“I would love to see her, too.”
“So?”
“Okay.”
“Yeah? Terrific. I’ll pick you up around four. That will give us time to visit for a little while before we eat.”
“I’d like that.”
They finished eating as evening fell. It was a pleasant night to be outside. The play of the fading light over her face was mesmerizing.
“God, you’re beautiful.”
He half expected her to deny the compliment. In the year they’d dated, she’d never learned to accept them gracefully. Instead, he swore her eyes turned bright as she replied, “You make me feel beautiful, Gid.”
The thud he felt was his heart. He’d patched it up as best he could since Christmas, but he doubted it would ever mend completely. Especially now.
Chapter Six
It wasn’t wise, but Gid stayed the night, and the next night after they returned from dinner with his parents. And he stayed the night after that as well. He never planned on doing so, but he wasn’t able to resist Mia, especially when she smiled. She seemed more open, more generous with her feelings. Or maybe he just needed to believe that something fundamental about her and their relationship had changed.
Meanwhile, he felt the ominous press of time as it ticked down to the day of his departure.
Two weeks after he’d stayed that first night, he woke to feel the familiar weight of her arm curved over his chest. Her breathing was deep and even. He levered up on one elbow and studied her. In the meager light that made it through the gap in the curtains, her face looked relaxed, peaceful. Was she happy too? More than anything, he wanted that for her. Hell, he wanted that for both of them.
At the moment, however, he wasn’t sure what he was feeling besides apprehensive. As much as Mia preferred not to think about the future as it pertained to a relationship, Gid needed to know where they were heading. Not only because of the immediacy of his situation, but because that was the way he was wired. She stirred and her eyelids flickered a moment before opening fully.
“Morning,” she said. She smiled up at him.
At the base of the bed, Charlie perked up his ears and his tail began to wag. Marney and Dell still hadn’t come to claim him.
“She’s talking to me,” Gid told the dog before returning his attention to Mia. “Good morning.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t stay last night. Something about having business first thing this morning.”
“Yeah, but every time I tried to leave, you threw an arm or leg over me.”
“I did not.”
He glanced meaningfully at her arm.
“Oh.” She laughed. “You’re not fooling me. You wanted to stay.”
“Yeah. I did.” He kissed her forehead. “I don’t like skulking out of here in the dark. It’s bad enough in the morning. Your neighbors are starting to talk, by the way. They think we’re back together.”
“Busybodies.”
Gid banished humor from his tone when he asked, “Are we, Mia?”
“Gid—”
She started to rise. He pressed her back onto the pillow with an urgent kiss.
“Are we?” he asked again. “After the last time, I told myself I wasn’t going to push, but I need to know.”
“You’re moving to California, Gid.”
He inhaled deeply, feeling the way a skydiver must as he prepared to fling himself out of a plane. Would his chute open this time?
“And if I weren’t?” he asked quietly.
“What do you mean?” Her expression had turned wary. He needed to believe that was a good sign.
“Just answer the question. If I weren’t going to California, if I were staying here in Chandler’s Cove, would we be back together?”
“But you are leaving,” she persisted. “Your house, the veterinary clinic, they’re both for sale, Gid. And you’ve accepted the job. You start in less than two months.”
This time, when Mia tried to get up, he let her. She pulled her legs up under her chin and wrapped her arms around them. The gesture was protective. The dark hair that fell around her shoulders curtained her face from view. She was shutting down, closing herself off. Meanwhile, he was in a free-fall with the ground rising up fast to meet him.
With impact seeming inevitable, he said, “Actually, my house is sold.”
Her head jerked around at that, the curtain of hair parted to reveal a pair of wide eyes. “What?”
“A couple made an offer for the full asking price less closing costs.”
“When did this happen?”
“They saw the house last week but made the offer yesterday. My real estate agent called while I was on my way over.” Gid’s meeting this morning was to sign the purchase agreement.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mia asked. A note of distrust rang in her tone.
“I’m telling you now.”
She looked slightly annoyed. “When do you close?”
“The paperwork still needs to be processed and their mortgage approved, but if all goes as planned, we’ll close in thirty days.”
“Thirty days,” she repeated. “That’s so soon.”
She looked miserable. Perversely, his spirits lifted.
When she ducked her head again, Gid reached over and tucked the hair behind her ears so he could see her face better. “You still haven’t answered my question, Mia.”
“I…I don’t have an answer for you,” she replied, which Gid supposed beat the hell out of a definitive no. Still…
“Do you love me?
At one time, he had been sure he knew her answer, even if she’d never said the actual words. Just as, at one time, he’d thought he’d known what her answer to his proposal would be. Now he held his breath and waited. Everything was riding on what she said next.
…
Mia’s first instinct was to get up and dash out of the room. When it came to fight or flight, she preferred the latter. It had served her well, or so she’d thought. But running away in this case wouldn’t solve anything. Had it ever solved anything? It was time to face life head on. To grab hold of it rather than let go and move on.
“You never asked about my past,” she said quietly.
“Wh—what?”
