Yours To Keep

by Shannon Stacey

  He was in the process of using gasoline and a wire brush to clean some gunked-up bolts when the door opened and his uncle walked in. “Hey, Uncle Leo.”

  “Thought I might find you out here.” He inspected Sean’s work and nodded in approval. “I’ve been teaching the boys to turn a wrench here and there. Steph used to help me out sometimes, too, but now her thumbs are too busy with that texting crap to twist a bolt.”

  “I should ask her how to run this damn phone I bought. I can do phone calls with it, but that’s about it.”

  Leo grabbed another brush and pulled up a milk crate next to Sean. “So how you doing?”

  “Not bad, I guess, considering what I let myself get dragged into.”

  “No, son. How are you really doing?”

  Sean shrugged and grabbed a rag to wipe off some diluted gunk. “I’m doing okay. Lot of guys—and women—had it worse than me over there. I was lucky and now I’m out, no worse for wear.”

  “Thought about what you’re going to do when this charade of yours is over?”

  “Probably the same thing I planned to do before this charade started. Get a job pounding nails somewhere until I figure out where I want to land.”

  “Your aunt’s got it in her head you and Emma have chemistry.”

  Sean snorted and stood to stretch his legs and reach his beer. “Between deployment and being sucked in by Typhoon Emma, I haven’t had a chance to sow my wild oats in a good, long time. Trust me, right now I’ve got chemistry with a telephone pole.”

  The last thing he wanted was chemistry with Emma Shaw—especially chemistry strong enough for other people to notice.

  “Leo?” Aunt Mary yelled from outside. “Are you in that damn shed again? Is Sean in there with you? It’s time to eat.”

  “Oops.” Sean wiped his hands the best he could on a semi-clean rag. “Busted.”

  “Listen, if you need to talk about…anything, you know where to find me.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Leo.” He put out his hand, but instead of shaking it, Leo used it to pull him in for an awkward hug and a slap on the back.

  “I’m proud you served, but I’m damn glad to have you home.”

  Sean would have said something, but his throat had tightened up on him so he just gave the old man’s shoulders a squeeze and nodded.

  “Sean Michael Kowalski!”

  “You better go,” his uncle said, releasing him, “before she gets her wooden spoon and storms my castle.”

  It was almost the end of the evening before Cat managed to get Mary alone in the kitchen. If she didn’t know better, she’d almost think Sean’s aunt was avoiding her.

  “Wonderful meal, Mary.”

  The other woman spun around, clutching a box of aluminum foil. “Oh! You startled me. And thank you, though the boys did most of it.”

  “I’ll have to beg that marinade recipe from you.” Cat leaned against the counter and crossed her arms. “So why are my granddaughter and your nephew pretending to be engaged?”

  Clearly caught off guard, Mary was silent for a few seconds. Then her expression cleared. “They’re not pretending. He asked her to marry him and she said yes. That’s engaged.”

  Mary went back to dividing up leftovers and Cat narrowed her eyes at the woman’s back. The question hadn’t surprised Mary at all. She hadn’t wanted to know why Cat would think that or what would possess her to ask such a thing. Obviously there was a conspiracy afoot.

  “Okay,” she said after a moment’s thought, “why are they pretending they’ve been in love and living together for over a year?”

  Mary practically flinched and Cat watched the tips of her ears turn a darkish pink. “Sean’s been a part of your granddaughter’s life for a long time.”

  Though it was artfully done, Cat could tell Mary was skirting around the truth. “How long ago did Sean get out of the army?”

  “Oh, he’s been out awhile. Would you care for more cobbler? I swear I made enough to feed the entire neighborhood.”

  “No, thank you. Have Sean and Emma been living together for a year and a half?”

  “It’s been…oh, I don’t know. I can barely keep track of my own four kids and all the grandkids.”

  She was good. Very good. “We hadn’t even left the airport yet and I knew they weren’t a couple. Or if they were, they hadn’t even been dating long enough to get to second base. What I haven’t been able to figure out is why?”

