by Arlene James
“You’re not coming.”
Mutely, she shook her head.
“Why not? I’m sure my aunts are expecting you.”
She snorted. “Me and my grandmother. Did you think I would go once I found out how Tansy had manipulated everything?”
Reeves winced. “You know about that?”
Anna hung her head, muttering, “She told me last night.”
He clenched his fist and brought it to the center of his forehead. What was wrong with Tansy Burdett? Did she actively seek to hurt Anna? So much for only wanting what was best for her granddaughter!
“Anna, I’m so sorry,” he said, dropping his hand. “I hoped you wouldn’t find out.”
She gaped at him. “You were going along with it?”
“No! How could you think I’d take her money?”
“Her money? Don’t you mean her granddaughter? That’s what she wants, you know, to get us together.”
“How could I not when she offered me money to marry you?”
Anna goggled, her eyes going impossibly wide. “You’re telling me she offered you money to marry me?”
Reeves clamped a hand over his mouth. She hadn’t known!
“I—I thought…when you said you knew about her manipulation…”
“Of dinner tonight! We were all supposed to eat together.”
He shook his head, trying to make sense of this. “All? Wait. Tansy, too?”
“Of course, Tansy, too! They’re all in it together, my grandmother and your aunts. I’m somehow supposed to, quote, fix your interest, unquote.”
Reeves moaned. He couldn’t say that the aunties would never do such a thing because, after all, they had already dabbled in matchmaking between him and Anna, but he was shocked that they would involve Tansy, especially after that scene at Chatam House on Monday evening.
“I can’t believe…” His voice trailed off as he recalled Hypatia saying something about trying to convince Tansy that her plan was hopeless. “Wait a minute. That’s not what this is about.”
Anna’s face set. “But my grandmother specifically said—”
“That’s Tansy’s agenda for tonight,” Reeves interrupted firmly. “My aunts have something else entirely in mind, I’m sure of it.” He tapped his temple with the tip of one forefinger, trying to recall Hypatia’s exact words, something about convincing Tansy and supporting Anna. “It was after I blasted Tansy for mentioning the crush.”
Anna gasped. “She…she told you?”
“What?”
“She told you!” Anna warbled, tears filling her eyes. Before he could ask her to explain, she dropped the frozen entrée and ran.
“Anna!”
Ignoring him, she disappeared around the corner. Stunned, Reeves looked at the flimsy packet of tea bags in his hand. Then he simply tossed it and went after her.
Anna ran blindly through the supermarket, stumbling into people and careening around carts and displays in a desperate bid to get away from the mortifying truth. Her grandmother had tried to bribe a man to marry her, and of course it had to be the only man she’d ever cared about! Even worse, Reeves knew how she’d pined for him, how she’d hoped and prayed and dreamed that he would look her way and finally truly see her. The humiliation was worse than anything Anna had ever imagined.
She got to her car and reached for the door handle before realizing that the keys were still in the pocket of her jeans. She was trying to dig them out when a hand clamped down on her shoulder and spun her around.
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. What did he have to be sorry about? It was all Tansy’s fault. It was always Tansy’s fault. Capturing her with his hands, he splayed his fingers in her hair, his palms covering her ears.
“I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand what it must have been like for you.”
Anna felt her face burning. She couldn’t think, couldn’t reason. All she could do was shake her head. He dropped his hands to her shoulders, gripping hard to hold her in place because she couldn’t seem to stand still.
“I’m sorry, Anna, for all those years that I judged your behavior without ever understanding the reason for it. I finally realized what you were fighting, how hard you worked to stand up to her.”
Anna brought her hands to her head, struggling to think and coming up against the same awful idea. He knew. He knew her most carefully guarded secret. “What e-exactly d-did she tell you?”
“After she attempted to bribe me, you mean?”
Anna rolled her eyes at that. “Of all the stupid…I mean, like that was going to work. You’re a Chatam, for goodness’ sake.”
