by Lori Wilde
“You know,” she said, the idea of wearing his dead wife’s clothes making her feel weird, “I think I’m well enough to go back to the cabin.”
“No. That roof is a sieve. You’ll never heal in that damp environment. Besides, it’s been raining in solid sheets all night, the road to the cabin could easily wash out. Even if I could get you back there, I’m not leaving you somewhere you could get stuck alone for days until this bad weather passes.”
She started to argue, but when she threw back the covers and went to swing her legs off the bed, sudden dizziness took her breath away. He was right. She wasn’t strong enough to be alone yet.
“Easy,” Joe said, his hand going around her back. “Light-headed?”
Mariah heard a soft catch in his voice. He smelled good—masculine and hearty. His scent hooked her so surely that she didn’t want him to ever let go of her. But his proximity was dangerous within the parameters of a bed. Being so near him, so vulnerable to him, caused a strange unraveling inside her. She wanted him, but she wasn’t ready for him, and she suspected he wasn’t ready for her either. If he had been, he wouldn’t have kept his distance this past month.
So she lied, slipped from his grip. “It’s passed.”
But Joe wasn’t easily fooled. He took hold of her elbow. “I’ll help you to the bathroom.”
She turned her head to look at him, to argue, but got trapped by the hypnotic lure of his coffee-colored eyes. The irises were almost as dark as his pupils, dilated wide in the bedroom’s dimness. That made her dizzier than the residual fever weakness.
Thankfully, he left her at the door of the bathroom. She took her time with showering, letting the hot water wash over her. By the time she finished, and padded back into the bedroom with a thick bath towel wrapped around her, she found stylish pink lounging pajamas spread out for her on the bed, along with pink crew socks and pink slippers. The bed had been made but the covers were turned down in case she wanted to crawl back in. She smiled at the efforts Joe had taken to make her comfortable.
She and Becca had been close to the same size, although Mariah had never been a pink person. She put on the clothes, and then opened the bedroom door.
The smell of cooking chicken curled down the hallway, calling her name. It might be morning, but she was ravenous to eat anything for breakfast. Running a hand along the wall to keep her steady, she followed the scent into the kitchen.
Joe had just come in from outside. He was scuffling his boots on the mat at the door and shaking off a black rain slicker. He glanced up, saw her standing there, and simply stopped everything he was doing to stare at her.
Feeling self-conscious, she reached up to run a hand through her hair. She was in his wife’s clothes. Was he seeing Becca in her? That made her stomach dive. The last thing she wanted was to be a substitute.
“I . . . I . . .” Joe stammered. “I’ve been out checking on the livestock. I listened to the weather report. Another line of fierce storms is moving through. This might go on for a couple of days.”
“So . . .” Mariah gulped. “It’s just you and me.”
“Yes.”
“Alone.”
Their gazes locked.
Unnerved, Mariah was the first to break the stare. “What is that heavenly smell?”
“Chicken soup. I put it in the Crock-Pot last night.”
“I’m starving.”
“How about oatmeal and cinnamon toast for breakfast? We can have the soup for lunch.”
“You can cook?”
“My mother believed a man should be able to make his own meals. She taught all us kids to cook. My dad taught my sisters how to change the oil in their cars.”
“Smart parents.” Mariah weaved on her feet.
“Hey.” Joe rushed to cover the distance between them. “You’re still shaky as a newborn fawn. C’mon, I’ll get you set up on the couch.”
He took her by the hand, guided her into the living room, and installed her on the wide leather couch. He covered her with a lap blanket decorated with stampeding horses, turned on the TV, put the remote control and a box of tissues within her reach. “Now, you snuggle in while I tend to breakfast.”
After breakfast, Joe built a fire in the fireplace. Outside, heavy rains lashed against the windows. He paced back and forth in front of the window, a caged lion anxious for escape.
She had to wonder if he was restless because of being stuck here with her.
“Relax. Come sit.” She patted the spot on the sofa beside her.
He eased down, keeping a cushion between them.
“Got any games we could play?” she asked.
“We’ve got dominoes. It was Bec—” He stopped.
“Dominoes would be great,” Mariah said brightly, putting a big smile on her face. He should be able to say Becca’s name without feeling awkward. The woman had been his wife. Nothing would ever change that fact. Still, it made Mariah feel . . . lonely. Joe’s heart was still twined up with his dead wife. She didn’t know what to say about it, so she didn’t say anything.
They played dominoes with the smell of chicken soup in the air and the warm crackle of mesquite wood burning in the fireplace and the sound of relentless wind and driving rain pounding against the house. Lightning flashed. Thunder snapped like gunfire.
After ten games, they were tied five to five. Evenly matched.
“Do you feel up for hot chocolate?” he asked.
“Hot chocolate sounds great. You keep spoiling me like this and I’ll never want to go back to my cabin.”
“I could make us some popcorn too. See if there’s any good movies on TV.”
“You are the host with the most,” she said.
A few minutes later, Joe was back on the couch with her, two mugs of hot chocolate and a big bowl of popcorn on the coffee table in front of them. Joe took over the remote control, flipping from channel to channel.
