It wasn’t the first time he’d held on to the small, inconsequential things she said. He was always attentive. Always interested.
Because he loves you. Remember that small, inconsequential thing he said?
She pushed the jar of jam back into the bag, but every time she walked past the kitchen counter her eye was drawn to it. The smell of fresh-baked bread seeped into the room and her willpower gave out midafternoon. She’d just put Alice down for her afternoon nap, and she returned to the kitchen, looked at the bag for the fiftieth time that day and something snapped inside her.
Pippa pulled out the bread and cut herself two thick slices, slathering them with butter and raspberry jam. She sat at the dining room table and ate Harry’s offering and thought about how early he must have gotten up to buy the bread, jam and butter and leave them on her doorstep without being seen. She thought about him lying in bed last night, planning his strategy. She thought about him selecting the jam for her from amongst all the jams on offer in the store.
The need to call him was like an ache in her bones. She didn’t, though. She put the jam and butter in the fridge and wrapped the bread so it would stay fresh and unpacked her books to study.
She’d made her decision. She was playing it safe.
The following Wednesday, she arrived home to be enveloped by the smell of fresh-cut grass the moment she got out of the car. She frowned. Then it hit her—someone had mown her lawn. Instead of a knee-high mess, it was now neatly clipped, the edges crisply finished. The garden beds had been weeded, too, and the dangling flap on the back of the letter box repaired.
She stood and stared for long minutes. Then she turned and got Alice out of her baby seat. Once she was inside, she poured herself a glass of wine and stood on the front porch and surveyed her neat, tidy yard as she drank it. With every sip, something loosened inside her. Warmth spread through her belly and down into her legs. She thought about Harry pushing the mower through the jungle of her yard. She thought about Harry on his hands and knees pulling weeds.
All that thought and consideration. All that energy he’d put into looking out for her. Showing her that he wasn’t going away. That he wasn’t giving up.
Because he loved her.
It was heady stuff. Intoxicating, really. She stared at her phone as she finished the last of her glass of wine, tempted. So tempted.
It would be so easy to call him and give in. To throw herself on his mercy.
She called up a blank text window on her phone and tapped in a message. She read it twice before she hit send.
Harry, the bread and jam were wonderful, the garden a godsend. Please don’t do anything more.
Pippa didn’t hear from him for the rest of the week and all of the weekend. She told herself that she was relieved, but the truth was that every time she came home and found no sign of Harry, she felt a small, dull throb of disappointment.
You’re such a pathetic hypocrite, she told herself as she turned into the driveway on Monday night, painfully aware that her heart rate had picked up at the prospect of coming home.
Just in case there was something from Harry.
She spotted the large, rather substantial-looking box on her porch immediately. It wasn’t until she was halfway up the steps, Alice a heavy weight in her arms, that she registered that the box had a peaked roof.
“No. Harry, you didn’t.”
But he had. It was the same style of dollhouse as the one in the shop, but he’d chosen different colored wallpaper and arranged the furniture to suit himself. When she circled it she saw he’d installed an addition—a neatly made garage, fixed to the side of the building.
“You idiot,” she said under her breath.
It would be years before Alice was old enough to appreciate this. And it was so expensive. Ridiculously so. It was a crazy, impulsive, silly thing to have done.
And it made her giddy with suppressed joy. It made her want to sit down and cry and throw back her head and laugh at the same time.
He’d wallpapered a dollhouse for her and built a toy garage. He was mad, utterly mad.
And he loved her. He really loved her.
She pulled out her phone and thought for a long time before sending him a message.
You shouldn’t have. She will love it forever. I don’t know what to say.
Although she did. She simply wasn’t sure she was ready to say it yet.
That night, Pippa dreamed of a small, perfect house filled with small, perfect people. The next morning she ate her breakfast while examining all the exquisite details of the dollhouse interior. Harry must have put in hours and hours to make it so beautiful.
The thought made her want to call him, but she still wasn’t ready so she got dressed for work instead. She got a call from day care midafternoon to let her know that Alice had a mild fever and she needed to come pick her up. Pippa took her straight to the doctor, who assured her it was nothing to be worried about and sent her home with some baby aspirin. She didn’t notice the large envelope sticking out of the letterbox until she was locking up the car. She tucked it under her arm with the rest of Alice’s paraphernalia and concentrated on settling her fractious daughter.
Even when she finally turned her attention to the mail, she didn’t understand what she was looking at until she pulled the thick sheaf of papers from the envelope and saw the impressive letterhead.
She read the covering letter with growing incredulity. By the time she’d finished she sat back on the couch and stared blankly at the wall, utterly stunned.
Steve had had a trust created in Alice’s name and deposited ten thousand dollars into it. He was proposing that Pippa be the sole trustee, in charge of disbursing funds as she saw fit. The letter said he would be adding to the funds on a quarterly basis as well as making regular child support payments.
She reread the letter twice, then flicked through the paperwork to make sure she hadn’t misunderstood.