“I’m a Leland,” he corrected dryly, his grip on her shoulders intensifying, “and the Lelands don’t actually have any money.”
“What difference does it make?” Anna asked, shrugging his hands away with thoughtless impatience. “It’s not like you care about that.”
“No,” he said rather cheerfully, “I don’t.” Grinning, he leaned forward and said, “And neither do you.”
She looked up at him, tired of this runaround. She had to know. “What did Tansy say to you?”
Reeves smiled sympathetically. “About the, um, crush, you mean?”
Wincing, Anna squeezed her eyes closed. Maybe she didn’t want to know, after all. Maybe she ought to just crawl under the car and stay there until he either went away or she died of starvation, whichever came first. Too late.
“She said she found notebook paper,” he told her softly, “that you’d written some names on. Anna Leland. Anna and Reeves Leland.”
“Oh-oh-oh.” Anna reeled, coming up hard against the side of her car.
Talk about stupid! How many sheets of paper had she filled with that drivel? Mrs. Anna Leland. Mrs. Reeves Leland. Anna Miranda Leland. Reeves and Anna Leland… And she’d thought she’d been so clever, tearing the pages into tiny pieces, hiding them in closets and under floorboards, while Tansy undoubtedly had known all along.
And now Reeves knew. Probably his aunts, too.
Moaning, Anna covered her face with her hands and did her best to disappear. After a long moment, she heard shoe soles scrape against the pavement, and then something brushed against her hair.
“Anna?” he queried softly.
“Go away,” she choked out.
“No.”
She balled her hands into fists. “Please just go away.”
“Not until you listen to me.”
Here it comes, she thought, the useless dismissals. She could already hear them. It wouldn’t have worked out. We’re too different. I was heading off to college. It wasn’t real love, just a silly schoolgirl crush. All the things she’d told herself a countless number of times, he would now tell her. Maybe they would finally work. Maybe, after all these years, she could finally just get over it.
She dropped her hands and opened her eyes, ready for the volley, ready to take the truth right in the heart.
“I can’t have you thinking ill of my aunts,” he said. “They only wanted to try to derail your grandmother. I think they feel responsible for having discussed among themselves that you would be a wonderful mother for Gilli.”
Anna blinked, a rush of warm surprise flowing through her. “They said that?”
One corner of his lips quirked. “A number of times. That seems to have given Tansy the idea to get us together, and we may have added fuel to the fire ourselves.”
“Last Sunday at church.”
“Mmm. Hypatia hoped that they and I and you together could make Tansy see that…” He seemed momentarily at a loss for words, but he shifted his stance slightly and went on. “That she’s driven you away with her obsessive need to control your life.”
“Fat chance!” Anna huffed, folding her arms.
“Yeah,” Reeves said, “she’s nothing if not determined, this grandmother of yours, and she obviously has her own agenda for this dinner. Her agenda,” he reiterated, “not ours. I propose that we just don�
��t play her game.”
“As if I ever have.”
He grinned and tapped her on the end of the nose. “Exactly.”
Narrowing her eyes at him, she cut him an incisive glance. “What are you suggesting?”
“For starters, that neither of us show up for dinner. The aunties will understand, and it’ll throw a spoke in Tansy’s wheel. Then…” He shrugged. “We’ll figure it out.”
Anna wondered what was left to figure out, but she didn’t ask. She was still trying to reason through Reeves’s behavior. He hadn’t said a word about her ridiculous crush. Maybe he figured it was too silly to bother about, water under the bridge, over and done with years and years ago.
Suddenly he asked, “Do you know where my house is?”
Taken off guard, she simply nodded.
“Good. I’ll meet you there in an hour, less if I can manage it. Okay?”
She opened her mouth, but so many questions crowded her tongue that she couldn’t sort through them to get at the right one.
He shook her gently. “Okay?”
She blinked and gave him the answer he seemed to want. “Okay.”
Beaming a smile at her, he hurried back toward the store. “Less than an hour, I promise. Then we’ll talk.”
