Her Unexpected Engagement (Checkerberry Inn)

by Kyra Jacobs

  A sniffle broke the silence that had blossomed between them. “You cared about me?”

  He waded over to where she stood and set his chin upon her crown as he wrapped his arms around the front of her shivering body. “From the first time you came busting through the hedgerow between our yards, chasing after that silly pink Frisbee of yours.”

  Her arms came up to cover his. “But you never asked me out. Why?”

  “Because when I was old enough to realize how I felt, I knew I was all wrong for you. You were a force to be reckoned with, so confident and bold, bigger than Mount Pleasant, bigger than I could offer you. But Liam…he could show you the world.”

  “But I never wanted the world. I just wanted to be loved for who I was.” Her voice lowered, her words growing bitter. “Not for what I brought to the table in someone else’s selfish plans for the future.”

  They stood there for a long moment, holding tight to each other as both came to terms with secrets newly revealed. All around them, nature resumed its daily buzz. And in that moment, he did see the forest for the trees. He tightened his grip on Stephanie, unwilling to let her go.

  “Is it too late for us, Miles?” Her whispered words were full of fear.

  “I don’t know.” He lay his cheek atop her wet hair. “I don’t know if I can be what you need me to be.”

  “I don’t know if I can be what you need, either. So, maybe we don’t worry so much about that right now. Maybe we just…keep having fun and see where this takes us. No demands, no deadlines, just…us.”

  She shrugged, as though this crazy idea of hers wasn’t contrary to every thought Miles had possessed since that overheard conversation of his parents had crushed his spirit all those years ago. He’d fought so long not to give in to the love he felt for her—did he really have it in him to make that leap? Did he really want to?

  Here, waist deep in a quiet stream holding fast to the girl of his dreams, he wanted to think he could. Wanted it bad. But he couldn’t promise her that his old habits wouldn’t come back, that he wouldn’t get cold feet and eventually run screaming the other way. Miles had spent too long in that mindset. Hell, it was quite possibly part of his DNA now.

  And yet, if there was a woman alive who could help change his mind, it was Stephanie.

  “No demands?”

  “None. Not that I’d ever ask for much, anyway. A little sunshine, a little water.” She turned in his arms to look up at him, a grin on her tear-streaked face. “Maybe a daily dose or two of bedroom therapy.”

  Scared out of his mind at what she might be conning him into or not, he couldn’t help but chuckle at the mention of “bedroom” coupled with that coy look in her eyes. Miles bent to kiss away the last of her tears from one cheek, then the other.

  “I’ve got a lot of learning to do,” he said. “On how to love someone.”

  “And I’ve got a lot of healing to do, learning to love again.”

  “Sounds like quite the recipe for success,” he said with a smirk.

  “Well, it’s got to be better than my baked ziti. That’s for sure.”

  Miles laughed. “Amen.”

  “Hey,” she scowled. “If I hadn’t nearly killed you with my kindness, I might never have gotten you in bed.”

  “True.” He pulled her close and bent to nip at her neck. “How about we go back to my place and start working on this new recipe of yours.”

  “Of ours.” She rose slowly up onto her tiptoes, sliding her wet body against his length. “That is, if you’re not too…chicken.”

  “Chicken? We’ll see who’s chicken. ‘Cause it’s my turn to cook tonight, baby. And just wait to see what I’ve got in store for you.”

  With that he lifted her up and tossed her into the water. Again she came up sputtering, but this time instead of fury, her face wore the look of determination.

  “Oh, you’re on, buddy. You. Are. On.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Stephanie swayed lazily on Miles’s gliding rocker, foot dangling over one edge and hand holding a Labatt’s Blue over the other. He stood with his back to her at his shined-to-perfection stainless steel grill, keeping a watchful eye over their dinner: New York Strips, marinated in some bourbon-based glaze, and baked potatoes the size of her hand. She knew just from the mouthwatering smell of that glaze caramelizing over the grates that this meal would far surpass her disastrous attempt at one last night. Possibly all the ones before that, too.

