Love on Mimosa Lane (A Seasons of the Heart Novel)

by Anna DeStefano

  Law turned to Kristen. She couldn’t let go of his hand. It felt as if they’d faced down an unconquerable foe. And they were still standing, together, neither of them with a clue what to do next.

  She supposed Libby’s appearance had been predictable. Kristen should have expected it and avoided the scene. Or had she expected it, subconsciously, and come anyway? Had she needed to know what Law would do?

  Law tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear.

  “How amazing does it feel,” she asked, reveling in his touch, “to have your daughter, her entire team, your brother, and all those parents who were here tonight stand with you, on your side against Libby?”

  His thumb brushed the underside of her jaw. The feel of it was electric, lighting her up. It was everything she’d dreamed it would be, as the evening breeze swirled around them. It was every reason she’d been so afraid of this man.

  I want you, she couldn’t say.

  I want this to be real.

  I want you to be the someone who never goes away, no matter what happens next or who tries to take this away from us.

  “You’re forgetting someone,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “You. You were here, too, Kristen. You stayed.”

  “I was worried about Chloe. She had a pretty bad day at school.”

  “You’re amazing at your job.” He shook his head. “But you have my cell number. You could have called me later and checked on her.”

  Kristen nodded into his touch, sinking into his cool blue gaze. “I was worried...” She’d been downright panicked. “I was worried what my life would be like if I let you disappear from it again, without at least trying to make this work.”

  Her confidence in them was still shaky. She almost wished Libby would come back and give her another excuse to give up. She didn’t say that to Law. How did she tell him that maybe she was the one who was too weak and afraid to see this through?

  Love, Dan had said.

  Could she really trust someone to love her as deeply and as unconditionally and as forever as she wanted to love this man and his little girl? Law studied her, as if he could tell how troubled she still was.

  “Maybe you just wanted one of Chloe’s chocolate milk shakes,” he said, smiling. “And this was a way to get your fix and have someone else pay for it.”

  “Strawberry,” she corrected.

  “Strawberry?” He winced. He stepped away, but he kept his hand on her arm. “Do grown women—fearless, all-star athletes and kick-ass APs who order teachers and kids around all day—really drink strawberry milk shakes?”

  She shrugged, charmed by his teasing.

  “I guess you’re going to have to find out for yourself,” she said, agreeing to join his family and the Dixons.

  He led her to the passenger side of his truck. It was getting cold out—even though it was the South, and February could sometimes feel like spring everywhere else. She shivered and felt his arms wrap around her, trapping her between his body and the passenger door.

  “I’m going to want more than milk shakes tonight, Kristen.”

  He kissed her, and she let him, losing herself in his taste until they were both shaking. They inched apart.

  “If Chloe goes home with Dan,” he said, “I’m going to want a lot more.”

  It was past time.

  Technically they hadn’t spent more than a few minutes alone together since that first morning at school. But they would be so perfect for each other. Kristen knew it. She’d wanted it so badly, for so long—the rightness she knew she’d feel with Law tonight, in his arms, in her bed.

  She’d let every other man go long before she’d had the chance to discover this kind of closeness with them. As if she’d been waiting her entire life for the connection she’d found only with Law. He challenged her, terrified her, amazed her with everything he could make her want.

  “I’m ready if you are,” she said, giving him her heart, and trusting him not to break it.

  Law had never wanted a woman more.

  It seemed like forever since he’d been with Libby. And since the divorce, her escalating demands for attention had pretty much obliterated whatever desire he might have had to want someone new.

  A handful of Chandlerville women had shown an interest, looking for either a bad boy or a man with too many commitments to want anything long-term. Two of them had been married, to men Law knew personally—husbands who stopped by McC’s several nights a week looking for some no-strings-attached distractions of their own. But in all his time in Chandlerville, no other woman had come close to tempting him the way Kristen did just by sitting in the truck with him.

  Before her, there’d been no music in his mind. No melodies. No strings of words and emotions and dreams for him to fiddle with. Now those long-ago dreams returned every time he thought of her.

  She was curled up next to him as he drove down Main Street to the Dream Whip. She was still in her suit from work, as if her effortless elegance had always belonged beside him in his run-down Ford. She was glowing and full of life and always giving so much of herself away, while she’d kept the best parts hidden deep, waiting for him to discover them.

  “This town is magical.” She inhaled, stretching the silk blouse covering her breasts—and Law’s patience with the fact that they were minutes away from joining Marsha and Dan and two kids.

  He focused on the picturesque scenery rolling slowly by beyond the windshield.

  “It’s a pretty town.” He pulled into the parking lot next to the burger joint. It was teeming with customers. It had been built to model a 1930s ice-cream parlor, and folks around Chandlerville couldn’t get enough of its vintage charm and handmade greasy mainstays. “Everything here is prettier than anywhere I’ve ever lived since leaving home.”

  “You sound almost like you resent it for being so quaint.”

  He’d parked and killed the ignition. Kristen caught him staring at her. She laughed at him. Maybe at both of them.

  “Pretty has a way about her,” he said, “that makes you want her too much.”

  A neon sign, an ice-cream cone, hung above the door to the building, lit up and dazzling. It cast fantastical colors across Kristen’s smile.

