The Two-date Rule

by Tawna Fenske

  …

  The next morning, he was up before the others. He made breakfast and practically inhaled it before scrubbing up and jamming everything into his pack.

  “Where’s the pickup point again?” Jimmy asked as they set out trudging north.

  “Little town called McKenzie Bridge,” he said. “About five miles east.”

  Tony whistled. “Better get going.”

  The sun was still fighting to make its way up over the horizon as they hoofed it through the trees at a brisk pace. The ground was mostly level, and the forest wasn’t all that dense. Smoke drifted in the air above them like an ethereal haze, but other than that, the morning was clear.

  Grady put one boot in front of the other, focusing on the beat of his heart so he wouldn’t think about Willa. About whether his plan might really work.

  “A soak at Belknap Hot Springs.” It was Jimmy who started the game this time. “That’s only a few miles from McKenzie Bridge, right?”

  “Hope you’re planning to shower first,” Tony said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Sitting on the sofa watching TV and eating pizza,” Grady offered. His chest tightened, but he pushed through the ache. Would they ever do that again? Curl up together on the couch and watch Whose Line Is It Anyway? with a box of cooling pizza on the coffee table in front of them?

  Tony grunted. “The Cajun tots at Ramble Inn,” he said. “Kayla’s meeting me there when we get back.”

  “I thought you broke up,” Grady said.

  “Yeah, but we’re still friends,” he said. “Better friends than lovers, remember?”

  Grady remembered. He also hadn’t forgotten the rest of what Tony had said.

  Not like you and Willa.

  They’d had something so unique, even Tony had noticed. The thought made his chest ache, but it also gave him hope. He’d get back to town, drive straight to his house to shower, then over to Willa’s where he’d—

  “Hey, there’s the truck,” Tony called. “Guess we won’t be waiting around this time.”

  Grady looked up, surprised to see they’d already arrived at the pickup point. A dusty green truck sat in a pool of sunshine. A pool that got brighter as the truck door opened and Willa stepped out wearing a blue dress and sunglasses. She slipped them off as she stepped toward him, her face brimming with hope.

  Grady froze. He stopped walking, stopped moving, stopped breathing, and stood frozen between two pine trees. “Willa.”

  “Hi.” The smile she offered was timid, not at all her normal smile. “Welcome home.”

  Home. He stood two hundred miles from his house, but here was Willa, and home was exactly what he felt in that moment.

  He opened his mouth to ask questions—how, why, what on earth was she doing here?—but she spoke first.

  “I’ve been second-guessing myself about doing this in front of your colleagues.” She glanced at Tony and Jimmy as she stepped forward. It really was her—she wasn’t a mirage. “I don’t want to embarrass you. Or them.”

  “We’re good.” Jimmy grinned and set his pack on the ground. “We don’t embarrass easily.”

  Tony rolled his eyes and grabbed Jimmy by the shirtsleeve. “We’ll wait in the truck.”

  He dragged Jimmy to the truck and yanked him inside, shaking his head as he clambered up beside him. The door slammed shut, and then it was just the two of them. Grady and Willa.

  Holy shit. He still couldn’t believe it was her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to apologize.” Willa looked down at the ground, scuffing her sandal through the dirt. “I was wrong.” She looked up, meeting his eyes this time. “About a lot of things, but mostly about you being a distraction. You weren’t a distraction, Grady. You were the best damn thing that ever happened to me, and I was too wrapped up in my own anxieties to see that.”

  He stared at her, hardly daring to trust his own eyes. She was really here, really saying the words he’d never dreamed he’d hear from her.

  “I did distract you,” he said. “I’m sorry about the TechTel deal.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “It was easier to blame you than blame myself and accept the fact that I’m human. That I can’t keep running my life like I’m a machine. I have a heart and a soul and a body that aches to have you close to me, and none of the rest of it matters if you’re not part of my world.”

  He pulled air into his lungs, barely trusting his own eyes. She’d come all this way for him? “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  She laughed, though it sounded a little shaky. “I’ve been doing a lot of work. With a therapist, I mean—on myself. And I’m learning to give myself credit for creating the kind of stability I always wanted.”

  Grady took a step forward, not yet daring to touch her. “I understand now why that matters so much to you. Why it matters to me now, since we’re in this together.”

  Her eyes widened, glittering with tears. “We are?”

  Slipping his pack off, he dropped it to the ground and rummaged inside. “I was coming to your house tonight to apologize. To tell you I’d been selfish and to give you something.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  He kept digging through the pack, tossing out sweaty socks and empty water bottles. “I made something for you.”

  A trickle of laughter filled the air as he tossed out a filthy T-shirt and another pair of socks. “Did you weave me a pine-needle basket or something?” she asked.

  “No. Something better.” At least he hoped it was. He straightened and held it out, hands shaking only a little.

  Willa stared, then slowly reached out to take it. “A calendar?” She tilted her head to one side. “You made me a calendar?”

  “Look inside.” He couldn’t keep the stupid burst of hope from filling his voice, his heart, as she flipped open the cover.

