Be My Texas Valentine

by Jodi Thomas

  Why don’t you just get down on your knees and beg him? JoEmma didn’t like for Angelina to feel so desperate. “I think that’s what we all should do. Just show up and let what happens happen. Nobody escort anybody unless they’re already married. That seems more fair and would get rid of all this cooing and wooing one-upmanship that’s going on right now.”

  “I was maybe thinking about asking both of you to allow me to escort you there, if neither of you has a particular beau you would prefer to take you.” Noah shared yet another glance with Hannah. “It would take me out of the running if everyone thought I’d already spoken for someone.”

  “It’s the least you could do to help him out.” Hannah took another bite of meat and chewed thoughtfully. “Since it was you, Angelina, that let all the women know he was back from the Boatrights and caused the rash of illnesses this afternoon.”

  Angelina lowered her goblet. JoEmma could see her sister’s mind galloping away with plans on how to make this sudden opportunity fit in with her original scheme. “It works for me. I’d love to go with you, Dr. Powell. Thank you for asking.”

  Sure it works for you ... at least halfway. Now JoEmma had to attend, too. Not to appease Noah. If she didn’t go, Angelina would win by simply showing up with him.

  He’d saved himself from matchmaking manipulation only to put himself right back into the line of Angie’s fervor to win.

  “I guess that means I go, too.” JoEmma thought she saw Hannah Lassiter wink at the doctor, but it had to have been a product of her tired imagination. It had been a very long day, a soul-bending kiss, and an extreme effort to remember that she really didn’t want her sister to hurt Noah’s feelings in any way with what she planned. “Thanks for asking us both.”

  She rolled her chair back from the dinner table. “I’m rather tired now. So if you all will forgive me, I’d really like to call it an evening. I want to get up early tomorrow and plan to be at your place by daybreak, Noah, since Hannah won’t be cleaning there. That way I can feed the birds, refresh the cage, and feed your cat before church.”

  “You don’t need to come unless you just prefer to.” Noah pushed his own plate away, done with his meal. “I’m not going to open the office tomorrow so I can handle Gabby and Amigo on my own. Why don’t you get some rest and come by after church?”

  “We will take you up on that.” Angelina spoke before JoEmma could.

  “You never close your office. Not even on Sundays.” One of Hannah Lassiter’s brows lifted quizzically. “What’s so special about tomorrow?”

  “If you really must know, I have to make my bed”—he laughed—“and make room for a wheelchair.”

  “What?” Angelina and Mrs. Lassiter chimed in unison.

  Noah explained why he would be making room for the pole and the birdcage in his bedroom rather than the parlor. The bird-sitters would now have to care for Gabby and Amigo in his room.

  “How thoughtful of you. I’ve always been curious about what a bachelor’s private quarters might look like.” Angelina grinned, looking quite pleased with the prospect. “Since I’ve never seen one, you know.”

  JoEmma thought her sister was being too coy and would have admonished her for it, but all she could do at the moment herself was focus on Noah’s lips and the fact that they were smiling directly at her and not Angelina. The idea of being in his private quarters with him stirred images that Angelina would find far more than coy if she had access to JoEmma’s thoughts. So JoEmma kept her criticism to herself.

  Mrs. Lassiter’s gaze swept their guest from head to torso. “That means you’re going to have to change some of your sleeping habits, young man.”

  Something unspoken but electric passed between her housekeeper and the doctor, and JoEmma couldn’t fathom its meaning.

  “You’re right.” He winked at the older woman. “At least until our little bird is ready to trust me and not fly away next time.”

  “Just remember she’ll stick around a lot longer if you don’t let any kittens in to play.”

  JoEmma wondered how Gabby and the cat he fed had anything to do with the way he slept.

  Maybe he liked to share his bed with a cat.

  Chapter 8

  Morning went by quicker than Noah had hoped. He was almost finished with cleaning his room and moving out anything but the four-poster bed and the wooden pole that now stood in the corner with the birdcage hanging on the hook. All he had to do now was stow away the rug and leave the floor bare so JoEmma could easily roll around the room.