  Mary turned to face her and leaned back against the counter with a sigh, her arms crossed. “If Emma felt a need to invent a relationship with Sean—and I’m not saying she did—maybe she thought you couldn’t be happy until she was happy.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” Or maybe it did.

  Thinking back on their many telephone conversations, Cat realized she may not have done a very good job of hiding how much she worried about Emma. She was always asking her about the house and if she’d had the furnace checked and admonishing her not to clean the gutters alone or climb a ladder or…a hundred other things. And she’d probably said the big, old house was too much for Emma more than once.

  And, looking back, maybe she had relaxed a little when Emma told her she was dating a really nice guy. Once Sean had supposedly moved in, she’d probably stopped using their time on the phone to fret and had talked about herself and how much she was enjoying Florida instead.

  Cat sighed and shook her head. “You must all think I’m a pathetic, doddering old woman for my granddaughter to feel a need to put everybody through this.”

  “No, we don’t think that at all.” She looked sincere. “Emma loves you and she didn’t want you worrying about her. Obviously it got out of hand. But for what it’s worth, I think Sean’s very attracted to her.”

  Cat thought about that for a minute. “Emma’s definitely attracted to him.”

  “They make a lovely couple, and I wouldn’t mind seeing Sean settle down. I’m tired of worrying about that boy.”

  “If I tell them I know they’re lying, Sean will leave and go back to whatever he was doing before.”

  “He hadn’t had a chance to do anything yet. He hasn’t been out of the army very long and he was going to stay over Kevin’s bar until he figured out what to do with his life.” Mary paused and then smiled. “I think it’s a very good idea not to let on you know.”

  “This could be fun.”

  Mary Kowalski’s smile spread into a grin that rivaled her sons’. “Oh, it will be.”

  “Have you two set a date yet?”

  Mrs. Kowalski’s question sent Emma’s iced tea rushing down the wrong pipe and she coughed until Sean pounded her on the back—maybe a little more enthusiastically than was required.

  “No, we haven’t,” Sean answered while she attempted to clear her throat. “Nothing wrong with a long engagement.”

  “But not too long,” Gram said. “I’m ready for some great-grandchildren.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a grandnephew or niece, either,” Mrs. Kowalski added.

  Emma wasn’t sure, but she thought Sean might have stopped breathing. “We’ll think about it.”

  “Hey,” Mike interjected, “you could get married while Mrs. Shaw’s home from Florida! A justice of the peace and a big, rented canopy. Couple of barbeque grills.”

  Emma was afraid Sean was going to chuck his glass at his cousin—who was obviously enjoying himself—so she laid her hand on his arm. It twitched under her fingers, but she turned her attention to Mike. “I don’t really want a burgers-in-the-backyard kind of wedding.”

  “What kind of wedding do you want?” Mary asked.

  “A big one,” Emma said. “They take a long time to plan.”

  “And to save up for,” Sean added.

  “I bet Stephanie would love to be a bridesmaid,” Terry said with an angelic smile.

  Emma squirmed on the inside, though she did her best to hide it. Sean’s family was brutal. They were doing their part in the deception, but they were having way too much
fun with it, too.

  They were all on the back deck, watching the kids play a very unstructured, rules-free game of badminton. It should have been a relaxing end to a fabulous meal, but all Emma could think about was getting the hell out before she had a total nervous breakdown.

  “I still have a stack of bridal magazines and catalogs,” Keri said. “We’ll have to get together and have a wedding planning party.”

  They were diabolical, every last one of them. “Maybe. This is my busy season at work, but…maybe.”

  “Of course she’ll make time,” Gram assured Joe’s wife, while reaching over to pat Emma’s knee. “Weddings are so exciting!”

  “You know what’s exciting? The Red Sox bullpen,” Leo said in that loud voice of his, and Emma wanted to jump up and kiss him for changing the subject as the women rolled their eyes and the men started talking over each other.

  Twenty minutes later, Gram yawned and Emma jumped on it like a starving woman jumping on a cheeseburger. “It’s been a long day. We should probably get going.”

