Oh, joy, a friend request. Probably some friend of a friend of a friend she’d never met in her life. Yawning, she clicked on the icon, only to let out a shriek of delight when a very familiar face popped up on the tiny screen.
It was well after midnight before Noah and his brothers finally convinced their mother to go home, get some rest, they’d bring her back as early as she wanted in the morning. Meaning, by that point, he wasn’t about to call Roxie. A good thing, all told, since he wanted to hear her voice way too much.
By the next morning, though, when they’d all trooped into Dad’s room to find him sitting up and eating oatmeal and fake eggs—and moaning and groaning about it the entire time—yesterday’s scare already felt like a bad dream…leaving a new reality in its wake. Because even if Dad took care of himself, lost some weight, exercised more, he couldn’t keep driving himself the way he’d been.
Amazingly, Gene was the first one to admit that life as they’d all known it was never going to be the same. “I’m glad you’re all here, because we need to talk about the future—”
“Dad,” Silas said, his eyes bleary behind his glasses. “This can wait for five minutes.”
“No, it can’t. Because if you all want me to rest easy, then I need to have this settled in my head.” As Donna, seated beside the bed, wrapped her hand around their father’s, his eyes landed on Noah. “Well, son…you wanted more responsibility? You got it. From here on out, you’re in charge.”
Noah flinched. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. You’re the boss.”
“What? No…the doctor said you’d probably be back at work in a week—”
“I know. But I made a promise to your mother, even after the docs give me the all clear, to cut my involvement way back. Oh, I’ll still keep a hand in, retirement would drive me insane—and her, too, even if she won’t admit it—but I’m turning the day-to-day stuff over to you.”
Stunned, Noah looked at Eli and Jesse, standing in almost identical, arms-crossed poses at the foot of the bed. “But you guys—”
“Come January, I’m going back to school, remember?” Jesse said, his pushed-up hoodie sleeves revealing almost solidly tattooed arms. “So I’ll only be around part-time.”
“And with the baby,” Eli said, “I’m already behind in furniture orders as it is. I can’t possibly catch up and oversee everything else.”
“Besides,” Gene put in, “you’re right. Nobody knows the business like you do. So—it’s yours. Since we’re closed until Monday, anyway, we can work out the details after I get home.”
Noah could imagine what some of those “details” might be. “That’s…it?” he asked. Prodding. “No stipulations?”
His father regarded him in silence for a moment, then said, “Only that you remember whose standard you’re bearing. And that I have the right to change my mind at any time.”
“Like hell,” their mother muttered, earning her a chorus of soft laughs.
“I won’t let you down,” Noah said.
“And I’m counting on you to keep that promise,” Gene said, and Noah could still see flickers of doubt in his eyes, that while Noah may have been his only choice, he still wasn’t necessarily his best.
Then his brothers said their goodbyes, with promises to stop by later, before easing back into their own lives. Their own brands of crazy. Noah was the last to give hugs, the last out of the room. And as he stopped by a water fountain to get a drink, he wondered…what did he have, besides new, hard-won responsibilities that came with enough entailments to sink a battleship? A sink devoid of female clutter? Nights uninterrupted by an infant’s cry? The satisfaction of knowing that when he sat down to watch a movie he’d actually get to finish it?
That so-called “freedom?”
At which point, a thought that had been poking and prodding and trying to find a way into his brain showed its face in a dingy window, waving like mad to get his attention, its voice faint but insistent.
“Hey, bro,” Silas said as they all piled into the elevator. “You okay?”
“Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Silas and Eli exchanged a glance before Eli said, “You don’t exactly look happy about that conversation. Even though you’ve been after Dad for years to give you more authority.”
“Because I’d always pictured that happening because he wanted to,” he ground out. “Not because he didn’t have a choice!”
The conversation died a quick death when a yakking family of five piled onto the elevator on the next floor…and when they all got off Noah strode away from his brothers, hopefully sending a clear message that he was in no mood to pick it up again. Not that they wouldn’t at some point, but right now all he wanted was to be by himself.
Which wasn’t exactly true, he thought, as he started back to Tierra Rosa. Right now, all he wanted was to hang out with Roxie. To somehow absorb some of that level-headedness, to hear her laughter. So when he noticed her car clinging like a mountain goat to Charley’s steep driveway as he drove past, a nice little inner battle ensued as he reminded himself that what he wanted wasn’t fair to her, that it was self-centered and childish.
And that he was better than that.
Except no sooner had he passed than he remembered it was the day after Thanksgiving. Meaning, in Garrettville, the day the Christmas decorations went up—his mom decked the halls from top to bottom, while his dad set up an outside display easily rivaling the Chevy Chase Christmas Vacation movie. Which, Noah thought as his eyes stung, along with Muppets’ Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life, they’d all watched every year.
His gut clenched. Because suddenly, he felt like a planet jettisoned from orbit, flung far, far away from its solar system.
Like hell, he thought, the brakes squealing as he made a U-turn and returned to his parents. Twenty minutes later, a good two dozen boxes marked “Christmas —outside” sat on the porch or in the yard, along with an untold number of heavy-duty extension cords and plugs-on-a-stick.