“My past. You’ve never asked me about it. Even after we first met and I told you that I didn’t have a family and had spent most of my childhood in foster care. You never pressed me on how I got there.” She glanced up, held his gaze. “Why?”
“I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”
But she’d never been ready. Sharing her physical space, even sharing her body, those were easy. Sharing her past? Her fears? Opening up her heart to the possibility of not only loving someone else but being loved in return? That was the hard part.
Was she ready now?
Marney’s advice whispered through Mia’s mind, telling her to listen to the very heart she was worried would be broken.
“My parents were drug addicts,” she began. When her voice cracked, she cleared her throat and continued. “From what I was told, they started out as just your basic potheads. We lived in a trailer park. They were young. Younger than I am now. Neither one of them had a high school diploma, but they managed to lead a relatively stable existence until I was about four years old. That’s when my dad got into meth and introduced my mom to it. Their lives spiraled out of control soon after.”
How different Mia’s life might be if their lives hadn’t.
Gid didn’t say anything, but he reached for her hand. It wasn’t pity she saw reflected in his eyes, or disgust—had she really believed she would see either?—instead she saw sympathy and anger on her behalf. Bolstered, she went on, unearthing memories she had buried long ago, determined never to revisit them.
“When my mom was high, she wanted to stay that way. Coming down made her sad and desperate. It made my dad…mean. I was in kindergarten the first time social workers came and removed me from my home.” The words came out dully, alt
hough the pain behind them remained surprisingly sharp, even after all these years. “I showed up at school one Monday morning with a black eye, my clothes filthy. Except for some stale bread, I hadn’t eaten since the free lunch the Friday before. I remember my mom crying, promising to change. She and my dad had to get clean and attend parenting classes in order to get me back. They did.
“Six months later, I was returned to them. But it didn’t last. One started using and the other followed suit. My dad got better at hitting me in places where the bruises wouldn’t show. But I was removed again. I was in first grade that time. I spent Christmas with a foster family. I liked them. The mom smelled like vanilla cookies and the dad had a laugh that reminded me of Santa Claus. I’d just started to feel settled when my parents got their crap together a second time and regained custody of me.
“Once again I had to adjust to a new school and make new friends. I was doing okay. Overall, I was happy to be home. Can you believe that?” Her mouth twisted.
Gid squeezed her hand. “Yes. Children love their parents, even parents who don’t deserve it.”
“I suppose. They stayed clean for nearly a year. While I’d been in foster care, my mom earned her GED. She was working nights cleaning offices. My dad was doing some construction work, probably paid under the table. I thought maybe this time…” She swallowed. “Then one night while my mom was at work, my dad came in and woke me up. He said we were going for a drive. He took me to a party store not far from our trailer, and pulled around to where the Dumpsters were in the back. A man was waiting there. I remember being scared, begging my dad to take me home.”
Her breathing hitched and a tear leaked down her cheek. Even now, years removed, the fear she’d experienced, the betrayal, cut her to the quick.
“Mia, you don’t have to—”
But she did. She understood that now. Not only did she have to say it, he needed to hear it. All of it, every last ugly secret she’d kept from him. She’d never be truly free otherwise. Free to love.
“I do, Gid. I do. My own father would have sold me to some pervert in exchange for a fix if a store clerk hadn’t seen us pull in, gotten suspicious, and called police. They got there just as I was being forced into the guy’s car. My dad was arrested along with the other man.”
“And your mother?”
“She had supervised visits with me for awhile. Then, after my dad was convicted and sent to prison, she got me back. Everything was okay for a while, long enough for me to start believing I was going to have a normal life. Then she hooked up with another loser who used drugs. She died of an overdose when I was eight.” Another betrayal, in some ways every bit as painful as her father’s.
“After that, I bounced around the foster care system until I aged out.”
Her cheeks weren’t the only ones damp now. “You deserved a better childhood than that.”
“Yes, I did, although for a time, I wondered if I’d been to blame somehow. If something about me made me…” She swallowed. “Unlovable.”
“Aw, Mia. No. If I could make up for the past—God!—I would. But I’m not like your parents—”
“I know that—”
But he cut her off with a vehement shake of his head that had Charlie hopping up and padding over the mattress to where they were. “You don’t know, Mia. At least not in here, where it counts.” The tip of his finger grazed the lace of her nightgown just above her left breast. “Any promises I make, I will keep, but you have to believe me. You have to trust me. You have to—”
“Love you. I love you, Gid.” She smiled, surprised to find it wasn’t as hard to say as she’d thought it would be.
Gid, meanwhile, stared at her unblinking. Another time, Mia might have teased him for the way his mouth had dropped open. But this wasn’t the time for jokes.
“Say it again,” he said quietly. “Please.”
“I love you.” The words flowed easily from Mia’s heart—the battered heart that Marney had urged her to listen to.
“I love you, too.”
He kissed her then. His mouth was soft and sweet for a brief moment before it turned demanding. He pressed her back against the mattress and followed her down, the weight of his body made her feel secure, every bit as much as the love shining in his eyes. But she had to know.