He zoomed past Tom Hanks standing at a gravesite.
“Sleepless in Seattle! My favorite movie. Go back, go back.”
Joe flipped the channel back to the opening credits of Sleepless in Seattle.
It was only when Tom Hanks’s character told his son, Jonah, that they didn’t ask why, that it fully dawned on Mariah that the movie was about a man who’d lost his beloved wife.
To Mariah, this quintessential romance was a tale of fate, destiny, two people who were meant to be together. She’d never given the fact that Hanks’s character, Sam, was a widower much thought. Yes, widower status was what made Sam so appealing, but now, here with Joe, all Mariah could think about was that Joe had suffered the way the Tom Hanks character was suffering. When Becca had died, he had lost his true north, his romantic compass, and now here was this movie rubbing his nose in it.
Mariah gulped. “That’s okay. You can change the channel. I’ve seen this show a hundred times.”
“Does it make you uncomfortable?” Joe asked. “Watching this show with me because it’s about a widower?”
“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Does it make you uncomfortable?”
Joe drew in a breath so deep she heard it from her side of the couch. “This movie is about a widower’s struggle to come to terms with his wife’s death?”
“You’ve never seen it?”
“Bits and pieces. Not the whole thing.”
“That’s partially what it’s about. It’s also about acceptance and how you never really know where you belong until you accept circumstances for the way they are rather than what you wish they were.”
“Then let’s watch it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hey, maybe Tom can give me some tips.”
“Okay,” she said. “But feel free to change the channel if anything bothers you.”
At first, the tension in the room was palpable, but as the movie went along, Mariah could feel Joe relaxing. Maybe when the show was over he would be able to talk to her about Becca. The trouble was she didn’t really want to hear about h
er, but if talking could help Joe move on with his life, she’d listen.
Finally, they fell into a companionable silence, watching the Tom Hanks character keep himself walled off, watching Meg Ryan become engaged to the wrong man simply because she was so desperate for love.
Am I that desperate? Was she trying to make herself fall in love with Joe?
Mariah slid a glance over at him, and she was surprised to find him glancing back. Their gazes hit, sparked, shot away like marbles bouncing off each other.
She wondered what he was feeling. Heck, she wondered what she was feeling. Joe was a special guy and she enjoyed being with him, but he’d been cut to the bone by the loss of his wife. Was it stupid to think he could ever love anyone as much as he’d loved Becca? She couldn’t replace his wife, didn’t want to replace her. But she couldn’t deny her growing feelings for him.
They both reached for a handful of popcorn at the same time, their knuckles grazing as they dug in. Instantly, the tension was back, but it was a different kind of tension this time.
Sexual tension. Blistering and tight.
Mariah quickly moved her hand, focused on the TV screen. It was the part where Annie walked right past Sam in the airport and he feels something, even though he doesn’t know her. When Sam mutters to himself, “God, she’s beautiful,” and tries to follow Annie, it was one of those magical movie moments that took Mariah’s breath.
But no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on the story, every nerve ending of her body sang with awareness of the man sitting beside her. The sexy man who compelled her the same way Sam compelled Annie. He’d suffered so much. All she wanted to do was take the pain away.
She fisted her hands against her thighs clad in the pink lounging pajamas that had once belonged to his wife. Her throat constricted. Her shoulders tightened. Restlessly, she wriggled her toes inside the thick woolen socks. She could feel the heat radiating off Joe’s body. Or maybe her fever was back. She certainly felt . . . unlike herself.
The television station cut to commercial. Joe muted the noise.
“They could have gotten together much sooner if Annie had just realized that she was settling instead of holding out for the magic of true love. And if Sam would have let go of the idea that it wasn’t possible to have two great loves in one lifetime,” Mariah babbled, simply to fill the silence, punctuated only by the sound of driving rain.
“Then there wouldn’t have been a movie,” Joe pointed out.
Mariah sighed. “Such pain they both suffered.”
“Foolish Annie,” he said. “Blind Sam. Luckily they had Jonah or they would never have met.”
“All great matches need a Jonah to facilitate things I suppose,” Mariah said. “How did you and Becca meet?”
Joe shrugged. “We knew each other all our lives. We both grew up right here in Jubilee. But it wasn’t until I saw her competing at an out-of-town rodeo that she really caught my eye. Before that, I had my head so deep into bull riding that I didn’t pay any attention to anything else. The men were all over Becca and I thought, I’ve got to make her mine or lose out forever.”
“How long were you married?”
“Just two years. She’s been gone as long as we were married.”
“We don’t have to talk about her . . .” Mariah paused. “Unless you want to.”
“You don’t want to hear about my heartbreak.”
“I do,” she said, and reached out to put a hand on his forearm. “But only if you’re comfortable talking about her with me.”
“Sam had an advantage,” Joe said, nodding at the actors on the television screen and turning the volume back up. “He got to tell Annie his history over a radio call-in show. It’s much harder face-to-face.”
They fell silent again.
Later in the movie when Annie and Sam looked across the road at each other in that moment of recognition, Joe reached across the couch and took Mariah’s hand.
The gesture stilled her breathing.