Take that, world, he thought as he dumped out enough icicle lights to doll up the Empire State Building.
“What on earth is the boy doing?”
Taking a moment to let the buzzing in her brain subside, Roxie broke her gaze from her phone to see Charley standing at the brand-new, double-paned window. Around which hung motionless draperies, praise be. Eden, who’d arrived with her dog before Roxie was even up, was in the kitchen—which she’d declared “a miracle”—chopping vegetables and whatnot for stew. And singing a tune from Oklahoma! Things would most definitely never be the same.
In many ways.
As if in a dream, Roxie got up to peer out the window. Across the street, Noah looked like a fly caught in a web of icicle lights, desperately struggling to break free—a sight that tickled her almost as much as it made her want to weep.
“It would appear he’s putting up Christmas decorations,” she said. “Trying to, anyway.”
“That’s Gene’s job…oh. Right.” Charley paused. “I’m gonna guess he has no clue what he’s doing.”
Roxie laughed, despite the weird, tight feeling in her chest. “I think that’s a safe bet,” she said, heading to the closet for her heaviest sweater-coat.
“Where you going?”
“To help. Wanna come?”
“Not on your life. Although I might dig out the Christmas wreath if the mood strikes.” Her uncle settled into his overstuffed chair, grabbing his glasses and half-read mystery off the table beside it. Then he looked over the glasses at Roxie. “You gonna tell him?”
“I don’t know. Because it’s not settled yet,” she said to Charley’s raised brows.
“Sounded pretty settled to me, from what I just heard.”
“Then not settled in my head. I need some time to get used to the idea myself, before I go blabbing about it to all and sundry.”
“Noah’s hardly all and sundry. And that didn’t keep you from telling anyone who’d stand still long enough
about the Atlanta thing—”
“I am capable of learning from my mistakes,” Roxie said, grabbing her mittens off the table by the front door and heading out into the cold, crisp morning, where all those mistakes she’d declared herself so capable of learning from taunted her mercilessly from the sidelines. Creeps.
Noah glanced over the minute the front door closed irrevocably behind her, and she wondered how it was possible to be this conflicted and still function.
“You look like you could use some extra hands,” she called as she trooped down the steps.
He grinned the grin of the completely beleaguered, and her stomach went all disco fever on her. “Only if they’re yours.”
Now across the street, she forced herself to traverse his lawn, the dry, brown grass crunching underfoot as she came closer, telling herself turning tail right now would be totally lame. “How’s your dad?”
“Doing pretty good, thanks. Should be home tomorrow, in fact. But…” Noah’s gaze swept the house. “But ever since I can remember, the decorations went up without fail the day after Thanksgiving. And since Dad can’t…” Noah cleared his throat, then looked at Roxie again, one side of his mouth lifted. “Do you remember what the yard looked like? When you were here in high school?”
“Like the mother ship had landed,” she said, hating the gentleness in his voice, her susceptibility to it, as she bent over to open one of the boxes. “Wow. Inflatables?”
Noah chuckled. “We’d gone to Wal-Mart a few years back to get some replacement bulbs. I still remember the look on Dad’s face when we walked through the door and spotted the display. Like a little kid, I swear. I also remember the look on Mom’s face when we came home with not, one, not two, but three of the damn things. There’s also a lit-up train that goes around the whole yard. On tracks.”
“Ohmigosh,” Roxie said on another laugh. “You’re kidding? No wonder he starts so early—it must take a week to get it all done!”
“Something like that, yeah. Depending on how many of us he can strong-arm into helping him.” He scanned the yard, as though envisioning the scene. “Dad gets a real kick out of watching the kids when they come to see it all,” he said before his eyes touched hers again. “And I know he’d be disappointed if they showed up and there was nothing to see. Here. Take this end.”
He handed Roxie the plug end of the lights, slowly walking backward, patiently untangling as he went, just as he patiently dealt with his father’s foibles every day…and she understood. Why he was out here freezing his butt off, why he put up with Gene’s nagging, all of it. Because for all their differences, their bond was indissoluble. Although to be honest, it almost made her mad, that someone so obviously devoted to his family couldn’t see his way clear to start one of his own.
“This is definitely much easier with two people,” Noah said, the recalcitrant lights yielding far more quickly with four hands prying them apart.
“Most things are,” she said.
His eyes cut to hers, then away. “Dad put me in charge of the business.”
“Really?” He nodded. “Temporarily, or…?”
“He said from now on, but who knows?” That strand set to rights, Noah carefully laid it on the porch and dumped the next one out of its box. “Except I can tell he had…reservations. That if he hadn’t had that heart attack he never would have handed over the reins, unless…” He yanked too hard on the strand. “Unless I’d met his conditions.”
“The same ones from before?”
“I imagine so. And you know what?” he said on a frosted breath. “It sucks that I’m nearly thirty and still feel like I have to fight for my father’s approval. That no matter what, I still come up short in his eyes. Why the hell should it even matter?”
Okay, so maybe not that patient. Not that she didn’t understand that, too. The closer the relationship, the more tangled it was likely to be. Like the lights.