“What about California? Your job? What are you going to do, Gid?”
“The clinic is still mine.” He nipped at her lower lip. “As for the rest, I’ll tell them I got a better offer.”
He didn’t say exactly what that offer was. Nor did he propose marriage. But this was enough, she told herself. When he would have kissed her again, Charlie started to bark and tried to wiggle in between them.
“I think he needs to go out,” Mia said ruefully.
“Yeah,” Gid agreed and then bobbed his eyebrows in a way that made her laugh and go soft inside at the same time. “I think he needs to stay out for a little while, too.”
Chapter Seven
“I’m so glad that you and Gid are back together.” Marney raised her coffee in a toast. Gabby and Jenny followed suit as the women sat at their usual table at the back of The Cuppa Cafe.
“If you start singing ‘Love is in the Air’ again, I’m out of here,” Mia groused, but she was smiling, too.
It had been a week since she had bared her soul to Gid, but this was the first time she and the girls had had a chance to get together and talk. On the tabletop were candid shots from Marney and Dell’s wedding that Gabby, a talented photographer, had snapped on the big day. Some were black and white, others full color. All of them captured the couple’s joy.
“I knew he would stay in Chandler’s Cove if you asked him,” Jenny said.
“I didn’t ask him to stay.” If there was one thing that could mar her current happiness, it was the fact that Gid was giving up so much for her. She couldn’t help wondering: would he regret it later?
“You know what I mean.”
“He’s happy to stay here because he loves you,” Gabby said. “He wants to be with you.”
Marney had said as much before. Still, that was a heady revelation, one Mia had only just begun to trust.
“You’re so lucky,” Jenny said. Her eyes misted. “All of you. You’ve found wonderful men to share your lives with.”
“You’ll find someone wonderful again, too,” Mia predicted of her friend. When they all gaped at her, she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “What?”
Marney chuckled. “You. Ms. I-Don’t-Do-Commitment.”
“Looks like someone’s been drinking the Kool-Aid,” Gabby added dryly.
“I love him. And he loves me. He really loves me,” she said with no small amount of wonder. She had pushed Gid away, broken his heart. Still, he forgave her. Now, even though he knew her ugliest secrets, he still he wanted to be with her.
“So, when’s the wedding?” Jenny asked.
“It goes without saying that I’ll take some lovely pictures for you, too,” Gabby put in, tapping the photos on the tabletop.
“We’ll be bridesmaids, right?” This from Marney.
Mia nibbled her lip.
“What is it?” Gabby asked.
“We haven’t talked about marriage.”
“Are you still afraid to make that kind of commitment?”
“A little,” she admitted. Everything was so perfect right now.
“Take it one step and one day at a time,” Jenny, always the most pragmatic of the bunch, suggested. “Just because these two hit the fast-forward button to wedded bliss doesn’t mean you have to, too.”
Gabby raised her hand. “Just to clarify, Mia and Gid have been dating a long time. Taking a stroll down the aisle would hardly be rushing it in her case. But I agree. There’s no need for them to set a date and pick out china patterns. I’d imagine Gid is happy enough just hearing the L-word.”
Her friends were right. The knot uncoiled in Mia’s stomach, only to twist tightly again when Gabby added, “Besides, now that his h
ouse has sold he’ll be moving in with you. Right?”
“Actually, we haven’t discussed living arrangements.”
Marney broke off a piece of chocolate chip muffin. They were her favorite, and she’d ordered some for all of them. Before popping it in her mouth she said, “Have you asked him?”
“No.”
Gabby reached for a muffin too. “Well, he can’t very well invite himself to live with you, now can he?”
“Do you want him to move in?” Jenny inquired.
Mia liked her little house. She liked the permanence it represented. It was a refuge as much as it was a home. She’d never had a problem sharing its space with Gid, but that had been when she’d known that he had his own place to go back to.
“Well?” Marney nudged.
“I do.” Mia rested a hand on her chest as soon as the words were out. Underneath her palm, her heart was beating crazily. “Oh my God! I want him to move in with me.”
That wasn’t all she wanted, she realized with a start that had her heart tapping in triple time. But, as her friends had pointed out, she could take this one step at a time.
Her cellphone was on the table top. Marney pushed it closer. “Call him.”
Jenny looked scandalized. “She can’t ask him something this important on the phone.”
“Over dinner then,” Marney said. “And I suggest you make something decadent for dessert.”
Gabby had an even better idea. “I suggest you be dessert.” And all the girls dissolved into laughter
…
It was twenty after eight when Gid arrived at Mia’s house. She opened the door, smiling, but she seemed nervous. Not the bad sort of nervous that would have set him on edge as well. But the kind of nervous one got before throwing a big party or making an expensive purchase.
Instead of asking her about it, he reached for her hand and reeled her in for a kiss. Patience was a virtue, especially when it came to this woman. Afterward, with her still settled against his chest, he said, “Sorry for being late. I had a last-minute emergency. Mrs. Johnson’s schnauzer stepped on a rusty nail.”
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