Steve had stepped up. He’d finally acknowledged his daughter. Not exactly in the way that Pippa might have hoped, true, since there was no mention of his personal involvement in her life, but it was a stupendous start when they’d started from less than zero.
She knew who she had to thank for the tectonic shift in his attitude, too.
Harry.
Harry, with his strong moral code and principles. Harry, with his determination to right the wrongs in her life. Harry, who had never ceased riding to her rescue.
The thought of him being her advocate with his friend even while she held him at arm’s length made her chest ache.
He was a good man.
Something expanded inside her as the thought echoed in her mind.
He was a good man. He had only ever behaved honorably toward her, even when he’d been slipping into a relationship that was way out of his comfort zone. He was hardworking and respectful and considerate, in and out of the bedroom. He was funny and irreverent, too, but he stepped up when he needed to, as he had with his father’s business.
As he wanted to with her—except she’d sent him away.
Pippa pressed her fingers to her lips, striving to contain the strong emotion rising inside her. After a few seconds she decided it was useless, so she let the tears flow as she stood and went to collect Alice from her room. She sobbed as she strapped Alice into the car and wiped tears from her cheeks for the entire ten minutes of the drive to Harry’s place. She had the hiccups by the time she got Alice out of the car and approached his front door.
Harry flung open the door before she could knock, barreling out onto the porch in nothing but a pair of well-worn jeans.
“Pippa. What’s wrong? Is it Alice? God, please tell me it’s not Alice.” He reached for them both with a fierce urgency, gathering them close protectively.
“I love you,” she hiccupped, looking up into his beautiful face. “So much. I’m sorry I’ve been such a big chicken. I’m sorry I made you wait. I was so determined not to screw up again, Harry, but you were right.
Letting you go would be the big screw-up. The biggest screw-up of my life.”
The confused, worried look faded from Harry’s face. “So you’re okay? Nothing’s wrong with Alice.”
“No.” She sniffed and used the back of her free hand to wipe her cheeks. “No. I just love you. That’s all.”
Harry closed his eyes for a beat, resting a hand over his heart. “Bloody hell, Pippa… When I saw you crying—”
She cut him off with a kiss, standing on her tip-toes and hooking a hand behind his head to drag his mouth down to hers. She kissed him fervently, desperately, pouring all of her pent-up feelings into the meeting of their mouths. His arms stole around her body, hauling her and Alice closer. She felt the press of his big, hard chest against her breasts and knew that she’d come home.
Finally.
They kissed until she was breathless, until her knees were weak and her thighs on fire. They kissed until Harry was trembling with suppressed need, his hands curling into her back.
There was no telling where it might have ended if Alice hadn’t started crying. Pippa opened her eyes and drew back enough to look down at her daughter. Alice stared up at her, an outraged expression in her wide blue eyes.
“I’m not sure, but I think we just shocked her,” she said.
“Figures. I could never stand it when Mum and Dad got busy when we were kids. No one wants to think of their parents having sex.”
He said it so easily. So naturally. Parents. As in family. As in the three of them. A ripple of fear, closely followed by excitement, washed through her.
“You want that, Harry? You really want that?” she asked.
She already knew the answer. She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t. But she wanted to hear it. She needed to hear it.
“I want you,” Harry said, without hesitation. “I want you and Alice. I want the bottle sterilizer and the stinky diapers and you pulling your hair out over assignments and me pulling my hair out over the accounts and weekends pottering around the house doing nothing except being with both of you. I want you, Pippa White. I want you forever.”
Pippa’s smile was so wide it physically hurt. No one had ever told her that happiness could feel both sharp and sweet at the same time. But she knew now. Thanks to Harry.
“You’ve got me, Harry. You’ve got me.”
Harry lowered his head and kissed her again—and this time Alice didn’t make a sound. Smart girl.
* * * * *
Be sure to pick up the next
Harlequin Superromance novel by Sarah Mayberry,
THE OTHER SIDE OF US.
Available January 2013.
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CHAPTER ONE
August 2012
Naval Station, Rota, Spain
THE PAPER ACTUALLY SHOOK in Darby Dufrene’s hand—that’s how shocked he was by the document he’d discovered in a box of old papers. He’d been looking for the grief book he’d made as a small child and instead had found something that made his gut lurch against his ribs.
“Dude, come on. The driver needs to go.” Hal Severson’s voice echoed in the half-full moving truck parked below the flat Darby had shared with the rotund navy chaplain for the past several years. His roommate had waited semi-good-naturedly while Darby climbed inside to grab the book before it was shipped to Seattle, but good humor had limits.
“Just a sec,” Darby called, his eyes refusing to leave the elaborate font of the certificate he’d pulled from a clasped envelope trapped in the back of his Bayou Bridge Reveille yearbook. How in the hell had this escaped his attention? Albeit it had been buried in with some old school papers he’d tossed aside over ten years ago and vowed never to look at again, surely the state of Louisiana seal would have permeated his brain and screamed, Open me!