“It matters because you love him,” she said gently, even as her stomach sank, remembering what Gene had asked of her the day before. “Everybody wants their parents to be proud of them.” His only reply was a grunt. “What are you going to do?”
“Work my butt off. Make sure I don’t give him any reason to regret his decision. And maybe…” His eyes swung to hers, and electricity shot through her.
“What?”
He gave her a long, hard look that sent another hundred megawatts or so crackling along her skin. But instead of finishing his thought, he handed her the strand of lights. “Hang on to this while I get the ladder?”
He’d barely gotten ten feet before she blurted out, “I got a job offer.”
And when he whipped around, she saw in his eyes exactly what she’d suspected he’d stopped himself from saying.
Not funny, God, she thought. Not funny at all.
Chapter Ten
“Where?” Noah said, the only word he could squeeze past the knot in his throat.
“Austin.”
“How…?”
“It was really weird, actually,” Rox said, with a short, nervous laugh. “Out of the blue, my former college roommate—we lost track of each other years ago—friended me on Facebook. Turns out she’s a designer now, in Austin. Which is her hometown. Anyway, long story short, we started texting, then she called me…and it turns out she also owns this funky little furniture and collectibles store, and she’s looking for someone knowledgeable to take over the merchandising because she’s about to have a baby. So when she found out I was looking for a job—”
“She said it was yours.”
“On the spot. With the possibility of becoming a partner some day. I even get to go on shopping trips all over the world, can you imagine?”
Although she was obviously trying to soft-pedal the news, there was no keeping the excitement out of her voice. Or her eyes. “When did this happen?”
“Actually, we’ve been on the phone all morning, ironing out the particulars.” Her nose was turning red; she scrounged a tissue out of her pocket and wiped it. “I said I needed to give Naomi two weeks’ notice.”
Noah slowly lowered himself onto the cold porch steps, reminding himself they’d firmly established they didn’t want the same things, that a relationship between them would have never worked. Not to mention he’d known all along she wasn’t going to stick around.
Reasonable arguments, every one. And yet…
After a long pause, Roxie came and sat beside him, linking her arm through his. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she whispered, leaning her head on his shoulder. Which, because logic was clearly not his friend right now, felt inexplicably right.
“This?”
“Us.”
Noah covered her hand with his. Swallowed hard. “The funny thing is, before you announced you’d found that job, I’d almost said—”
“That we should give it a shot? See where it goes?”
“Yeah,” he breathed out.
“To make your father happy?”
He craned his neck to look at her. “You actually think I’d hook up with somebody just to please Dad?” She shrugged against his arm. “Honey, he’s been on my case about this for years. Believe me, if all I’d wanted to do was shut him up I could’ve gotten hitched long ago.”
“Why is that not making me feel better?” she said, and he chuckled.
“Only telling it like it is. But…even as I considered asking if you were game, I knew it wasn’t fair to you. Or right.” He rubbed her arm for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “The thing is…it really does feel different. With you, I mean. I actually like you. I like being with you, talking to you. And I don’t doubt for a minute we’d have a lot of fun in bed. Still and all, whenever I think of the next step…I choke.”
“It’s okay—”
“Dammit, Rox—would you stop being so reasonable? It’s not okay, it’s messed up, is what it is.”
“Except, it would have never worked anyway, right? I’m leaving in two weeks, you’ve g-got obligations
here…” Ah, hell, he thought as she said, in a small, mad voice, “I knew it was stupid to let myself fall for you. Knew we’d never see eye-to-eye on certain major issues. And for damn sure I wasn’t about to go through that again, not after Jeff. But it was like…knocking a glass off the counter, when you all you can do is stand there and watch it fall, knowing it’s going to crash into a million pieces.”
Tell me about it, Noah thought, his heart fisting in his chest. Then he slung his arm around her shoulder and pulled her to him again, rubbing his cheek in her hair. “I’m so sorry, honey.”
“For what? Being who you are?” She paused, skimming one fingertip over a varnish stain on the knee of his jeans. “I was so sure, as long as I didn’t sleep with you I’d stay in control.” She made a pfft sound through her lips, then sighed. “But that’s not your fault. I still could’ve been more careful with the glass, made sure not to leave it on the edge. And I didn’t.”
“Because you’re still not over Mac?”
“No!” Roxie lifted her head to look at him, her gaze steady despite the crease between her brows. Then her mouth scrunched on one side. “Okay, to be honest, you do remind me of him in some ways. Or did, before I got to know you. But when I moved on from Jeff I apparently left Mac behind as well.” She nestled her head on his shoulder again. “Believe me, buddy, whatever I feel for you, I feel for you. Not as a memory or a placeholder, but as somebody I think is amazing in his own right.”
He snorted. “Amazing?”
Her soft laugh vibrated against his shoulder before she looked at him again. “It’s true. Screwed up though this may be, at least I’ve got that part straight in my head. I’m not confusing you with anybody else. Cross my heart.”
That makes one of us, Noah thought with a twist to his gut. “So…what do you want to do now?”
Roxie pushed herself to her feet, backing into the yard to look up at the porch. “Finish decorating this house, for starters.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
Husband Under Construction Page 15