  He had decided to store the sunflower seeds in the corner beneath the cage so she wouldn’t ever have to struggle with lifting the sack and he could always be aware of when she might need the supply replaced. He didn’t worry so much about her rolling all the way from the kitchen balancing a water tray, but the more he could leave in the bedroom for her access, the easier her job would be.

  Now he had to learn to make his bed before he went anywhere so he wouldn’t embarrass himself by showing how sloppy he could be. Always being called away gave him plenty of excuses. Besides, he’d always had Mrs. Lassiter to make the rest of the place look good. It had been a challenge the past couple of months learning how to care for someone other than himself. Amigo’s care had made Noah aware of how he fell short in other areas of his life, and now preparing his room for JoEmma’s ease gave him reason to want to improve some of those shortcomings in himself.

  He could start by taking the time to build a bigger cage for the sweethearts, improve their home by making a bookshelf with levels of shelves and perches to allow room for the coming offspring. He’d have to talk with the peddler about getting something that he could use to form a cover for the bookcase that would let in plenty of sunlight and still allow him to see the birds. Yet it would have to provide enough barrier to keep them from flying away. A thin chicken coop wire might be just the thing, but he wasn’t certain.

  He needed to learn a lot more about the lovebirds as a species and how to care for a possible family of them. Just as JoEmma warned might happen, Gabby was already gathering things that made him certain she was starting to build a nest. He’d gotten close to her when he’d changed out the trays this morning and he’d felt a sting at the top of his head. Next thing he knew, Gabby was taking a string of dark hair and showing it to Amigo before tucking it away in a corner of one perch.

  Wanting to protect himself from being plucked bald in the next few days, Noah had gone outside and grabbed a handful of items he thought she might use for nesting material and laid them as an offering in the birdcage. Gabby spent the morning building her nest with leaves, grass, and several threads from the ball of string he kept for the cat to play with when he visited. Noah found a particular humor in the fact that he and Gabby were working their fool heads off all morning while Amigo simply relaxed in the cage, looked on, and chirped, “No-ah-Pow. No-ah-Pow. Smch-smch-smch.”

  “That’s the good life, isn’t it, buddy?” Noah teased as he flung the rug up over his shoulder. “Let the little beauty do whatever makes her happy while you practice your sweet talk.”

  A knock on the front door reminded him that he had forgotten to unlock it. Even though he’d hung a closed sign for the day, if someone desperately needed him, he would open back up. Maybe church service was over and it was the Browns. They should be here anytime. Where had the morning gone? How in the world did Hannah clean the rest of his place so quickly in the same amount of time that it had taken him just to clean and rearrange his bedroom?

  “I’m coming!” he hollered, making his way to the door. He opened it and was just about to say he was sorry for having it locked when the words died in his throat. There before him stood Thurgood Powell.

  “Dad?” Noah swallowed the word hard. The thought that instantly came to mind was a twelve-year-old’s. Boy, am I glad I cleaned my room.

  “May I come in?” Thurgood took off his Sunday bowler, letting loose a wealth of salt-and-pepper-colored hair that would probably be Noah’
s fate one day. His father looked healthy for a man over sixty, his blue eyes piercing and intent above the sharp angular features and bearded jaw. If not for the cane he used to help him with his arthritic joints, no one would suspect the dapper-suited man was anything but in his prime.

  “I thought it was time we talked.”

  “Come in.” Noah stepped aside and let his father enter the office that had once been his own. “Can I get you some coffee?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “You want to wait in the parlor or would you prefer the kitchen?” Noah didn’t quite know what the protocol should be since making him wait in the parlor seemed too impersonal and the kitchen too personal between two men who had been little more than strangers to each other for several years.

  “The kitchen.”