  “You don’t trust pretty?” she asked.

  “I don’t trust myself around pretty. Not someone as pretty as you. It’s too easy to forget the damage that I could do, wanting too much of it.”

  He was sweaty and covered in grass and dirt from the soccer field. All he’d done when he’d gotten to the truck was throw on a sweatshirt. Libby would have had a seizure at the thought of going anywhere in town with him looking like this. But not Kristen. She just kept gazing at him as if she wanted to gobble him up.

  “I’ve always wanted to be pretty.” She looked at the restaurant. “You know, the easy kind of pretty that you don’t have to take a second look at to find something you like.”

  She wrinkled her nose. She unstrapped her seat belt and opened her door. Its screech reminded him he needed to oil its hinges—and that he needed to be getting out himself, instead of sitting there, dumbstruck by what she’d said.

  She was leaning against her door staring at the ground when he reached her side.

  “I say too much sometimes,” she explained, “when I’m not being careful. I wasn’t fishing for a compliment, Law, I swear.”

  He took one of her hands and kissed her palm. “I don’t want you to ever be careful with me again. I want you in my life, just the way you are. All that you are, you and your ridiculous self-esteem issues. And anytime you want to hear how beautiful you are, just come back to me, Kristen. It’ll be the first thing I tell you every time I see you, because it’s the God’s honest truth.”

  “I ... I didn’t have nurturing parents, any more than you did.”

  “I know. But that doesn’t make yo
u any less pretty, just because you didn’t have people in your life when you were Chloe’s age to show you how to feel good about yourself.”

  She glanced past him into the Dream Whip. When she looked back, there was doubt in her eyes. He felt her confusion, down to his soul.

  “Are you?” she asked.

  “Am I what, darlin’?” He’d be absolutely anything she needed him to be.

  “Are you in my life?” She smiled then, the way she’d smiled as he’d driven them through town. “I want you to be. I want us to be. I’ve wanted this kind of thing, what I feel with you, for so long, I don’t remember not wanting it. But I’ve never let myself try. It seemed better that way, than to be wrong again about what love and family seem to mean for everyone else, and—”

  Her breath caught when he leaned in and kissed her.

  He kept his hands to himself. But listening to her saying how much she’d wanted him, how long she’d waited for him, how could he not kiss her? Her lips softened beneath his. Her kiss back was seeking and finding and giving and asking, sweet and fierce. Perfect.

  It was his doing when they slipped apart. He either let her go now, or he opened her door, bundled her back into the truck, and drove away without going inside.

  “I…” She brushed the back of her hand across the sexy blush on her cheek. “I didn’t mean to keep you from Chloe for so long. I tend to ramble when I’m nervous.”

  “I make you nervous?”

  She nodded.

  “And you make me want to sing,” he admitted.

  “I do?” She sounded as if he’d given her the finest of diamonds. Did she understand how rare she was?

  “From the first Sunday you jogged that pretty ass of yours past me at the park—even if I wouldn’t let myself hear it then. Now, more notes and words and melodies come back every day. I can’t stop it, Kristen. You’re inside me. You keep spilling out in the way I’m talking with Chloe now, and Dan, and dealing with myself and Libby. I’m singing in my head all the time.”

  “Thank you. I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me.”

  “You’re welcome. We’re both scared of this, Kristen. But we’re going to make it work.”

  “What…what happens when Libby gets worse again?” Kristen asked. “Dan thinks she’s going to. What if she’s drinking again, and it’s because you’ve decided to be with me?”

  “Then we protect Chloe, the way we have been.” They would protect the family he could see them one day becoming, if they kept fighting and didn’t give in to the fear they both had of love never working out. “We protect each other…”

  “I like the sound of that.” There were still shadows in her eyes.

  He’d protect Kristen, too. He’d do whatever he had to do, now that he’d found a woman who would fight for him just as fiercely as he would for her.

  “Let’s go.” He tugged her toward the door, not letting go until the last possible second, just before they stepped inside.

  “There’s nothing wrong with strawberry milk shakes,” Kristen said, because Chloe’s dad and Uncle Dan wouldn’t stop teasing her about ordering one.

  Ms. Hemmings had just asked Chloe to call her Kristen when they weren’t in school. She lifted her glass and held it out to Chloe. Chloe thought for a second, wondering what Kristen wanted. And then she lifted her strawberry shake, the one she’d ordered instead of chocolate after she’d heard Kristen order hers, and clinked glasses, the way the adults did on TV and in movies.

  “Don’t tell me you like them better than chocolate now,” Chloe’s dad said, “after all these years not drinking anything else.”

  He was teasing her, too. And he was smiling, the way he had last night when Chloe had told him she loved him. The way he had after soccer, when he’d hugged her so close again.

  And everyone was smelly and sweaty still—at least, she and Dad and Fin were—the way her mom would never have let Chloe go out smelling. And…Chloe loved it. All of it. She suddenly never wanted today to end, no matter how bad some parts of it had been, even the part where Mom had shown up tonight.

  This felt good, like last night had. Being at the Dream Whip with Dad and Kristen and Uncle Dan and Fin and Mrs. Dixon felt better and better the longer they were there.