  He watched her face as she turned the page to the current month, then beyond. Through summer and fall and winter and—

  “What do all these marks mean?” She looked up at him, curiosity sparking in her eyes.

  “The green circles are long-term plans, weekends we’ll spend together, that sort of thing.” He swallowed hard, pulse beating in his throat. “The blue boxes are for spontaneous magic—times I get to surprise you with things.”

  She tilted her head, lips quirking in surprise. “You’ve scheduled spontaneity?”

  Yeah, it sounded weird to him, too. But he could adapt, could learn to plan like this. “The dates marked in red are yours,” he continued. “Well, it’s alone time for both of us. But those are your times to tell me to fuck off, that you’re busy making your dreams come true and you need space and time to do that.”

  Tears filled her eyes. She stared at him—just stared—as her hands began to tremble. “Oh, Grady…” Her voice caught, and she looked down at the calendar again. When she looked up, a tear slipped down her cheek. “You’d do this for me?”

  He nodded as relief flooded his chest cavity. “Yeah,” he said. “I never liked making plans because I never met anyone I wanted to make plans with.” He swallowed hard, emotion clogging his throat. “But I want that with you. Long-term, short-term—I want all of it with you, Wills.”

  Another tear slipped down her cheek. She laughed and swiped it away. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”

  Yeah, he did.

  Just like he knew how much it meant to him that she’d taken time off work to come here, to meet him at the pickup point this way. His father’s words echoed in his head as he took a step closer to her.

  The test is in how you handle it. In whether you can bend and she can bend and somewhere in the middle of all that, you form this perfect bridge.

  And now here they were, forming that bridge. “I love you, Willa.”

  Holy shit. He’d actually said it.
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br />   She laughed, looking caught off guard again. “I love you, too.” She threw an arm around him, still gripping the calendar in one hand. “So damn much. And I missed you like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I believe it.” He pulled her into his arms, so damn grateful to feel her against him again. “I’ve missed you, too.”

  He kissed her then, gently at first, then deepening it as she pressed against him, so warm and soft and sweet.

  Dizziness swept over him as he drew back and looked down at her. “Sorry,” he offered. “I smell like a campfire someone doused in sweat.”

  She shook her head and nuzzled closer. “You smell great to me.”

  Her gaze dropped to the calendar again and peered closer. He felt her stiffen as she noticed. “Wait.” She drew back again, tracing a finger over the lines he’d drawn. “What are these two weeks marked in yellow in January?”

  He grinned, pulse drumming in his ears. Leave it to Willa to notice. “Hypothetically speaking,” he said, “I’ve always thought it would be amazing to plan a romantic getaway to Australia. That’s the tail end of their fire season, so—”

  “Seriously?” Her mouth dropped open. “I’ve always wanted to go to Australia.” She looked down at the calendar like she was still trying to make sense of it all.

  “And the pink dot,” he continued, pointing to a spot in the middle of that two week period. “Also hypothetically, that would be a really good time to propose to someone special on this hypothetical vacation.”

  He let the words hang there between them, knowing he’d gone way out on a limb. Knowing Willa didn’t love surprises, so maybe this was one way to ease them both into this idea.

  For him, it was a no-brainer. He was 100 percent sure he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Willa. No question at all in his mind.

  But probably she needed a little more time to get there. To think through every possibility, process every red flag, plan everything down to the last detail.

  He loved that about her. Loved everything, really, but especially that. The thing that made them so different was the thing he’d grown to love most about this woman standing in front of him with tears in her eyes and a marked-up calendar in her arms.

  She wasn’t speaking, and his heart lodged in his throat. “Willa?” He touched her arm. “We don’t have to keep that on the calendar if you don’t want,” he said. “We could—”

  “My hypothetical answer in this hypothetical situation would be yes.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “But I’m okay with leaving it all up in the air.” A blush crept into her cheeks. “That’s one thing I’m totally okay with having as a spontaneous moment.”

  Grady grinned and pulled her into his arms again, crushing the calendar between them. “I love you so much,” he breathed into her hair. “So damn much.”

  “I love you, too.”

  And somewhere in the middle, in that infinitesimal space between their bodies, everything was just right.

  Epilogue

  Six months later

  “G’day, Hot Stuff!” Grady grinned as he came through the door of their hotel suite in his jump suit. The fact that it was unzipped to the waist and he wore nothing underneath was not lost on Willa.

  “You look like a stripper.” Beaming, she stood to greet him, twining her arms around his bare torso. Damn, he felt good. “A hot Australian stripper.”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “A very good thing.” She circled her palms over the muscles in his bare back. “How was work?”

  “Great. Well, great as far as wildfires go. We got that blaze contained south of Brisbane. They’ve got more crews from New Zealand flying in to help, plus our teams from the States.”

  “And the pilot training?” She kissed the scruff on his jaw, then planted another kiss at the edge of his mouth. “Still liking it so far?”

  “Loving it.” He slid his hands around her waist, dipping one a little lower to squeeze her butt. “Almost as much as I love you.”

  She wriggled against him. “Sounds serious.”