  Noah led the way, wondering why he suddenly felt so defensive. He worried if the coffee would be the way his dad liked it, if he would approve of what he’d done with the office after being handed over the reins of the medical practice, if he had come to resolve their issues or make a final break between them.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here.” Thurgood sat down in one of the two chairs at the kitchen table and propped his cane against the edge.

  Noah took two cups from the hutch, set one in front of each of them, and poured the cups full. Should he add a saucer? He tried to remember how his dad preferred it. No saucer. Just a cup. “I made this about an hour ago. I’ll make fresh if you like.”

  “This will do.”

  Noah sat down, his hands gripping his cup, but he couldn’t have drunk a drop from it if he tried. He was afraid if he lifted it to his lips, his hands would shake the cup dry. He didn’t want his father to know how his presence unsettled him so he simply gripped the cup and forced himself to look Thurgood squarely in the eye. “Why are you here, Dad?”

  “Mrs. Lassiter has informed me that you’re interested in the younger Brown sister.”

  “JoEmma.” Noah needed to personalize her to himself. To both of them. His father was making her sound like one of their patients. She was more than that to Noah. How much more he could only hope at the moment.

  “Yes, JoEmma.” Thurgood took a sip of the coffee. “I think you’ve made a good choice.”

  A compliment? From his father? Noah couldn’t remember the last one he’d received and had to think hard to remember even the silent pats on the back his parent had offered when he achieved something at school or college. The memory came suddenly, full blown and full of irony. It had involved JoEmma even then. The day he’d carried her home from school with the skinned knee. His father had seen the other boys taunting him as he carried her safely home. When Noah finally reported home and learned that his father had witnessed his act of kindness, Thurgood rustled his hair and said, “Good boy, son.”

  Noah had helped JoEmma because it was the right thing to do and she had always been kind to him. The fact that the deed had made his father proud of him had made Noah feel like the heavens had opened up and poured sunshine on his soul that day.

  “You always liked JoEmma,” Noah remembered aloud.

  “She’s got a good heart. Comes from a fine family.”

  “Is this your way of telling me that you approve of my interest in her?”

  “It is.”

  It seemed that their conversation was a train struggling uphill one chug, one sentence at a time. Maybe they were simply out of practice in talking to each other. Noah didn’t know what it was that made it so difficult for them to feel comfortable with conversation between them, but it had always been this way. No, the difficulty had started after his mother died. Then the conversation was so rare and so brief that Noah had thought his father had gone mute with grief. He decided maybe now was the time to put into action his plans for JoEmma. Maybe his father would be willing to speak more if it concerned her.

  “Speaking of her good heart, you won’t mind me asking what you know about her state of health at the present?” Noah broached the subject cautiously and waited. His father was a retired doctor, after all, and might not violate patient privacy.

  “That shouldn’t matter if you care about her.”

  Emotion from a stoic man? Noah felt a little envious that his father defended JoEmma so quickly. He’d obviously spent the last several years making sure he kept up with JoEmma’s progress. He couldn’t remember another person in the territory his father had come out of retirement for.

  Noah didn’t like what he was feeling. It wasn’t JoEmma’s fault that Thurgood Powell showed more interest in her than he had in his own son. He was being childish and that would get him nowhere. All it had ever done was put more distance between them and stop any conversation that might have started between them.

  “I care enough,” Noah finally answered his father’s reprimand, not wanting to share exactly how he felt about JoEmma. That was purely between her and him. “That’s why I’m asking. I want to know if it’s her heart that keeps her in the wheelchair or if she has something else she’s dealing with physically.”

  “Doctor to doctor, it’s her heart. I’m not telling you anything that isn’t already common knowledge and she’s told others herself. Father to son, I’ll tell you that I think it’s her belief that she’s a burden to others that keeps her chair-bound. If she worked at it, she could strengthen those legs and that would strengthen her heart as well. She just hasn’t found enough purpose yet to push herself into trying to improve more quickly. She practices standing and walking but not enough.”

  “But if she were not in the chair, she could prove to herself she’s no burden. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “To you it doesn’t. To her it does. Have you ever known anyone afraid of success?”