Anna hugged herself, watching him dart through traffic back toward the building, his tie flapping in beat to his movements. Even after he disappeared through the automatic sliding doors, she stood there, slightly dazed by the emotional upheaval of the past few minutes. Finally, she pulled her keys from her pocket and let herself into the car. Slumping down behind the steering wheel, she tried to gather her thoughts.
What, she wondered, did he expect to talk about? Her embarrassment at Tansy’s highhandedness? His embarrassment at Tansy’s high-handedness? Not high school and all that, please God.
On the other hand, what if he wanted to just talk, period, about…whatever normal people talk about? Was that possible?
He’d apologized for judging her. If she apologized for having made his life a misery all those years ago, that would be a start toward…friendship, at least. Wouldn’t it?
There was only one way to find out.
Reeves let himself into Chatam House via the side door, as usual, carrying the retrieved packet of tea in one hand. The sound of running footsteps greeted him perhaps two seconds before his daughter launched herself at him out of the gloom of the hallway.
“Daddy!”
He caught her up and parked her on his hip, hugging her close. “Hi, sugar.” She smelled fresh and sweet and wore clean clothes, a matching set of royal blue knit top and pants. “You look pretty.”
“Anna’s coming.”
“Ooh, I don’t think so,” he told her, carrying her through the house, “but you and I are going to see her, instead.”
She tilted her head, caramel curls bouncing. “Can Special come?”
“Uh, no. Special will have to stay here.”
Sighing, Gilli spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I ha’fa stay wif her.”
“Gilli, you can’t stay with that cat all the time.”
“I promise her, Daddy, ’cause Aunt ’Patia say she gots to stay in the kitchen for our dinner party.”
“Yes, I know about the aunts’ dinner party,” Reeves said absently, turning down the central hall.
“No, I mean in the kitchen, me and Chester and Hilda and Carol and Special.”
Ah, so that was Hyaptia’s plan, a very clever one that would effectively keep Gilli and the cat out of the way. “I see. Well, if that’s what you want to do, then I’ll give Anna your regrets.”
Gilli screwed up her face. “What’s grets?”
“Regrets. It means that I’m sorry I won’t be able to join you.”
“Oh. That’s ’kay.” She patted him as if accepting his apology.
Reeves grinned and carried her into the parlor, where he paused to set her on her feet before addressing the others gathered there.
“Hello, everyone.” He moved from spot to spot, kissing cheeks until all three of his aunts had been greeted, then stood before Tansy and acknowledged her with a nod that was almost a bow. Ignoring Tansy’s wide smile, he turned back to Hypatia and dropped the box of tea into her lap. “As requested.”
“Thank you, dear.”
“You’re welcome. Unfortunately, I won’t be around to enjoy your special tea this evening. In fact, I’m afraid I won’t be able to stay for dinner, either.”
Behind him, Tansy barked, “What?”
Hypatia looked troubled. “That is a shame.”
He grinned. “Sorry, I have other plans.” He bent to hug her in sheer gratitude for the lovely, godly woman that she was. “Don’t count on Anna, either,” he whispered.
“Oh?”
He straightened with a wink. “Mmm-hmm. I hope that’s all right with you.”
Hypatia smiled. “Of course. God’s plans always supercede our own.”
He grinned at her. “Couldn’t agree more.” Maybe this was all part of God’s plan. Maybe God had been the real matchmaker all along. If so, He wouldn’t let Tansy scuttle things. “I hope it’s okay if Gilli stays here. I understand there’s a dinner party in the kitchen that she doesn’t want to miss.”
Hypatia lifted her eyebrows. “I insist that Gilli stay. She’s our only hope for a peaceful meal.”
Laughing, Reeves turned with an expansive sweep of his arm to take his leave of the others. “Enjoy, my lovelies!” With that he bounded from the room, feeling ridiculously pleased. He couldn’t have arranged things better himself.