  Cat chattered about Sean’s family all the way home, while Emma slumped in her seat, thankful the ordeal was over. They’d survived and now she was exhausted.

  When they finally parked in front of the house, Gram went in while Emma and Sean took their time gathering the army’s worth of leftovers Mary had sent home with them.

  “That went pretty well,” he said.

  She laughed. “Your family has a twisted sense of humor.”

  “That they do, and they’re going to give us both shit whenever they can. But nobody spilled the beans.”

  As they crossed the porch, Emma shifted her leftovers so she could touch his arm. He turned and looked down at her in the fading sun. “Thank you, Sean. For doing this even though your aunt’s not very happy about it and your family’s never going to let you live it down.”

  “Don’t worry about it. And that was the biggest hurdle, so it’ll only get easier from here.”

  Somehow, she doubted that.

  Chapter Ten

  A knock on the door jerked Emma awake and she blinked at the clock across the room, next to the bed where Sean was now sitting up straight. Six twenty-five.

  “Are you both decent? I can’t wait to show you what I found!”

  Oh crap. Gram wanted in. She scrambled off the couch. “Just a second!”

  After draping the blanket in a half-ass way over the back of the couch, she grabbed her pillow and crossed to the bed in a tip-toe jog, dodging the squeaky spot in the floor. Sean pushed his pillow back to one side and lifted the covers for her and, even though she tried not to look, she caught a glimpse of gray boxer-brief-clad bulge as she slid between the sheets. She wouldn’t mind waking up to that every morning.

  Instead, she was waking up to an impromptu visit from her grandmother. She gave Sean an apologetic glance and he flopped backward onto his pillow, throwing his forearm over his eyes. “Come on in.”

  Gram opened the door and stepped in, carrying an old shoebox decorated with bits of lace and pink hearts cut out of construction paper. She smiled at them and held it up. “Your wedding box!”

  Emma’s stomach dropped. She’d forgotten about the wedding box. For years she’d been obsessed with weddings—maybe because the only pictures she had of her parents together in the same shot were wedding photos. She’d cut pictures out of magazines and drawn primitive sketches of whatever she couldn’t find in the colorful pages. She’d written notes about her future wedding in a crayon scrawl and then penciled block letters. She’d even done a few in cursive with a hot-pink pen before she finally outgrew the box. She hadn’t thought about it in years, and she certainly hadn’t expected to see it at the crack of dawn on a Monday morning.

  “It was in the back of my armoire, way down at the bottom,” Gram said. “I was going to start breakfast but I remembered it Saturday night while we were talking about what kind of wedding you want. I finally found it this morning and I just couldn’t wait to show you and I knew you’d be getting up for work.”

  Emma rubbed her face, wishing the friction could jumpstart her brain. “You don’t have to make breakfast.”

  “For the last time, I’m not a fan of instant oatmeal and I don’t mind doing it.” She walked over to set the wedding box on Emma’s lap and headed for the door. “I’ll see you downstairs in a few minutes.”

  She was almost to the door when Emma’s alarm went off. The alarm from her cell phone, which was across the room and plugged in next to the couch where she had been sleeping only a few minutes before. Emma watched Gram stop and look at it, frowning.

  “I keep it over there because it’s too easy to hit Snooze when it’s next to the bed. If I get up to shut it off, I stay up.”

  “Makes sense.” Gram smiled and left, closing the door behind her.

  Emma groaned and climbed out of her bed—her wonderful, comfortable bed that she missed very much—and crossed the room to shut off the alarm and unplug her phone. When she turned around, Sean was sitting up, rummaging through the box.

  He held up a small piece of paper she recognized with a pang as being from the pink stationery set her grandfather had bought her for her tenth birthday.

  “I want to marry a man who will wear pink shirts because it’s my favorite color,” he read aloud and then he looked up at her. “Really? That’s your criteria?”

  “It seemed important when I was ten.”