“This is a good movie,” he said softly when it was over. “Gives a lonely guy hope.”
Her heart jumped. Thump-thump.
He squeezed her fingers. “Sam hung on to his grief for too long.”
“Everyone grieves at their own pace.”
“Yes,” he said, “but if you keep holding on to what’s gone, you miss out on what’s right in front of you.”
She tilted her head, afraid to hope, but wanting to so badly.
Joe leaned in closer.
Mariah held her breath.
His lips brushed hers, soft and sweet. It was a languid kiss with no expectations or promises. Just pure and simple. His lips against hers. Then he pulled back, said nothing else, but kept holding her hand.
“You know,” she said, feeling the need to say something, anything to center the sudden dizziness spinning her head. “The fictional call-in show featured in the movie really does exist in Chicago.”
“No kidding?”
“I used to listen to it when I’d get down about my own life. It helped me feel like I wasn’t alone. That other people were out there who felt the same way I did.”
“Is the show still on the air?”
“Yes. It’s called Midnight with Dr. Dana. It’s only satellite radio now.”
“I’m assuming it comes on at midnight.”
“That’s when most people need to talk. In the middle of the night. Alone and hurting, having a crisis of faith.”
“Did you ever call in?”
“No, but I wanted to. After I lost my job.”
“Do you think it was odd the way Annie fell for Sam simply over what he said on the radio? I mean she’d never seen him. He could have been a toad.”
“I don’t think that it would have mattered to Annie. She fell in love with who Sam was inside, not what he looked like. They shared the same values, even if they had opposing beliefs about love.”
“Opposing beliefs? I didn’t pick up on that.”
“Sure, Sam believed you only got one shot at happiness. Annie loved everyone. Even people that didn’t deserve her love like Walter. She had a tendency to sell herself short. Sam on the other hand, wanted lightning to strike. He believed in grand love or nothing at all.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“I’ve seen the movie a lot. It really resonates with me.”
“Why is that?” He rubbed his thumb over the backs of her knuckles.
“I think it’s the message of hope. That you truly can have a second chance at happiness.”
He snorted.
“There you go. Disbelieving, just like Sam.”
“I’m not saying I don’t believe in love. Just that it’s hard to put your heart back in the vise again when you already had it cracked like a walnut.”
Mariah smiled. “But cracks are how the light gets in.”
He looked startled. “That’s insightful.”
“Can’t take credit. I heard it in a song somewhere.”
“But you remembered it. Points for that.”
She touched his shoulder. “Tell me about her.”
Joe clenched his fists, his face was unreadable but he couldn’t hide the tension in his jaw. Mariah had always been able to read people easily. She’d grown up watching for cues, looking for signs from others that told her how to behave in order to get along in a world that wasn’t her own. She’d learned well. Excelled at pretending to be something she wasn’t. Toe the line. Do what’s expected of you if you want to be of value.
Mariah swallowed against the emotions pushing inside her. Emotions she didn’t quite understand. Her impulse was to wrap her arms around Joe and tell him that she was so sorry he’d lost his beloved.
“I . . . I have trouble talking about her.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” she ventured, even though the cautious side of her that had shot her to success was screaming at her to just let things lie. It was none of her business. And yet, as impossible as it might seem, she coul
dn’t just leave well enough alone. “You’re keeping all your emotions jammed up inside you. If you talked, let them out, maybe you could let go.”
If she wanted to understand Joe, she had to hear what he had to say whether she wanted to or not. His history was what had made him. Ignorance was not an option. Not if she wanted something more.
And she did want something more.
It had been gathering for a while. These feelings.
Joe’s eyes flared darkly. Had she pushed too hard? Why was she pushing? A smart woman would just walk away. Once upon a time she would have just walked away. Why didn’t she just walk away?
She knew the answer before she even thought it—rhetorical question of the highest order. Joe was in pain and all she wanted was to ease his suffering, and if pushing and prodding would do that, then that’s what she would do. He’d pushed her when she’d been in physical pain, forcing her to go to bed when she’d stubbornly clung to her goal of painting the chapel. He’d been right then and she was right now.
Joe stood up, splayed his hands to the small of his back, and paced the floor. The sound of his feet on the hardwood filled the silence. “Becca was a pistol.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry.” He offered a small smile. “Cowboy term. She was a spitfire. Half the men in town were in love with her. She was tempestuous. Impossible to please, and I was crazy for her.”
Jealousy sucker-punched her. You started this. You asked for it. “Sounds like she wasn’t good enough for you.”
“You’ve got me up on some pedestal. I was no saint either. Don’t get me wrong. I never cheated on Becca. I might have been a hell-raiser in my day, but once I’m committed to a woman, I’m committed to her. But I’ve done things I’m not proud of.”
“We all have.”
He walked over, sat down, took her hand again, squeezed it. “You’re not built for Jubilee.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’ve got big dreams.”
“So do you.”
“But we’ve got different kinds of dreams.”
I can dream your dreams with you, she wanted to say, but she didn’t dare. It would kill her soul if she let herself fully love Joe the way he deserved to be loved and then things didn’t work out between them.
