welcome to come see these pigs anytime.”
She hugged him. It was an impulsive, easy thing and holy shit he liked it. So much he wrapped his arms around her, just soaking it in for long moments before he kissed her forehead and stepped back.
She looked around, peering closer at the corner of his garden. “Do you have a garden, too?” She pointed at the nearby hedgerow.
“I do. Just a little something I do in my spare time.”
“Show me.”
He took her hand and led, feeling proud and a little embarrassed at once.
* * *
TUESDAY PAUSED, sucking in a breath as they got a few steps past the wall of hedges. “Wow. This is what you do in your spare time?” She took it all in, the paths lined with flowering plants, the trees and bushes and plants. It wasn’t a huge garden, but it was big enough that as she wandered through she began to see that each area had its own feel, its own sounds even.
“I think this is my favorite.” She sat on a little bench under a tree, near a water feature.
He sat next to her. “Really? It’s just a thing, this isn’t...” Again the man tried to wave away something amazing he’d done.
She took his hand. “This isn’t just a thing. Ezra, this is like...I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s a whole different world in here. It’s quiet and it feels faraway and serene. It’s nice to have a place to escape to when you need to clear your head.”