  Or maybe she was just starving from the physical exertion of the day. And there had been plenty of exertion—both in and out of the water—thanks to Miles.

  Hallelujah, her dry spell was over.

  I could get used to this, she thought, raising the beer to her lips. Him cooking for her, caring for her. Pleasing her when she asked with just the bat of an eye. Lord, he’d spoiled her rotten the past few days. Paid her far more attention than she’d been paid in years.

  Looking back now, Liam had checked out of their marriage further back than she’d realized. He’d been gone more and more, home less and less. Intimacy had dwindled down to nothing the last year they were married. She’d just chalked it up to stress from his push to climb the rankings, but had there been more? What if he’d been cheating on her long before that kiss on TV?

  Bile rose in her throat.

  Miles reached for his tongs and gingerly turned the steaks over. The motion drew her gaze…and got her thinking. If anyone would know Liam’s extracurricular activities, it’d be his old playboy college friend.

  “You ever talk to Liam?” she asked, trying to keep her voice casual.

  “Once in a blue moon or so. He used to call or text when he was passing through town. His last one I didn’t bother answering.”

  “Oh.” She took a sip of her beer. “So, how long ago did that one arrive?”

  “I don’t know. Sometime last week?”

  “Last week?”

  “Yeah. He’s got a tournament at Polecat this coming weekend.”

  Stephanie spit out the sip she’d just begun to take. She hadn’t thought to check his stupid schedule before hopping on the plane. No, she’d done that ten years too many as it was, thank you very much. She sat up and toed at an acorn that’d fallen onto the deck from last night’s wind.

  “Huh. Might not have come into town this week if I’d known d-bag would be here.”

  “D-bag?” Miles chuckled. “Is that what you call him now?”

  “Among other things. That’s the nicest I can do in mixed company.” The rest involved various pieces of his cheating anatomy. “Since apparently you two are still friends and all.”

  “I don’t know that I’d go that far. He only calls when he wants something.”

  “Let me guess: company on the links. Or at the bars.”

  Miles kept his eyes on the steak but said nothing.

  “How many times, Miles?” Even with her voice low, she heard it waver. “How many times did he cheat on me when you guys were out barhopping?”

  Now he did turn around, his face dark. “Whoa. I may have been a playboy in my younger days, but I wasn’t without morals, thank you very much.”

  “Younger days?”

  “All right, up until Friday. But I mean it, Steph. I would never encourage anyone to cheat. Or stick around to watch.”

  A strangled squeak escaped her, and a second round of bile rose in her throat.

  “Look, I never saw him do anything specific, okay? But yeah, I had my suspicions.” Miles shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Mainly,” he mumbled, “I agreed to meet up with him so I could hear about you.”

  Stephanie felt a smile curl her lips. All this time, all these years, he really had cared about her. Even when she was convinced that wasn’t the case. Had it been as hard for him to stay away, to block her from his mind, as it’d been for her to try and forget him?

  “Why only up until last Friday?”

  He grinned. “That’s when I saw the most amazing pair of legs come walkin
g into the Checkerberry Inn.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Mmm, hmm. Had one hell of a view point from where I sat at the time.”

  Stephanie chuckled. “You looked absolutely ridiculous on the floor, you know that? I would have given you all sorts of grief if I hadn’t been responsible.”

  “You give me grief? I can’t possibly imagine it.”

  She shook her head and toed another downed acorn. This, this was what she loved about Miles. How easy it was to be with him, and how easily he could turn her sour moods around. She’d thought that kind of relationship just happened when you said you loved someone. Or, at least, when you thought you did. But it’d never been this easy with Liam, or anyone else. Only Miles.

  “Hey.”

  She looked up and found him standing before her, a plate of perfectly grilled steaks and potatoes in one hand as he offered her help up with the other.