  “Strawberry milk shakes are the best,” she said, and her dad winked at her this time.

  “Girls are so weird,” Fin said.

  “But wonderful,” Mrs. Dixon said, teasing him, too. She smiled at Chloe, and then at Fin. “I’d make it a point never to forget that, if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Some of us like being weird,” Kristen said.

  Chloe and Fin stared at her.

  “You?” Chloe asked, liking the assistant principal even more than before, even if she wasn’t sure yet how much she liked Kristen and her dad being together.

  “Sure,” Kristen said.

  “But you’re the assistant principal,” Fin said.

  “And I’ve been the tallest girl in every class, at every job, and on most every ball team I’ve ever been on. I got picked on about it plenty as a kid, and about a lot of other things.” She looked sad for a minute, but then she smiled and looked right at Chloe. “You can learn to live with standing out, and with all the other things about your life that don’t seem so good at first. I did. What choice did I have?”

  “You fly your freak flag proudly…” Dad held up his chocolate shake for Kristen to clink. They were looking at each other now, like they couldn’t stop. “My kinda girl.”

  Uncle Dan grunted, but he didn’t say anything. He hadn’t said much the whole time they’d been at the Dream Whip.

  “You mean…” Chloe thought of all the times that her mom’s crazy behavior had made Chloe wonder if she’d ever feel good again, for real, instead of just acting like she did. “You like being different?”

  “I’m me,” Kristen said. “The only me there’s ever going to be. I could let other people make me feel bad about it, or I could get over it. And I deserve better than to feel bad about myself the rest of my life.”

  Chloe glanced at her dad, to see what he thought. The way he was looking at Kristen made Chloe look harder. He seemed so happy, like he’d said back at the park that they both deserved to be happy, no matter what Mom did.

  Only if her mom got even worse after today, then what? It made Chloe afraid to think about it, but it also made her mad, the way she’d been mad at the park when she’d told her mom to go home.

  She looked at Kristen and tried to imagine the pretty assistant principal who practically ran the school being afraid of anything, like Chloe was of her mom sometimes. Or of her dad finally deciding that her mom couldn’t be part of their family at all. Kristen had gotten over being afraid, she’d said. Chloe really wanted to, too.

  “I guess being different can be kinda cool.” Chloe glared at Fin before he could say something stupid about it. “As long as you’re not so different you almost get kicked out of school.”

  “Hey!” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Yuck. “That was months ago.”

  “Three of the calmest months of this school year,” Kristen said, smiling at Fin now, instead of Chloe’s dad. She raised her glass again. “Here’s to you, Fin. Now if we can just get you to focus on your schoolwork as well as you’ve focused on staying with the Dixons, we’ll be golden.”

  “Which reminds me,” Mrs. Dixon said. “You’ve got homework and chores waiting at home.”

  “Man…” Fin slid down in the booth and drank more of his shake.

  “Do your homework, or no soccer,” Chloe’s dad reminded him. “You keep your grades up and do your work, you stay in school and do what the Dixons need you to, and you’ll have more soccer than you can handle. That’s our deal, right?”

  “Right.” Fin pushed back up in the booth.

 
“He’s brought all of his grades up to A’s and B’s.” Mrs. Dixon sounded proud, making Fin smile.

  “You’re capable of all A’s,” Kristen said.

  “All A’s are boring.” Fin rolled his eyes. “Who cares?”

  “I do,” Chloe admitted. She wouldn’t have said it if her mom had been there.

  Mom thought friends and doing things with them and what Chloe wore to school and what everyone thought about Chloe and how she looked were more important than what she learned.

  “I’ve always made straight A’s on everything,” she bragged, “and I like it. I don’t care what anyone thinks, or if all of my friends think I’m a geek or whatever. I like school as much as I like soccer.”

  She waited for Fin to make fun of her. But he just looked at her weird, like he wished he could make all A’s, too.

  “I could show you how,” she said. It would be fun, like they had fun together at the park. “It’s not like you care what anyone at school thinks about you.”

  He shrugged, drinking some more.

  “You’re an amazing kid,” her dad said, hugging her against him. “You know that?”

  Chloe could hardly swallow her next sip of strawberries and milk. It felt so good to hear him say things like that, and to be at the Dream Whip like this, not worrying about anything and having fun.

  “Mrs. Dixon’s right,” Uncle Dan said. Chloe had almost forgotten he was there, at the end of the booth next to Fin. “I need to be getting home to Sally and Charlotte. Chloe, why don’t you ride with me, so we can get you into the bath before some of that dirt becomes permanent? Your dad’s got to return Ms. Hemmings to that racy car of hers.”

  Chloe looked up at her dad. He was waiting for her answer. She finished her milk shake, slurping it and remembering all the times Kristen had been nice to her at school, after things had gotten so bad at home. And now she was being nice to her dad the same way. Why had Chloe ever thought that was a bad thing?

  Her mom divorcing her dad had been bad. Really bad. Her parents still fighting and her mom still drinking were bad, too. But that wasn’t what tonight felt like. Tonight felt like…getting better, the way her dad had promised they could.