Heartstrings and Diamond Rings

by Jane Graves

  Well. At least one male on the planet was crazy about her.

  She looked down at her martini. “I think I’m going to stop drinking.”

  “Please don’t,” Heather said. “Tony and I own a bar. You’re half our revenue.”

  Alison dropped her head to the sofa cushion behind her. “But it’s not working. I can’t get him out of my head. I dated Randy for eight months and thought he was going to ask me to marry him, and I banished him from my brain in about two hours.”

  “That’s because Randy was slime.”

  “And Brandon? What was he?”

  Heather shrugged. “I know what he did. The lies he told. But I still think he cared about you. He was just the wrong man at the wrong time.”

  “Please don’t tell me that. I need to find a way to hate him. Tell me he’s slime like Randy, and maybe I’ll forget all about him.”

  “He’s slime like Randy.” She paused. “Except that he offered to bring in a professional cleaning service so the house would really sparkle for the tour and we didn’t have to mess with it at the last minute. That was nice.”

  “Will you stop with the redeeming qualities? He’s a terrible person who hurt me and I hate him.” Alison sighed, her shoulders drooping. “Or not.”

  Heather tilted her head. “Do you need some ice cream to go with the vodka?”

  “No. Right now I’m just a lush. That’ll make me an overweight lush.”

  “You have a right to drown your sorrows for a while.”

  “Do you know I spend half my life having sorrows, and then I have to spend the other half drowning them? But I guess that’s good news for you and Tony, economically speaking.”

  She looked at her half-empty martini glass, thought about taking another sip, then simply set it down on the coffee table with a heavy sigh.

  “You’re not doing too well with this, are you?” Heather asked.

  Alison took a breath. “No. Not really. And I’m so not looking forward to going to Brandon’s house on Saturday.”

  “Would it help if I took over as tour guide?”

  Alison forced a smile. “You? Please. I don’t think you could work up much enthusiasm for a hundred-year-old house. You’d be telling people how ugly the furniture was and swearing there were rats and spiders in the basement.”

  “Hey, I could keep my thoughts to myself. Just give me your notes on the history of the house, and I swear I’ll play nice.” She shrugged. “To tell you the truth, the place kind of grew on me.”

  Alison’s smile faded. “I know. Me, too.”

  Heather sighed. “I’m sorry, sweetie. That was the wrong thing to say.”

  “No. You don’t have to tiptoe around me. And you don’t have to take over for me, either, okay? I’ll be just fine.”

  She hoped so, anyway. But until the tour was over and she left Brandon’s house for the last time, she couldn’t even begin to put it all behind her.

  Just then, Ethel jumped up on the sofa beside Ricky. She reached out a paw and tapped Alison on the leg. Alison scratched her behind the ears, and she practically turned herself inside out to take full advantage of all five fingernails.

  Then Alison remembered. Jasmine had done the same thing.

  She felt a shiver of worry. Jasmine. Brandon was leaving town. What was he going to do with her?

  The next morning, Brandon slept late, only to be awakened at nine‑thirty by the musical trill of an incoming text message. He rolled over and fumbled for his phone on the nightstand.

  The text was from Alison.

  His heart beating rapid fire, he opened it. What about Jasmine? she asked.

  If only he knew. He still hadn’t come up with a solution.

  I’ll find her a home, he typed, and sent the message. A moment later, Alison responded. She’s too old. Nobody will want her.

  Sadly, Alison was right. He wouldn’t mind keeping her, but since he rarely stayed in one place for long, taking her with him would be next to impossible. But how was he going to find a home for a fifteen‑year‑old cat?

  Then he heard his text tone again. He looked at the screen. I’ll take her.

  That instantly brought back memories of the day he’d been working on his air unit and she brought him her questionnaire. I know what you’re thinking, she’d said. Don’t even go there. Three is absolutely normal. Four means you’re a crazy cat lady.

  That seemed like a hundred years ago.

  Since he didn’t know what else to say, he texted back. Thank you.

  A minute passed, then another message came in. Of course, I’ll need to change her name to Fred.

  For some reason he couldn’t fathom, Brandon felt tears burn behind his eyes. It was a joke, but…

  But it was so Alison.

  He’d realized there was something special about her from the first time he met her. But it had taken him until now to realize just how special, and just how much he was giving up by leaving her behind.

  He texted back. She’ll need a sex change operation. And a minute later, Alison responded. I’ll call Zach. He’ll advise. And she followed that with a smiley face.

  Even now, even with how much he’d hurt her, her gentle sense of humor was still there. He would have thought she’d carry the betrayal with her for a long time to come, but now he knew that wasn’t going to happen. Once he was gone, hope would blossom inside her all over again that true love might be just around the corner, because there wasn’t a pessimistic bone in her body. She was the most trusting soul he’d ever known, a person who wanted to be cynical and wary, but in the end it was a weight she just couldn’t carry. And when it fell away, all that was left was a woman who trusted that strangers wouldn’t hurt her irreparably and the people she loved would always look out for her.