As he moved toward the stairs, he heard Tansy hiss, “Make him stay!”
“He’s an adult,” Hypatia returned firmly. “We can’t and wouldn’t try to make him do anything.”
Grinning, Reeves climbed the stairs two at a time. He didn’t know why he felt so ebullient, and just now he didn’t care. Thinking of Anna, he quickly changed into jeans, a black long-sleeved T-shirt and casual shoes before grabbing a denim jacket and heading back downstairs, where he kissed his little girl—and at her insistence, her cat—goodbye. He figured he came away with his face intact merely because Gilli was holding the vicious thing at the time.
Ten minutes later, he pulled up in front of his house to find Anna waiting for him, dressed exactly as before in jeans and a double T-shirt but with the addition of a snug little cardigan. Leaning against the fender of her pathetic coupe with her arms folded, she frowned solemnly; yet he smiled, absolutely delighted to see her.
This woman, he realized, was not just his friend, she was his best friend, someone to be admired, someone who deserved regard and kindness. She had enriched his life and that of his daughter in ways that he could not have imagined. He shook his head, hardly able to believe it.
The brat had become one of his greatest blessings, and very possibly, he realized with a jolt, the answer to his prayers.
Chapter Thirteen
They dined on pizza at Gilli’s favorite restaurant, though Gilli had elected to stay at home with her cat. Anna smiled at Reeves’s animated account of Gilli’s dedication to her pet and Tansy’s outraged disappointment as his defection. She listened carefully to his frank description of his encounters—two, as it turned out—with Tansy, and felt a certain sense of vindication at what he said afterward.
“I knew she was difficult, but I figured it was just a quirk of her personality, a first impulse sort of thing. I never realized how far she would go to try to dictate to you or why you would rebel so blatantly. I just want you to know, I get it now.”
Anna nodded then shrugged, still troubled by a sense of Tansy controlling her. “She always manages to set it up so she gets her way. Like right now.”
“How do you mean?”
Spreading her hands, Anna stated the obvious. “She wanted to get us together, and here we are.”
“On our terms,” Reeves pointed out, “not hers.”
“Still, Tansy gets what Tansy wants.”
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br /> He reached across the table and captured one of her hands. “Anna, you’ve got to stop this,” he said. “It’s about what you want and what’s best for you, not what Tansy wants or thinks is best. If the two should happen to be one and the same, you can’t let the fact that it pleases Tansy mess up everything. I thought you got that when you showed up at church. Don’t confuse standing up for yourself with displeasing your grandmother. They aren’t mutually exclusive ideas. If we want to be friends, we’ll be friends. It’s up to us, not Tansy.”
Anna glanced at him, sitting there with his dark hair rakishly tousled, looking so handsome and solid and good, every woman’s dream. Well, not every woman’s, obviously, but hers. Definitely her dream. And he had just offered her some sort of friendship. That was better than nothing. Was she going to let Tansy take it away from her? Reeves was right about doing what was best for herself, and she would, just on her own terms. As soon as she figured out how exactly to accomplish that.
In the meantime, this evening was the closest thing she’d ever had to a date with Reeves, and it might be as close as she ever got to one. She intended to enjoy it.
They talked for hours. When they finally discussed the dossier he had given her, she found herself admitting that she was a bit uncertain about sticking her neck out.
“Dennis is at least a known quantity,” she pointed out. “How do I know the next situation will be any better?”
“You just have to have faith.”
He told her about the disaster of his marriage, bringing Anna to conclude, “Marissa wasn’t who you thought she was.”
“Believe me, I realize that,” he said. “The thing is, how do you trust your own judgment again after you’ve made such a mistake?”
“Someone recently told me that you just have to have faith,” Anna answered.
“Ouch. Coming back to bite me.” He grinned and slid toward the edge of the booth. “Well, now that we’ve cleared that up, I have a house to inspect tonight. Come on, I’ll give you the ten-dollar tour.”
“You’ll have to put it on my account,” Anna quipped.
