by Zoe York
“No, no,” Trish was saying to Lily. “You don’t need to go to the bother of trying to feed us all. This is a celebration, not more work for you.”
“I’d like to.” Lily looked put out at being denied the opportunity to fill eight hungry mouths.
“Fine then,” Trish said softly, giving in. “We’ll see you both Sunday.”
“What about Gramps?” Ethan asked.
“We’re going to put him in a home. He can’t live alone any longer.”
“Oh.”
“We’re hoping you can tell him.”
“Me?”
“You have a good relationship with him.”
“Well, I guess.” That was going to be hard. He knew what it felt like to have your independence taken away. Which was maybe the real reason the family had chosen him.
“Ethan,” his father said, coming to stand beside Trish, “we’d also like you to take in your grandfather until we can get him into the home. There’s a bit of a wait list, but it doesn’t seem safe to have him living on his own any longer.”
Ethan opened his mouth to protest, but his dad continued on, not backing down even though Ethan gave him the same helpless look that had worked beautifully while he’d been paralyzed, but seemed to be losing its effect these days.
In other words, his father wasn’t buying it.
“You have a guestroom and work from home. Plus you’re one of the few people he listens to.”
“But…” That wasn’t how things were supposed to work. Cory wasn’t supposed to push him around like he did Mandy and Devon. Ethan glanced at Lily, who was looking everywhere but at him. “But we…”
“We what?” Everyone in the room was watching them, waiting for his excuse.
“We would love to have Gramps,” he said quietly, knowing that it would take Gramps about ten seconds to see through his and Lily’s pinch of commitment.
“What are you doing?” Lily put her hands on her hips and looked up at Ethan, who was standing precariously on a stepladder, messing around with something in the ceiling tiles near the walk-in fridge in the back hallway. It was crazy early and she’d been having a Beyoncé dance party while getting things prepped for the day; she didn’t need an audience messing with her “zone.” But he’d marched in like he owned the place, toting one of those clear plastic boxes of his full of gadgets, and now he was setting something up in the ceiling. Her ceiling. She squinted at the device he was aiming. A camera! Seriously? “Are you spying on me?”
“No, solving the bad luck of this place once and for all.”
“What does that mean?”
“The new fridge that turns off on its own, the missing cash float. That stuff.”
She’d never found the missing two hundred and fifty dollars. Lily decided she must have made a simple accounting error and deposited it along with the day’s income. But before coming to that conclusion she’d made the mistake of mentioning the missing money to her father in their weekly phone call. He’d gone into a tailspin about her being shafted by The Man. She never did manage to pinpoint who he thought The Man was, but secretly suspected he was referring to Ethan.
Either way, she now was much more careful with her accounting and kept better track of which employees had access to what.
But the fridge? She hadn’t heard anything about it acting up but if Ethan was training a camera on it, she could assume something more than a faulty switch might be at play.
“Has someone been turning off the fridge?”
Ethan shrugged.
“Well, I hope a camera solves the mystery.” She hated to think how much a walk-in fridge of spoiled food might cost the restaurant.
Ethan glanced down at her, his mouth holding some sort of orange thing that looked like the cap off a glue bottle. He plucked it from between his lips and twisted it onto two wires, saying, “Flip the third switch down, left side, in the panel box.”
“Where’s that?”
“In the office, behind the door.”
She went into the room, flicked the stiff switch and returned, happy to see she hadn’t electrocuted her husband.
“Well?” she asked.
Ethan carefully eased his way down the stepladder. “That should do it.” It seemed like his muscles were bugging him again. His skin was slightly pale, too.
“Do you eat a lot of wheat?”
“What?”
“Your joint stiffness. It could be a wheat intolerance.”
“Or the fact that a few hundred thousand tons of snow threw my car off the road and down the side of a mountain.”
Lily winced involuntarily and he saw it, turning his shoulder to her, shutting her out. Okay, tough guy. So his body language was saying he didn’t want empathy from anyone, but it didn’t mean she had to play along.
“You were paralyzed?” she prodded.
“Yup.” He picked up his plastic bin and carried it off to her cramped office.
“But now you’re not.”
“Yup. But there are things I can’t do.”
“Like what?”
He simply gave her a look over his shoulder. That broad, broad shoulder. Then he winked and thrust the bin into her arms, lifting the lid and removing a small camera.
What had that wink meant? He was teasing her, playing around.
“I’m going to put this one watching the safe.”
She felt as though the bottom of her world dropped out, sending her into free fall. “But you and I are the only ones with access now.” That was a change he’d insisted upon after the float had gone missing. There was no reason to put a camera above the safe unless he didn’t trust her.
“I thought my bad luck would end when you came along,” he told her.
Lily’s world rebounded and her heart lifted. “Aw, thanks, Ethan.” He gave her a strange look. “That’s really sweet.”
“My luck hadn’t changed,” he grumbled. “Something’s still messed up around here with the fridge shutting off and the missing cash.”
She nodded quickly.