Yet, back then he’d been in a funk—a childish, rebellious huff of craptastic proportions. He probably hadn’t thought about much else except the pity party he’d been throwing himself.
The moving truck’s engine fired and a loud roar rumbled through the trailer, vibrating the wood floor. The driver was eager to pick up the rest of his load, presumably a navy family heading back to the States, and his patience with Darby climbing up and digging through boxes already packed was also at an end. Darby slid the certificate back into its manila envelope, tucked it into his jacket and emerged from the back end of the truck.
Hal’s red hair glinted in the sunlight spilling over the tiled roof, and his expression had evoled to exasperation. The man was hungry. Had been hungry for hours while the movers slowly packed up Darby’s personal effects and scant pieces of furniture, and no one stood between Hal and his last chance to dine in El Puerto de Santa Maria, the city near the Rota Naval Base, with his best comrade. “Let’s go already. Saucy Terese and her crustacean friends await us.”
“Not Il Caffe di Roma, Hal. I don’t want to look into that woman’s eyes and wonder if she might greet me with a filet knife.”
“You ain’t that good, brother,” Hal said in a slow Oklahoma drawl. “She’ll find someone else on which to ply her wiles when the new guy arrives.”
“You mean the new guy whose name is Angela Dillard?”
“The new JAG officer’s a girl?”
Darby smiled. “Actually she’s a woman.”
Hal jingled his keys. “Entendido.”
“Your Spanish sucks.”
“Whatever. Now get your butt in gear. There are some crabs and sherry with my name on them.”
Darby tried to ignore the heat of the document pressing against his chest. Of course, it wasn’t actually hot. Just burning a hole in his stomach with horrible dread. He was an attorney and the document he carried wasn’t a prank, but he couldn’t figure out how the license had been filed. His father had virtually screamed the implausibility at him nearly eleven years ago—the day he’d shipped Darby off to Virginia—so this didn’t make sense. “Fine, but if Terese comes toward me with a blade, you must sacrifice yourself. If not, Picou will ply the sacrificial purifications of the Chickamauga on you. She’s been waiting for five years to get me back home to Beau Soleil.”
Hal rubbed his belly. “Did they perform human sacrifices?”
“Who? The Native Americans or Picou?”
“Either.”
Darby grinned. “I don’t know about the Chickamauga, but my mom will go psycho if I don’t climb off that plane.”
“Consider it done. No way I’m left to deal with your mother. She makes mine look like that woman from Leave It to Beaver.”
“Your mom is June Cleaver all the way down to the apron and heels.” Darby knew firsthand. Her weekly chocolate chips cookies had caused him to pack on a few pounds.
“I know. All women pale in comparison.” Hal opened the door of his white convertible BMW, his one prideful sin, and slid in. He perched a pair of Ray-Bans on his nose and fired the engine.
“Except our housekeeper, Lucille. Can’t wait to get my hands on her pecan pie.” Darby took one last look at his beachfront flat before sliding onto the hot leather seats of Hal’s car. He’d already shipped his motorcycle to the States weeks ago. He wanted it available when he got to Seattle and went in search of apartments, though he knew he’d likely have to sell it in favor of a respectable sedan. With all tha
t Northwest rain, he’d have little chance to take as many mind-clearing drives as he had along the coast of Spain. Plus, Shelby hated it.
“Well, say goodbye, dude,” Hal said, sweeping one arm over the sunbaked villa where Darby had spent the past two years, before pulling away and heading toward the motorway that would take them into the city.
“Goodbye, dude,” Darby said, parroting his friend. He smiled as the wind hit his cheeks, but as soon as he remembered the document, his smile slipped away. Trouble brewed and this homecoming would be no cakewalk despite the pecan pie that waited.
“Are you sad? Thought you’d been ready to leave Rota since you got here, Louisiana boy.”
How could Darby tell him his mood wasn’t about leaving the base and his small adventure in Spain but about the marriage license he’d found in his high school trunk? He could, but there was no sense in ruining his last night with the man who’d become like a brother to him over the course of his deployment. With Hal being the base chaplain, most would think him an odd choice of roommate for a formerly degenerate bayou boy, but something about Hal clicked as soon as Darby met the man who’d been looking for a flatmate. Having Hal as a friend, guide and trusted mentor had made the move overseas tolerable. In fact, after a few months, Darby had downright enjoyed himself.
And he’d found Shelby through Hal.
And when he met the blonde teacher who taught at the American school on base, he knew he’d finally grown up, finally left his confusion and his past behind. Here was what he’d been looking for—a beautiful woman, a promising career, if the interview went well, and a clean slate in a new place—so he’d flung the dice and shipped his things to Seattle rather than home to Bayou Bridge.
He patted the inside pocket of his jacket.
But maybe he wouldn’t be moving forward as soon as he’d planned.
Because he was fairly certain he was legally married to Renny Latioles.
* * *
Suddenly You Page 24