  Noah thought about it. Yes, he supposed he did. “Yes. They’re afraid if they’re successful, they still won’t get what they want, so it’s easier not to challenge themselves to be better.”

  “Your JoEmma unconsciously remains a burden to herself because she’s afraid in the end that she still won’t get whatever it is she truly wants. She’s never been able to compete with her sister.”

  My JoEmma? She could be. The kiss had told him that he wanted her to be. If he could only encourage her to believe that whatever she really wanted, he would help her get it. If he could somehow urge her to open up to him about what was so important to her that she intentionally denied herself better health, then he might find a way to make it all possible. Noah dwelled on the wisdom of his father’s words. The answer to everything seemed to lie in getting JoEmma to speak up.

  He had to thank his father, not only for finally coming to visit but for being truthful about JoEmma and confiding in him. It was the finest conversation they’d shared since his youth. “I appreciate you talking about her with me, Dad. It means a lot.” Noah dared to share something more with his father. “She means a lot to me.”

  “Good.” Approval echoed in Thurgood’s tone. “That’s what I came to hear. Hannah told me that she heard wedding bells in your future. I didn’t believe her. I wanted to see for myself if you really were starry-eyed or if it was just a figment of her matchmaking imagination. I can see Hannah has diagnosed the situation correctly. The woman can be hardheaded at times about things she wants. She knew I wouldn’t ask her to marry me and she wouldn’t accept until we were both sure you had someone to really take care of you, not just your office.”

  Thurgood wiped the coffee from his mustache and looked sternly at his son. “You rely too much on Hannah, son. And frankly, I’m not getting any younger waiting on you to get smart enough to realize that you need more than a profession to make life worth living.”

  “So, that’s why she’s being so stubborn this time.” Noah saw it all more clearly now. “She’s in a hurry to be a bride herself.”

  “And she wants what she wants when she wants it.”

  For the first time in a very long time, he saw that Thurgood Powell was a man who had been bested ..
. by love. “And we both know what she wants most.”

  “Her way,” they echoed in unison.

  The two shared their first laugh as grown men together.

  Years of loneliness washed away in that moment of sharing. Noah felt pounds lighter as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders and the love he’d always felt for his father formed a lump in his throat as he tried to swallow it back, afraid it might make him cry the tears he had refused to shed all those years after his mother’s death and his father’s estrangement.

  He wanted the air between them to be pure once again, needing to put to rest the foul stench of the last words they’d shared four years ago before they had treated each other with silent indifference. Though he didn’t want to lose the sudden camaraderie between them, he had to make things right again. “Dad, I want you to know I’m sorry that I didn’t come to you in time to save Cousin Jenny. I honestly tried to persuade her to let me bring you in but she begged me—”

  “You don’t have to say anything more, son. I know. When I visited your cousins after I retired, they told me that you did everything possible for Jenny. They also told me that Jenny made you swear on your mother’s grave not to leave her, even if it meant coming to fetch me. Betsy and Will insisted that they were too scared to come get me themselves for fear that they wouldn’t see their daughter alive again if they did. And they were right. You all were right for staying there and being there with Jenny in her last moments. I simply overreacted with grief of not knowing that I had been needed. Of not being able to say good-bye to that precious girl. Of having more grief added on to the other grief that I still wasn’t coping with well.”

  His hand reached out and patted Noah’s shoulder. “I said some cruel things to you the day you came home from Jenny’s. I thought you were so upset with me about going into myself and leaving you all alone since your mother’s death that you had deliberately not consulted me about your cousin. That you were too afraid to talk to me about her or anything else, for that matter. After all, I was. Angry at my life as it was. Angry at death for taking your mother away from me. Angry at myself, Noah, because if you had been able to come to me, I wouldn’t have been there to hear you. And even though I knew I was the one at fault, I wasn’t man enough to admit I was wrong. Instead, I took it out on you and drove us even farther away from each other than before. You did right by staying with Jenny and doing what you could to comfort her going.”