“So I have to look out for you, Lilypad.” He had climbed up onto her desk and started messing around with a ceiling tile.
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“You’re my wife.”
“That you don’t love.” And still won’t confide in.
His eyes met hers, as if he was searching for meaning behind her words.
“Ethan, I’m all grown up. You don’t have to keep pulling me out of mud puddles.”
“Yes, I do.” He took her in with a sweeping gaze, then said gruffly, “You’re important to me.”
Lily sucked in a deep breath. She was going to cry. A big ugly, happy cry.
He fitted something up in the tile, then checked his phone. He angled the camera, then rechecked his screen. “Hand me your cell.”
She felt her back pockets, then rifled through a stack of papers she’d been working on earlier. She found the device and handed it to him. He tapped the screen a few times, then showed her a live video feed of her office. There they were in black-and-white. The desk, the safe, the couch and filing cabinet.
Lily felt conflicted. She loved that he was trying to look out for her, but it also meant he could spy on her at any time, as if he didn’t trust her.
Ethan carefully eased himself down from the desk, swinging his legs over the side before standing beside her. “Now you’ll be able to see if someone is stealing money or messing with the fridge.”
She could see him watching her through the image on her phone.
“Some people would say thank you, you know,” he added.
She felt the tug of a smile and put her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. She knew he meant well, that he wouldn’t abuse his ability to peek in on her office.
“Thank you, Ethan.”
He nodded. They were standing close, watching each other. He wasn’t backing off like he usually did.
“Hey, Ethan?” she asked softly. “Can you help me drag this co
uch out of here?” She hoped to remove it, giving her more room to work. She also wanted to see if Ethan would avoid the request as usual, or whether he’d tell her the secret that kept wedging its way between them.
When he didn’t move, his conflicted gaze still stuck on the piece of furniture, she took the few steps that separated them, sliding between him and the door, hoping he’d choose her this time.
“You can’t, can you?”
He didn’t say a word, simply kept staring at the couch. Finally, he shook his head.
“Nobody talks about your injuries. Not even you.”
The room was painfully quiet.
“You can tell me, you know,” she said gently, pressing a palm against his solid chest.
“Lily.” He placed his hand over hers, finally meeting her gaze. “We didn’t get married to fix each other or ease the loneliness. I might be able to walk, but…I can’t be everything you need.”
“And you think you know what that is, do you?”
“Just take what you can,” he urged quietly.
“Maybe you need to take what you can and enjoy life.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Lily…”
“Trust me, Ethan.” She lifted herself onto her toes, whispering in his ear, “You’re more man than you realize, so you’d better let go of your fear and start acting like it. Your wife expects it.”
You’re more man than you realize… Lily’s words kept going through Ethan’s mind as he hiked across the meadow with his family, celebrating the addition of Axel to the Mattson clan. He was feeling pretty good, making him think that maybe she was right. For example, he’d balked at going on the hike when Trish had first suggested it, but it turned out he was fine. More than fine. He even wanted to go farther, up into the gentle hills that overlooked the town. It had been a long time since he’d gone this far on his own steam, and he was likely going to regret it. But right now he didn’t care, and just wanted to enjoy the feeling of liberation.
Lily hooked her arm through his and he leaned closer, bumping shoulders with her as his stomach growled.
She sighed, obviously regretting that she’d forgotten her carefully packed picnic lunch back in the car when they’d arrived late.
“It’s okay, Lil.”
“You’re having a good time even though you’re obviously starving?” she asked.
“The best.” He pointed to the others, who were up ahead. “You can run on with the crew, if you’d like.”
He hadn’t quite told her the extent of his lingering injuries in her office the day prior, nor the fact that Dr. Leham thought he might have a form of arthritis that could leave him immobile again, but he’d tried. And she’d essentially told him to stop living in fear and live for today.
Go with the flow.
He wasn’t sure what to do with that. But he was trying.
“I’m enjoying being right where I am,” she said, snuggling against his arm. Given their leisurely pace he figured they looked like a couple on a romantic stroll. He liked the image that evoked.
“Me, too.”
She smiled up at him and he had to prevent his heart from involuntarily growing a size or two.
“Do you miss the restaurant?” she asked after they’d walked a ways.
“Miss it?” He couldn’t think of a single reason why he would, other than it got him out of the house a bit. “Nope.”
“Not at all?”
“Okay, I miss Leif’s eggs.” Not really. He preferred Lily’s meals and the way he felt good all day after eating them. Maybe it actually was something in his diet bugging his joints, as his doctor had suggested. Or maybe it was simply the Lily Effect, where everything just seemed sunnier in his life when she was around.
“Oh, you,” she muttered, apparently knowing he was kidding about Leif’s cooking.
Mandy hung back from the clan to wait for them. With Axel in a carrier strapped to her chest, Ethan’s sister looked happy, at peace. He hadn’t even realized that she and Frankie were having fertility issues until she announced the other month that they were in line to adopt a baby.
“Motherhood looks good on you,” he said as they caught up.