  He’d told her he was going to miss her. He just hadn’t known how much.

  He lay back against his pillow, a memory flashing through his mind of that day his father had left him, something he thought he’d long forgotten. Not the gut-wrenching abandonment he’d felt. He’d take that to his grave. He was just now remembering what his grandmother had said to him that morning when he got up to find his old man gone.

  You can call this place home, Brandon. I don’t care where you go or what you do, now or twenty years from now. You can always call this place home.

  And that was exactly what it felt like now.

  His grandmother had been the one person on this earth who had tried to give him some semblance of family, but he had already been so screwed up that he never would let her. It wasn’t until now, looking at his adolescence through the eyes of an adult, that he realized just how much she’d tried to be the family he desperately needed. How might his life have been different if he’d taken the love his grandmother had wanted to give him?

  Better question: How would his life be different in the future if he took the love Alison wanted to give him?

  When Alison’s alarm clock went off on Saturday morning, she slapped it silent and collapsed against the pillow again, wishing she could sleep straight through this day rather than go to Brandon’s house.

  Brandon’s house? It really wasn’t his house after all. Technically it belonged to the First Baptist Church.

  Finally she shoved the covers back as best she could with three cats draped over them and rose from the bed. She was thankful, at least, that he didn’t intended to be around for the tour. She didn’t know if she could handle seeing him without losing it all over again. Since she’d left him that morning, she’d tried to get angry. Had every right to get angry. But any anger she managed to summon would last for only a second or two, and then she’d remember the night they spent together and start wishing one more time for something that could never be.

  An hour later, she and Heather loaded tour programs and raffle baskets into her car and headed for Brandon’s house.

  “You’re not wearing the blue dress,” Heather said.

  Alison shrugged weakly. “Yeah, I know. I just…​couldn�
��t.”

  Heather just nodded. “It’s just as well. You said it was uncomfortable.”

  Yeah, but it wasn’t the discomfort of the dress itself that kept her from wearing it. It was the discomfort of knowing it had belonged to Brandon’s great-grandmother. After what had happened between them, she just couldn’t face putting it on.

  A few minutes later, Alison pulled up to the curb. She and Heather got out, and as they were grabbing boxes from the trunk, Karen pulled up behind them. She got out of her car with a tray of hors d’oeuvres from Maggie’s Café.

  “I have this one and two more for this house,” she said.

  “We’ll come back for them,” Alison said.

  Heather unlocked the front door and the three of them went into the house. Alison went into the dining room to set down the box of programs she was carrying. Then she went back to the entry hall, intending to go back outside to grab another hors d’oeuvre tray from Karen’s car. On the way there, she happened to glance up the stairs, and she was shocked at what she saw.

  Brandon was standing on the midfloor landing, looking as handsome as ever.

  And he was wearing his great‑grandfather’s suit.

  Chapter 27

  Karen came back into the entry hall, and when she saw Alison looking up, she looked up, too.

  “Holy moly,” she whispered, her jaw practically dragging the ground. “Is that the guy who owns the place?”

  “Yes,” Alison said, her voice hushed. Just as she’d imagined, the suit made him look taller, broader, and ten times sexier, and she felt a stab of longing so powerful it nearly knocked her to her knees.

  “I thought he wasn’t going to be here.”

  “I thought so, too,” Alison said.

  “All this house stuff is too much trouble,” Karen said, still dazed. “We should just sell tickets to look at him.”

  Heather came up beside Alison. “What’s he doing here?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want me to hang around?”

  “No. I’m okay. Just…just give us a minute.”

  “Come on, Karen,” Heather said. “We’re out of here.”

  “But we have to set up for the—”

  “Now.”

  Karen shook herself out of her trance and followed Heather out the front door.

  Brandon started down the stairs, and every nerve in Alison’s body tightened with anticipation. He wasn’t supposed to be here. And the suit. Why was he wearing the suit?

  She was dying to go to him. To run straight back into his arms again. But maybe this wasn’t what she thought it was. Don’t do it. Don’t be a gullible fool.

  Again.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Isn’t this the day of the tour?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “But you said you wouldn’t be.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “No,” she said as he hit the bottom step. “Don’t do this. Don’t you dare do this.”

  He stopped in front of her. “Don’t do what?”

  “This roller coaster ride is making me sick.”

  “What roller coaster ride?”

  “The one where first you’re here, then you’re not. The one where you want me, and then you don’t. I can’t do that anymore.” She turned and walked toward the dining room. “I have to get ready for the tour.”

  Brandon followed her, and when she stopped at the table, he put his hand on her shoulder. She spun around. “Don’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  “Whenever you touch me, I lose my head. Right about now, I need to hang on to it.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Fine.” She pointed to the other end of the dining room table. “But you’ll have to stand over there.”

  “Huh?”

  “Way over there.”

  He stepped back a little.