  “Bouquet—pink gladioli tied with white ribbon,” he read from a torn piece of school notebook paper. “What the hell is gladioli? Sounds like pasta.”

  “Glads are my favorite flower.” She grabbed her clothes and went into the bathroom, closing the door none too softly behind her.

  When she emerged, he was still in bed and still rummaging through her childish dreams for her future. She watched him frown at a hand-drawn picture of a wedding cake decorated with pink flowers before he set it aside and pulled out another piece of pink stationery.

  “If the man who wants to marry me doesn’t get down on one knee to propose,” he read in a high-pitched mock-feminine voice, “I’ll tell him no.”

  “My younger self had very high standards,” she snapped. “Obviously that’s changed.”

  He just laughed at her. “Were you going to put all this into spreadsheet form? Maybe give the poor schmuck a checklist?”

  “Are you going to get up and go to work today or are you going to stay in bed and mock a little girl’s dreams?”

  “I can probably do both.”

  When he put the lid back on her wedding box and set it aside, she bolted before he could throw back the covers to get up. One glimpse of his boxer-brief-clad body was all she could take in a day.

  Gram was making blueberry pancakes, which improved Emma’s mood drastically. She fixed two coffees and set Sean’s army mug in his spot before sipping her own.

  “Thanks for finding my box, Gram.”

  “You used to work on that box for hours. You were so little when you started, your grandfather had to help you cut the pictures out of the magazines because you cried if you cut into the pretty dresses.”

  She’d had such big dreams. Prince Charming was going to charge into her life with his white horse and his pink shirt and sweep her off her feet. There would be romance and roses and champagne every day, and he’d write poems about his love for her.

  Things had definitely changed since then. If and when she finally reached a point where settling down and starting a family was an option, she’d settle for love, reliability and respect over romance and roses.

  She was on her second pancake by the time Sean finally appeared, his hair damp from his shower, and he dug in with relish after making a fuss over Gram.

  “I’m going to cry when you go back to Florida, and I’m back to instant oatmeal and fast food drive-through windows,” he said.

  “Kiss ass,” Emma muttered against the rim of her coffee mug, but he just grinned at her.

  Gram plopped another pa
ncake on Sean’s plate. “Mary invited us all to their big Fourth of July bash on Saturday. They have a party and then go watch the fireworks over the lake. I told her we’d be there, of course. She said your family sometimes comes, too, Sean.”

  And there went Emma’s appetite. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  He shrugged. “Mitch said he’d be there. I haven’t heard from the others yet.”

  Banging her head against the table wasn’t an option, so Emma shoved another bite of blueberry pancake into her mouth and chewed slowly to buy herself time to stop screaming on the inside.

  Not only were more people getting dragged into the mess she’d made, but his brothers and sister would be even worse because she’d have to pretend they weren’t total strangers. Just thinking about it gave her a headache.

  She shoved back from the table and rinsed her plate. “I’ve got a few phone calls to make before we leave. And we’ll be working in the sun all day, Sean, so you might want to take it easy on the breakfast.”

  “Are you okay, honey?” Gram asked, her eyes full of concern. “You looked fine before, but now you’re a little pale.”

  She forced herself to smile. “Just trying to sort my schedule in my head, Gram. I’m not sure about Saturday. I might need to work.”

  “Don’t be silly. Nobody’s backyard is more important than your family. If Sean’s family can make the time, so can you.”

  “Okay, Gram. I’ll make it work.” She kissed her grandmother’s cheek and escaped to her office for a few minutes of peace.

  Sean hadn’t mentioned the upcoming family bash or the fact his aunt would expect them to be there. Or the fact some of his siblings might show up.

  Emma rested her forehead on the cool surface of her desk and sighed. Just what she needed. More Kowalskis.

  Sean still didn’t have much of a plan for what he’d do when the month was over, but he was pretty sure of one thing he wouldn’t be doing—landscape design for finicky people with too much damn money.

  They were spending the day on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee again, at one of those little summer cottages that were really mansions, adding to landscaping Emma had previously done.