“Thanks. I hope this hike becomes tradition every time we add a kid to the family. It’s fun.” She gave him and Lily a pointed look.
“Think you’ll miss working?” he asked.
“I’m not quitting,” she said quickly. “Just slowing down a little.”
“Right.”
“How could you not miss it?” Lily asked. “Your café must feel like home.”
“Home?” Mandy asked skeptically. “I don’t know…”
“Yeah. You know, you’re cooking and have all these wonderful people working together and you feel like…” Lily paused uncertainly and Ethan took a better look at her.
“Like you belong there?” he asked quietly.
Mandy quirked her head.
“Yeah.” Lily’s face lit up. “And because you own it…it’s yours. It’ll always be there.” She frowned. “That sounds silly, doesn’t it?”
Ethan thought about it. His wife had lost a lot of kitchens over the years, which couldn’t have been easy if they were places where she’d felt at home and accepted. First she’d lost the Mattsons’ kitchen, when her father found a new job and they moved away. Then kitchens where she’d served out her various internships for school, and finally in the city of Dakota where she’d been romantically burned.
“Benny’s will always be there for you, Lily. Just like me,” he said, helping her over a fallen tree that crossed the path, Mandy having already scrambled over it, baby and all.
She smiled at him and, looking over the events of the day, he realized something. Lily just might be onto something with her comments about him and his life. He might have believed he was sheltering himself from pain and from being a burden on others, but in the process of hiding himself away he was also missing out on truly living.
Chapter 9
“Ethan, just chill!” Lily was feeling exasperated. They were back at Ethan’s house after the hike, and Gramps was scheduled to start moving in that night. “We can share your bed.”
“The futon will be here next week. I can crash on the couch after Gramps goes to sleep.”
“Ethan. We’re married.”
“Lily…”
She couldn’t help but secretly wonder again if his rejection of her had anything to do with his ex. His sexy, beautiful, successful, famous fiancée, who’d left him but was supposed to return to Blueberry Springs any day now.
“We can share a bedroom,” she said quickly. “I’ll be working extra, anyway, seeing as Leif is getting cataract surgery tomorrow and won’t be in for up to a week.”
“We need to talk—”
The front door opened and Ethan’s dad entered, Gramps in tow. Devon was behind them, hauling suitcases.
“I can’t believe you’re giving up on me,” their grandfather complained loudly. “One outfit that doesn’t meet your approval and I’m out on my ear and being babysat.”
Ethan moved past Lily to settle him. “Gramps, it’ll be okay. We’ve got a spare room and, honestly, working at home is lonely. I could use the company.”
“Bull crap!”
Lily laughed. There was nobody quite like Gramps.
Ethan smiled. “Yeah, okay. You got me, but are you going to fight city hall?”
“I’d like to see you try,” Devon said with a smile, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I want my own place.”
“It was either here or my place,” Devon said. “And Emma—Olivia’s sister—is coming to stay for a bit and I didn’t think you’d like her as a roommate.”
“Is she pretty?” Gramps asked, perking up.
“Come on,” Lily said, interrupting the gripe session. “I made you some mashed potatoes with extra butter.” The man loved them and she’d hoped it would help ease the transition, distract him from the fact that the family was overriding his wish
es.
“I’m imposing. You’re newlyweds.”
Lily gave a small smile. “Don’t worry about us. We’re all family here.”
“My hearing is just fine, you know.”
“It’s not,” Devon muttered, heading out to get more of Gramps’s belongings from Mandy’s truck.
“I don’t want to be a burden,” Gramps complained.
“You’re not,” Ethan said quietly.
“Says you.”
“Yeah.” He stood taller. “Says me.”
“You called yourself a burden and now I’m one. I thought we were sticking together.”
Ethan swallowed, avoiding looking at Lily. “I struggled for a while to be completely independent.”
“What?” Gramps was scowling in frustration at not being able to hear him. The old man looked lost, alone, and Lily’s heart went out to him. He relied on Ethan and likely felt betrayed right now, tricked into answering to the will of the family. A family who loved him and cared for him.
“Maybe I was wrong, Gramps,” Ethan said louder. “Maybe it’s okay to let people help if they want to.”
“Amen!” Cory hollered from the guestroom, while Gramps grumbled, “Balderdash!”
“I want to help and I’m family. That’s what family does,” Ethan said. “How’s that a burden?”
He and his grandfather stared at each other, waiting for the other to back down.
“I love you, Gramps.”
The old man relented with a scowl. “Fine. Love me. See if I care.”
Lily bit back a smile as Ethan shot her a secret glance. He was trying not to smile either.
“Mashed potatoes?” she offered again.
“You bribing me?” Gramps asked.
“Yes.”
“I take bribes,” he said after a pause.
“That’s because I make the best mashed potatoes.”
“And you put up with Ethan.”
“That I do. And I’ll happily put up with you, too.”
As they turned to head to the kitchen, Ethan held out his hand for a fist bump. United.