  “Mm, very. Have I mentioned how much I adore being in Australia with the most beautiful woman in the world?”

  Willa laughed. “Let me know when she’s coming over and I’ll get out of your hair.”

  Grady pulled her against him and kissed her long and slow and deep. Damn, that felt good. Would she ever get tired of this?

  She was pretty sure not. These last six months had been the best of her life, with each of them learning to flex just a little to make room for the other. She’d gotten better about switching off her phone, making a hard-and-fast rule about leaving it behind on their date nights.

  Scheduled date nights. That was Grady’s doing, his way of stepping up to the plate to plan some of the most romantic dates she’d ever experienced. A moonlight snowshoe adventure, complete with cocoa and a meteor shower. A silly game of naked Twister that left them both tied in knots and laughing until tears ran down their cheeks.

  And Willa had learned the fine art of spontaneity. Sometimes it was as simple as swinging by the Hart Valley Air Center with a surprise picnic lunch. Another time, she agreed to his nutty plan to prowl thrift stores together, each choosing an audacious five-dollar outfit for the other to wear on a dinner date at the local truck stop.

  And at no time did the world come crashing down around her because she took time away from work. She’d learned to plan for it, to schedule time off and communicate with clients. The downtime left her feeling sharper and more efficient than she had in her career.

  “What are you thinking?” Grady drew back and reached up to sweep her hair off her face.

  Willa smiled at him. “About how happy I am,” she said. “And how grateful I am that your sister had all those airline miles to get me here.”

  Grady kissed her again. “The upside of having so many sisters and brothers is that there’s always someone in a useful profession who can help you out in a pinch.”

  “I dropped a thank-you note in the mail to her yesterday,” Willa said. “And a baby gift. I can’t believe you have another set of twin nieces.”

  “The Billman family is good breeding stock, I’ll give ’em that.”

  Willa smiled. “It’s been nice feeling like part of the family,” she said. “Being welcomed with open arms.”

  “They love you,” he said. “Not as much as I love you, but a lot.”

  “I love them, too.” She grinned and kissed him again. “And you, you’re okay.”

  He grabbed her butt and squeezed. “Only okay?”

  “Eh.” She shrugged, mischief lighting her eyes. “You’ll do.”

  He squeezed her butt harder, and she jumped back laughing. Grady chased after her, finally catching her over by the bed. He was just about to topple her onto it when her phone rang.

  They both looked at it. “You need to get that?” Grady asked.

  “Nope,” she said. “I’m shutting down for the day. Work’s done; it’s time to play.”

  She’d had the good fortune to land several new Aussie clients, as well as a couple in New Zealand. She’d had meetings all morning, and it turned out the land down under was ripe for the sort of web development she offered.

  And now it was time to enjoy this glorious—albeit, budget-friendly—hotel suite they’d booked. It was Grady’s first scheduled day off, and tomorrow they’d go snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef.

  Willa sat down on the bed and shot him an inviting grin. “Don’t you love this mattress?”

  “Very soft.” He dropped onto the bed beside her, making them both bounce. “I have grand plans for this bed.”

  “I love when you talk dirty,” she growled, brushing a kiss against his lips. “Planning is soooo sexy.”

  “I know your hot buttons.”

  He dotted a trail of kisses
along her jaw as Willa nuzzled his ear. “You smell smoky,” she said, burrowing her face into the crook of his neck. “I didn’t think you were out on a fire today.”

  “I wasn’t. Just helping to organize equipment. I can shower if you want, though.”

  “I don’t mind.” She kissed the soft warmth at the base of his throat, then drew back smiling. “Unless you want to shower. I could help you get some of those hard-to-reach spots.”

  “Tempting. Very tempting.”

  He kissed her one more time, then leaned back on his elbows to look out the window. White sailboats bobbed in the harbor, and Willa rubbed a hand over his chest as a pair of cockatiels flew past.

  “I got to Skype with Stevie today,” she said. “Kayla tried to get the cats to make an appearance, but they weren’t interested.”

  “Did you tell Stevie he’s a good boy and we’ll be home soon?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “Carl says hi, by the way.”

  Grady laughed. “I’m glad your fish and I have bonded,” he said. “Any word from your dad?”

  “Aislin went to visit him yesterday,” she said. “Took him some lunch and met with his new sponsor. He’s doing great. Taking it one day at a time, just like he’s supposed to.”

  She’d been nervous about leaving him so soon after his release from rehab. It was a precarious time to abandon him, and she’d nearly guilted herself into staying. But her friends had stepped up—Aislin, Kayla, even Grady’s coworkers and siblings. Everyone rallied to make sure her dad was rarely alone, that he had a constant support system around him.

  “I’m glad he’s doing well. I know you didn’t want to leave him.”

  “I knew my friends had my back,” she said. “And I knew he needed to do this on his own. It’s okay; I’ll see him when I get home.”

  Grady smiled. “Speaking of home, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  “Oh?”

  She held her breath, wondering if this was the moment. The one he’d penned on the calendar all those months ago. She’d assured him spontaneity was great—even preferable—when it came to an engagement.