  “I was only kidding.”

  “I know.” She smiled and took his hand. Savored the warmth there, the kindness of his gesture. Miles had said in the stream before that he didn’t know if he could be what she needed him to be. And she’d been honest when she said she needed time herself to learn how to love again, to learn to trust. After the misery that came with watching her lackluster marriage disintegrate a handful of months ago, was she really fool enough to risk her heart again so soon? Especially on a man who’d spent most of his life shunning love?

  But, oh, how her heart suddenly longed for him to open up, to learn to love. To learn to love her. Because she’d never met a man who was a better match for her in every possible way than Miles David Masterson.

  And deep down, Stephanie knew she never would again.

  …

  Miles sat across from Stephanie at the dinner table, his meal all but demolished while her plate remained mostly full. Surely it wasn’t his cooking that kept her from eating—this was some of his best grill work yet. Though, what exactly had turned his vivacious, ornery guest from making herself right at home to sullen and reserved eluded him. Was it something he’d said, or had the earlier conversation about Liam bothered her more than she’d let on?

  He had no idea, but Miles longed to get her smiling again. Because when she smiled, he forgot about all his worries, his responsibilities. She was sunshine, chasing away the clouds from his dreary existence. Good Christ, where the hell did that analogy come from? What a pathetic sap I’m turning into…

  A smile tugged at his lips.

  “Did you have fun today?”

  Stephanie’s gaze came back into focus and shifted to his. “Sorry?”

  “Your wish list.” He waggled his fork at her, the last bite of steak still attached. “You’ve been running me ragged all day. Did you enjoy yourself?”

  “Oh, yes. I mean, how could I not with the tour of the grounds, the long nature walk, the canoeing, the shower after the canoeing, the, um, post-shower activities”—she offered him an exaggerated wink—“and then the post-post-shower activities nap, topped off with lazy time on the deck and this wonderful meal? It was perfect.” She sighed, then her brows drew together in concern. “Did you enjoy it?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, when you weren’t trying to drown me—”

  “Um, excuse me—you were the one who tried to drown me.”

  “Sure, we’ll go with that.” He winked back. “But we never did finalize our story for this charity event tomorrow. Shoot, I’ll have to see if my tux is clean.”

  “Don’t bother. We’re not going.”

  “What? Why not?”

  Stephanie kept her gaze trained on what remained of her baked potato. “Because. I don’t want to go.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Miles frowned. “Steph, you’ve gotten so much stronger these past few days. Don’t get all timid on me again over this.”

  “Timid? Did you just call me timid?”

  Oops. It seemed Miles had poked the proverbial bear. But damn it, he wasn’t going to sit back and watch her shirk away from life forever. Stephanie deserved to be out there doing what she loved best. He’d seen the excitement in her eyes when Evanston was talking with her on Monday—it was the same gleam he’d seen when she’d been interviewed on television or for any one of those magazines.

  Kids. Helping kids made her happy. And he wanted her to be happy, even more than he wanted to be happy himself. Which meant he might have to poke that bear a bit more to get her to snap out of this scaredy-cat slump.

  He popped the last bite of steak into his mouth, watching the fury build in Stephanie’s eyes. “Yeah, well, we’ve kind of used ‘chicken’ to death, don’t you think?”

  Her hands clenched into fists, and he prepared to duck lest flatware and silverware were sent airborne. Because it certainly wouldn’t be the first time she chucked something at him during a meal, even if the last time had been a good twenty years ago. To his surprise, though, the fists flattened, and her face went eerily smooth as she offered him a polite smile.

  “Well, since you’ve never been much into timid women, you should be relieved to hear we’re not going.”

  Of all the things he expected her to throw at him, that wasn’t one of them. Miles shook his head.

  “What?”

  “You didn’t used to be so good at this.”

  “At what?”

  “Controlling your temper.”

