Joy, in Adam's arms, was wide-eyed and amazed at all the fuss. She presided like a princess over her homecoming celebration feast of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, her own request. After Joy's early bedtime, when she'd fallen quickly asleep, Adam insisted that Sage come with him to Kalmia Hill.
At first she protested. Adam had been so helpful and so kind throughout her ordeal, but being back in Willoree reminded her of the problems that had come between them before they left.
"I'm not up to it, Adam," Sage told him. "Not tonight."
Ralph, passing them in the upstairs hall, stopped for a moment to talk. "Go with him, hon," he said gently. "Joy will be fine with all of us, and you deserve a break." He hugged Sage, clapped Adam on the shoulder, and continued to the room he shared with Irma.
"Please come with me. I want you to see the foyer," Adam said after Ralph left them. "It's completely cleaned and repaired, and you'll never be able to tell it was damaged. Honestly," he said when he saw her doubtful look.
"Oh, Adam," she said. "It's true that I haven't thought much about what Jim did since—"
"He didn't do it," Adam said firmly. "You must believe that, Sage."
She couldn't believe it. Even after time away from the scene of the crime against Kalmia Hill, her anger and distrust of Jim hadn't dimmed. Adam was asking the impossible of her.
Why did Adam insist on bringing this up now, of all times? He had been so caring and so giving during the past twelve days. Had he only acted that way so that he could use it as emotional blackmail, so that she would relent and let Jim stay at Kalmia Hill? They had not discussed the matter of Jim and the vandalism at all since they'd left Willoree for Florida. Couldn't he let it go for another few days until she felt stronger and capable of dealing with the problem?
"Sage," Adam said quietly and compellingly. "Do this much for me. Come to Kalmia Hill tonight, just for a little while. Will you?"
One look into his earnest eyes, and Sage knew she would go. She was immediately and thoroughly ashamed of herself for harboring doubting thoughts about him. Adam had never shown her anything but kindness. He had never done anything that wasn't in her own best interests. Even though she didn't trust Jim, she trusted Adam. Somehow she'd have to keep her feelings for father and son separate. Adam wasn't to blame for what Jim had done, and it was natural for a father to defend his son.
At Kalmia Hill, Sage preceded Adam up the gracious curving outside steps to the door and waited nervously as he unlocked the door. She couldn't help wishing unhappily that she hadn't come after all. No matter how she tried, she couldn't get the nightmare scene of the desecrated foyer out of her mind. And then Adam swung the door open, and with a nod indicated that she was to walk in first.
She did, catching her breath. The foyer was perfect, its mellow elegance restored. No paint spatters marred the walls, no marks gouged the perfectly refinished walnut parquet. The walls had been repainted a soft shade of gold, and the floor was buffed to a high shine. Someone had arranged a brass vase full of red flowers on a low table near the door.
"It—it looks fine, Adam," she said. She couldn't believe how wonderful it looked.
"Jim did most of the work."
"Jim? Jim did the painting? The varnishing?"
"Hayley helped him. So did Ben. But Jim was the one who insisted that the work be finished before you came home."
Sage took in the careful repainting, the restored newel post. She was impressed with the workmanship. She couldn't have done better herself.
"They did a wonderful job," she said slowly.
"Then you approve?"
She nodded, suddenly shy with him. The way he was looking at her, as though he expected something more, intimidated her. She avoided his eyes, looking everywhere but at him, until he said gently, touching her arm ever so lightly, "I've laid a fire in the fireplace. Do you suppose we could sit for a while and talk the way we used to? We haven't been alone in a long time, since before Joy was lost. There's something I want to show you, and it's important."
Sage glanced quickly up the stairs. "Are you looking for Jim?" he asked, reading her mind. "He's playing video games at a friend's house. He won't be back until ten o'clock or so. Come on." He steered her toward the fireplace.
She sat and watched him as he crouched to light the fire. She'd been so worried about Joy all this time that she hadn't thought about Adam at all other than knowing that he was there to help her. A sudden wave of gratitude washed over her. He had been so faithful, so helpful, that she longed to tell him how much it had meant to her. How much he meant to her. She couldn't have made it through the hell of the past twelve days if Adam Hracek had not been constantly at her side and easing the way.
The crumpled paper he used for tinder blazed as Adam held a match to it, and the flames gilded his features with light. She noticed again as he waved the match to quench its flame how long his fingers were, and she couldn't help but see the ripple of muscles in his back as he rose and sat down beside her. He held a folded sheet of newspaper toward her.
"Read this," he said. She shot him a look full of questions. "Go ahead, read it." He smiled at her encouragingly.
She held the paper up to the firelight. "POLICE CATCH VANDAL" said the headline. It was a copy of the Willoree Times-Courier, dated last week. She read on:
Stanley Garth, 47, was arrested yesterday and charged with the vandalizing of Kalmia Hill on January 28. Garth was formerly employed by Sage McKenna, who is renovating the house.
"Stanley Garth admits doing the damage," said Donald Tate, local police officer. "Apparently his reason was a grudge against Sage McKenna, who fired him recently."