  “More.”

  He moved a little more.

  “Brandon—”

  With a roll of his eyes, he walked all the way to the other end of the table. “There. If I walk any farther away, I’ll be in the neighbor’s dining room.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Can you hear me clear down there?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “This is weird.”

  “You’re lucky I’m not making you text me from the other room.” She nonchalantly grabbed a stack of programs from the box. “Okay. You can talk now.”

  “I gave up the Houston deal. Another investor bought out my position.”

  She dropped the programs as if they were on fire. “What?”

  “I’m keeping this house.”

  “What?”

  “And I’m keeping the matchmaking business.”

  “Stop!” She held up her palm, suddenly feeling breathless. “I told you. No more roller coasters, or I swear to God I’m going to throw up.”

  Brandon frowned. “Gee, Alison. I imagined you having a lot of reactions, but that wasn’t one of them.”

  All at once, she felt exposed and vulnerable and helpless, as if her emotions were being laid bare all over again and she couldn’t do a damned thing to stop it from happening. But she was going to stop it. This time she wasn’t going to act like she had in the past, just handing over her heart so a man could stomp all over it.

  “So let me get this straight,” Alison said, her formerly helpless heart racing out of control. “You decided to give up real estate investing, and you’re starting by backing out of a deal that was going to make you hundreds of thousands of dollars?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re going to live in a house you said was nothing more than a money pit?”

  “The thirty thousand dollars I was going to put into the Houston deal will go a long way toward making this money pit a home.”

  “And you’re going to continue being a matchmaker?”

  “As long as there are people out there looking for true love, I’m going to be finding it for them.”

  That sounded so wonderful. Every last bit of it. But for Brandon to show up here and now and say those things sounded like a product of her own wishful thinking. And if there was one thing she’d learned in this life, it was that her own wishful thinking led absolutely nowhere.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “A few days ago, you were planning to leave. You didn’t want any of this. Why the sudden change?”

  He put his hands on the back of a dining room chair and looked away, seemingly lost in though for a moment. “It wasn’t a sudden change,” he said finally. “It didn’t happen in a day. Or a week. Or even a month. It’s been happening since the day I met you. I was just too dumb to see it.” He bowed his head, and when he lifted it again, he fixed his gaze on her, and his dark eyes were filled with longing. “What I finally realized is that the man you want is the man I’ve become. And I was hoping you’d give that man a chance.”

  Alison’s throat felt so tight she could barely breathe. Oh, God, how she wanted to. But did he mean it? Did he know what he was saying? Would he give up his old life because of her, and then resent it later?

  “What would you do if I said no?” she asked.

  He paused a long time, swallowing hard. “I’d still stay here.”

  Alison was stunned. “You would?”

  “I love matchmaking. I love this town. I love this old house. I love going to McCaffrey’s. All those things have made me happier than I’ve ever been in my life.” He paused, his voice hushed. “But they won’t mean half as much to me without you.”

  She lifted her hand to her mouth, clenching her teeth, trying to hold back the tears.

  “But if you decide I’m not the one,” he said, “I’ll move heaven and earth to find the man who is.”

  “No! Please, Brandon. Stop. After the first four you set me up with, I couldn’t even fathom what number five would look like.”

 
“I was hoping he looked like me.” His fingers tightened on the back of the chair, his knuckles whitening, as if he was afraid of what she might say. “Alison? Am I the man you’re looking for?”

  She wanted so badly to cross the room, throw her arms around his neck, and beg him to kiss her until she passed out. But she’d been there before. Feeling as if a wonderful future was dangling right in front of her, only to have it ripped away from her at the last minute.

  Brandon sighed softly. “Look, I know you don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you. But if you don’t believe everything I’ve just told you, then at least believe this. There’s only one reason on earth I’d put on this horrible, itchy, uncomfortable suit and walk around looking like a total idiot.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I love you.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. She was afraid if she spoke, all the wonderful emotions bottled up inside her right then would come tumbling out, setting off Richter scales across the globe. Did she really want to be responsible for that? She took an extra deep yoga breath to try to stay calm, but yoga breaths only went so far.

  “My life changed the day I met you,” Brandon said. “With you, I found out I could be a better man than I ever imagined. You showed me that family means everything when I barely knew what one was. You made me believe in love. And if you’ll let me,” he said, his voice deep with emotion, “I’ll move heaven and earth to make your world a better place, too.”

  In that moment, Alison was absolutely sure she felt fuzzy little heartstrings reach out from Brandon’s heart to wrap around hers.

  “Just one more question,” she finally managed to say.

  “What’s that?”

  “What the hell are you doing clear over there?”

  He came around the table and she met him in the middle. He swept her into his arms and spun her around, then set her down and kissed her, a long, slow, scorching kiss that promised a whole lot more to come. Later. After about five hundred people traipsed through his house. Alison seriously considered locking the door and telling everybody to go home so they could be alone for the rest of the day.