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me anymore, Miles. That’s just one of them.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But one thing I do know is that the Stephanie I knew then would never have let life push her around.”

  “I don’t let—”

  “Admit it—you haven’t RSVP’d about this event because you’re scared.”

  “I am not.” Stephanie’s scowl deepened. “I’m just not ready to rush into anything yet.”

  “Rush into anything? You were interviewing for a job, Steph. What did you think would happen—that he’d let you place cold calls for sponsors tucked safely inside some windowless cubicle?”

  “I can get a job anywhere. One that doesn’t involve dinner events.”

  She crossed her arms, and Mile sensed she was gearing up to leave. But leaving would be all wrong; he wouldn’t let her throw her future away for fear of having to face the past. Miles tossed down his napkin, rose from his seat, and came to kneel beside her chair.

  “My nose.” He took one of her hands in his. “You were tracing it last night right before I fell asleep. I know you know it was broken, but you never asked how. Ask me.”

  “What?”

  “Ask me how my nose got broken, Steph.”

  “Fine.” Her voice went flat. “How’d you break your nose?”

  “Bullies. At least twice.”

  She winced but said nothing, the hard look remaining in her eyes.

  “See, I took longer than the other kids to hit my growth spurt. By the time we hit middle school, Brent was a head taller than me and twice as broad. Remember? Most of the other boys in our grade were, too. At the time they were all pretty clumsy and focused on trying to grow into their new, oversize frames. Then we all hit high school, and everything changed. I shot up in height my sophomore year, but the weight wouldn’t come. I was scrawny, weak, and uncoordinated. The other guys had grown into their bodies, their muscles, and so when life didn’t go their way, they looked for someone to take it out on. An easy target. The smart kid.”

  “Oh, Miles.”

  He released her and got to his feet, hating how pathetic this story made him sound, how pathetic he had been, but knowing it had to be said. She needed to hear it, to know there was hope.

  “Brent was there for me, most times. And popular—you remember? But a few times I wasn’t so lucky.”

  An all-too-familiar scene came to mind: him walking back to his car in Suzie Klein’s driveway. They’d been on a date—at Stephanie’s prompting, ironically enough. One of the very few he’d had in those early days. Th
ey’d gone to see a movie, and when he‘d kissed her good-bye, Miles was so nervous that he’d nearly missed. He’d walked back to his beater Mustang, too distracted by the way his lips were still tingling to notice the three figures waiting for him in the shadows beside her house. One of them, he learned after waking in the hospital, was the boy Suzie had dumped to go out with Miles. He’d never even gotten in one swing. Never had a chance.

  “They were bullies, Steph. Bullies who did whatever they pleased and didn’t care who they hurt along the way. I hoped it would eventually stop, that they’d get tired of picking on me and find a new target, but that didn’t happen until I learned how to stand up for myself. Until I learned how to fight back.”

  She rose and closed the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his waist. “I never knew,” she said, her cheek resting against his chest.

  “I never wanted you to. Not until now.”

  She looked up to meet his gaze. “Why?”

  “Don’t you see? I had to learn to face my demons, to fight back. And it’s no different for you.”

  The empathy dimmed in her eyes. He felt her begin to shift away, but Miles wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. “Listen to me. Life took a major dump on you this year. I get that. And on national television, which made it like a million times worse.”

  “Thanks for the reminder,” she muttered.

  “But that was then. It’s over, done, no more, and yet you’re letting that monkey on your back control you, limit who you are. You don’t really want to spend the rest of your life hiding from the public eye, do you? Ruled by a fear that some stupid photographer might snap your pictures and slap it on the front page of some tabloid? No. You’re better than that. Stronger. Don’t waste your life worrying about what everyone else might think. Who cares? Live life the way you want to live it.” He reached to cup her soft cheek in his hand. “Face your demons, Steph. Move on.”

  “I wish I could,” she whispered, her gaze turning watery. “But every time I’ve tried I…”