Sage lifted her eyes to Adam's. He was still smiling.
"But then Jim didn't do it," she breathed, stricken.
"That's right." Adam's gaze held hers.
"I accused him," she said, pained by the memory of the cornered look in Jim's eyes on that Saturday morning when she'd thought she'd caught him in the act.
"He said you must have assumed he was guilty because he was guilty—of leaving the front door unlocked when he went down into the basement to stir the paint you were going to use in the sun porch."
"Why didn't he say something?"
"He was taken by surprise, just like you. Remember that can of white paint Jim had in his hand? He went downstairs to get it so he could get a head start on the painting. He wanted to show you that he could be responsible and work on his own so you'd trust him to work alone on other jobs like the Beauregard Street house. But by leaving the front door unlocked, he made it possible for Stanley to get in. Stanley apparently came inside and started tossing paint and paste and wallpaper around during the twenty minutes or so that Jim was in the basement—sort of a hit-and-run deal."
"Oh, Adam, I feel so terrible," Sage said. She was horrified at her mistake. She'd never even suspected Stanley. She'd never taken seriously his threat of revenge because as long as she'd known him, Stanley had been all bluster and hot air.
"I think Jim will understand," Adam said soothingly. "In fact, if you'll stay until he comes home, the two of you can talk about it. But first there's something we should discuss."
Things were moving so fast, almost too rapidly. With bringing Joy home from the hospital, with the resultant celebration, and now her own anguish over wrongfully accusing Adam's son, she didn't feel able to concentrate seriously on anything else. And Adam looked serious, all right. Serious and also self-satisfied as though congratulating himself about something. What did Adam have up his sleeve now?
He watched her confusion play itself out in her face. This was the point of no return for him, not only in the way he related to Sage, but in the way he related to everything. She had made him new. Now he was a different person from the Adam Hracek who had charged into Willoree in a sapphire-blue Lamborghini, determined to be the carefree bachelor he'd always pretended to be. In making him new, she had made everything else—marriage, parenthood, life—new, too.
Sage: Adam remembered from his long-ago study of Latin that the word meant to save. And she had saved him. She'd made him see how to build a good life for himself, a settled life. He would tell her some day.
First things first, he decided.
"I've found a buyer for Wilpacko Industries," he told her.
Oh, no! Just when Sage was beginning to think that everything was going to be all right, he had to hit her with this. Her heart sank and left her floundering. She'd worried about this possibility, and now it was coming true.
"And what are your plans?" she asked, almost holding her breath.
"To stay in Willoree," he said firmly, taking her hands in his.
"In Willoree?" she said. "Yes, but how long?"
"Forever."
This was no joke; Adam's eyes glimmered with truth and shone bright in their intensity. They seemed to be speaking more than his words, but what were they saying?
She shook her head, trying to clear it. "I don't understand," she whispered finally, unable to tear her eyes away from his.
"I'm staying here forever, Sage. With you. And with Joy and Jim and your whole family. It's the only place I've ever found where I fitted. You've all shown me what it's like to be cared for and loved. I've never know that before, and it's too precious to let go. I'm finally home, and it's more wonderful than I ever dreamed."
Sage swallowed. She couldn't believe his words, his eyes, the curve of his lips, as he smiled at her, enjoying this.
"Will you marry me, Sage? I love you so much. I've loved you from the very first. Please say you love me, too." The words were inexpressibly tender, and his hands released hers to slip around her waist, holding her so that she stared at him from only inches away.
"I do," she said. "I have loved you. For so long, Adam."
"You never told me," he said.
"You never told me," she whispered.
"I couldn't. I could barely admit it to myself because I couldn't stand the thought of loving and then losing you. I didn't want you to love me when I'd only move on in the end. I didn't want to hurt you that way. But things are different now, Sage. I want to settle down, to be part of this community and to have a wife and a family. Not just any wife, but you. And not just any family, but your family. All of them."
"Oh, Adam," she breathed, and then he kissed her on the lips. It was almost like their first kiss, breathless and excited and full of tenderness, and she knew then that every time would be like the first time, all their lives.
"Of course I will marry you," she said shakily when she could speak. Her heart overflowed with love for him, so much that she couldn't say any more than that.
"My mother used to make a stew," he told her, his eyes reminiscent now. "It's one of the few things about my childhood that I remember with fondness. It was a hodgepodge of different meats and vegetables. I loved to come in from the cold street and smell the fragrance of it and be warmed by it. Our family will be like that stew—bubbling all the time, different kinds of people all mixed together, but fragrant. And it will warm us."
"I love you, Adam," she said, the newness of the words strange and wonderful on her lips.
"We'll have more children, Sage, as many as you want. We'll fill our house with the sounds of people. And I want a home wedding," he went on. "With Hayley playing the wedding march on the piano. With Joy as the flower girl. With Jim as my best man."
She could picture it, a spring wedding with her and Adam standing beneath a floral bower in the archway between the living room and den of her restored Victorian house, her family gathered around them.
"You forgot Irma," she murmured. "She'll want to sing a gospel song. Or maybe play one of the Down Home Gospel Singers' records."
He reared back and looked at her sharply. "I can't stand gospel music," he said.
"Neither can I," she said demurely. They both laughed.
"And after we're married—" began Adam.
"You have it all planned, don't you?" she interrupted. It didn't surprise her. He'd always been a take-charge person.
"Yes, Sage, all of it. Including living here, at Kalmia Hill, you and me and Joy and Jim."
So she would live at Kalmia Hill after all, just as she had dreamed so long ago! It seemed right, somehow.
"Aren't you leaving anything to me?" she said. "You've made all these plans, and you've never even consulted your bride-to-be."
"How about if you decide what colors the wedding party should wear and where we'll go on our honeymoon," he suggested. "And whether I should change the name of Wilpacko to Hracek Industries."
She stared at him, perplexed. "Hracek Industries?" Then it dawned on her. "Adam, are you the buyer of Wilpacko?"
He nodded, a bit too smugly, she thought.
"I decided that there was no better use for Tony Hracek's fortune than to invest it right here in Willoree. I fell in love with you here and I'm going to marry you here, and I'm going to live with you here while expanding the plant that will employ many more people in years to come."
It took a few moments for this to sink in. "I don't think you should change the name of Wilpacko to Hracek Industries. No one would ever know how to spell it," she said.
"True. I'll have to be content with changing your name, I guess. You'll need to print new business cards: 'Sage Hracek, Handyman.'"
"It has a certain ring to it," she agreed, delighted at the idea. Changing her surname to Adam's would put her previous marriage and all its heartbreak to rest.
Adam smiled down at her. His mustache curved upward, and his eyes twinkled. She loved him so much when he looked like that. She'd be looking at him the rest of her life, and never would she tire of it.
"My darling Sage, you're the most special handyman I've ever met," he said, and as the teasing faded from his eyes to be replaced with his own special brand of tenderness, he lovingly lowered his lips to hers.
Our beloved
Sage Allison McKenna
and
Adam Antonio Hracek
request the pleasure of your company
at the uniting of their families in marriage
Saturday, April 25 at 2:00 p.m.
63 Sycamore Lane
Willoree, South Carolina
Reception immediately following the ceremony
Please bring no gifts, only the love in your heart!
Irma and Ralph Davies
Leon Turbeville Madsen
Hayley Elizabeth Carroll
James Paganini Hracek
Gregory Webb
and
Joy Demelza McKenna
The End
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Want more from Pamela Browning?
Page forward for Irma's Recipe for
HOPPIN' JOHN
followed by excerpts.
Irma's Recipe for Hoppin' John
2 cups black-eyed peas
1 large onion
1 large rib celery (with leaves)
1/2 lb. smoked bacon (ham hock)
Salt
Pepper
1 cup rice (uncooked)
1 strip of bacon (optional)
Wash thoroughly 2 cups fresh black-eyed peas, do not soak before cooking. Remove any peas that may have insects. ("Insects"—that's a nicer word than "worms.")
Put on to cook in cold water—lots of it. Add 1 large onion and 1 large rib celery (including leaves), both finely chopped, and about 1/2 lb. of good smoked bacon (ham hock). Salt and pepper to taste.
Cook covered until peas are just done. T
hey do not take long to cook, so check every now and then to see if they're ready.
Now, put 1 cup rice in a pot and add 1 1/2 cups stock from the peas as prepared above. Then put in 2 cups of the peas, without liquid. Stir to mix and bring to full boil.
Cover pot and let the mixture simmer for about 30 minutes. Stir it gently with fork until well mixed, cover again, and let cook until rice is fluffy. (Test the rice by stirring it first; if it is not done but all liquid has boiled off, add a little more stock.) I like to add a strip of bacon, cut in small pieces, to the rice while it is cooking so it will be good and rich.
You're supposed to eat Hoppin' John on New Year's Day in order to have good luck in the new year. It worked for Adam and Sage.
If you don't eat it all up, it freezes nicely.
Submitted to the Willoree United Methodist Church recipe book by Irma R. Davies
Missed the first book in the Circles of Love Series?
Page forward for an excerpt from
UNTIL SPRING
Circles of Love Series
Book One
or
Skip to an excerpt from Pamela Browning's
EVER SINCE EVE
The Keeping Secrets Series
Book One
Excerpt from
Until Spring
Circles of Love Series
Book One
by
Pamela Browning
Award-winning Author
He liked everything about her—the way she cared for that little cat of hers, her interest in the llamas, her responsible shepherding of Mary Kate, her thoughtful ways. She didn't deserve the buffeting that life had meted out to her, and he wanted to make it up to her.
He wanted—but what difference did it make what he wanted? At night he often thought of her lying alone in her bed. In his fantasies she came to him, looking soft and ethereal, and he imagined reaching up to her and pulling her down to him, imagined being absorbed into her.
Handyman Special Page 24
