by Anna Adams
Emma looked at Owen. “Why isn’t he here?”
“He was waiting for your dad to call.”
“Why does he have to do that? Why can’t he just be normal and tell me what he’s doing? This has to have been going on behind my back for most of this week.”
“He thought it would be a good thing to do it this way,” Suzannah said. “I tried to tell him.”
Emma grabbed her keys off the rack beside the kitchen door. “Suzannah, will you look after dinner? And when I come back, we’ll discuss why everyone in this house thought keeping secrets would be a great idea.” She glared back at them, grabbing her jacket off the door handle. “Have secrets ever worked out well for any of us?”
* * *
NOAH STARED AT his phone display one last time. Brett wasn’t answering. He’d been certain of having an answer from the council by this morning. The news must have been bad.
He slid the cell back into his jeans pocket. He had two choices. Show up at Emma’s and hope he could persuade her to let him explain, or hide out here in his home above the office.
He picked up his jacket from the back of a chair, but the phone rang again as he was putting it on. He snatched it from his pocket and slid the answer icon to the right.
“What took so long, Brett? Did our hardheaded council friends say no?”
“They said yes, but I was going to tell you here, not knowing something had gone wrong between you and Emma.”
Noah was torn between relief and rueful dread. “She probably suspected you’d put a stop to any clinic when you heard I’d treated her badly.”
“I might have,” Brett said. “I see you’ve been trying to call, but I forgot I left my phone in the diaper bag. Emma’s coming for you.”
“Coming? As in gunning?” He laughed, but had to credit himself for doing the wrong thing one more time with Emma. “She’s angry?”
“With all of us, but I think you hold a special spot. As you do with me.”
The man was filled with new-baby protectiveness, and Noah had wasted enough time resenting Brett Candler in his life. “I think I see her car careening around the square right now.”
“And that’s another thing. If she’s so upset she has an accident and gets hurt, I’ll be the one coming after you.”
Somewhere along the way, Brett had turned into the father Emma had always longed for. Noah was a little annoyed on her behalf that it had had to wait until Brett had a new family.
“We’ll call you,” Noah said and hung up.
He went downstairs and opened his door. Emma was already marching up the sidewalk.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked as she stepped inside.
“Hold on. Let’s go upstairs.” When they reached the landing, he took her jacket and dropped it on the chair, along with his own, and led her into the living room. “I didn’t offer the barn as a power grab,” he said.
She stared at him, disbelief in her green eyes, and her body tensed for battle or retreat. He couldn’t be sure this time which would come first.
“I didn’t want you to give up Nan’s house. I wanted to give you back your memories and the love you knew in that house. Your happiness,” he said.
“Four walls don’t make happiness.”
“They do for you.” He eased her onto the long leather sofa and sat beside her. “Can you deny you’re different since you started living there?”
“I honestly don’t know. I don’t know why you keep walking away from me.”
“Stop saying that.” He couldn’t hide his anger. “I loved you. I broke when you left. I went on rounds and focused on patients and dragged my parents and my brothers and sister out of trouble, but I was functioning without a soul because it went with you.”
She sat back, her hair splaying over the creased leather, her mouth tight.
“Say it,” he said. “Whatever’s on your mind. Let’s not lie to each other anymore.”
“If you’d loved me, you would have found a way to tell me. You would have come for me because there was a time when I would have come home with you.”
“And now? Are you leaving again?” He had to know. It wouldn’t change his feelings for her, the love that flooded every part of him. The love that softened his heart and made him honest. “Because if you do, I’m following you, even if it means I can only afford to support you on beachcombing wages.”
“I don’t need you to support me,” she said. “I need you to want me.”
“I do want you. I held you off before, trying to protect myself because I felt weak, needing you so much. With all the secrets I kept about my family, I thought you’d leave me if you knew. I wasn’t worth your while, so it was easier to let you leave than beg you to stay, and I justified it all by saying that you didn’t love me enough to come to me.”
“How could letting me go have been easier if you really cared?” Tears, pooling in her eyes, made them a dark sea-green, drawing him toward her. He kissed her temples until she held his face away with both hands. “I had to learn to live again,” she said, “without you.”
“You did a great job.” He turned her palms toward his mouth and traced the lines with his lips. “You’re more alive than I ever knew you, and more than ever, I didn’t know how to handle you. I’m not sure I do yet, and not sure I deserve you.” He smiled against her hands, already happy because admitting the truth was such a relief. “But I intend to prove you could do worse.”
She twisted her hands free. “I don’t need you to prove anything, and I don’t understand being worthy. You’re driven to be the best man you can be. You just have to learn to share your life, and I don’t know that you can.”
“Then you have to trust me,” he said. “I’m telling you the truth. I can’t find words to describe the love I feel for you, but it won’t end, and you can count on me from this day forward. I will not turn my back, and I won’t leave you out of my life.”
Doubt trembled on her mouth, but she bracketed his face with her hands, the way she’d always done when she’d tried to get a point across. This time, he held her hands to his skin and waited for her.
“What about today?” she said. “You let me think it was over between us, when you were planning a wonderful gift. I spent how many days, aching, because you wouldn’t talk to me?”
“I’m sorry. I wanted it to be perfect. I didn’t want to make one more promise to you that I couldn’t keep.”
“You only had to promise you’d try with the barn. You are perfect for me as long as you tell me what’s going on with you.”
“I’ll make mistakes,” he said, “but can you trust that I love you, even when I don’t show you that love the way you want me to?”
That was her leap of faith. A death-defying jump for a woman who was learning to trust.
“I’ll always try,” she said. She kissed his cheek, her mouth tracing the line of his jaw, teasing the point of his chin, stealing his breath. “And we’re not so different. We both lived on the fringes of life, afraid we’d lose the people we loved. But loving each other matters most. Trusting each other is more important than where we live or who makes the sacrifice. I was so certain I knew what the clinic meant to you, so I gave you the house to free you from all the demands you’ve carried all alone.”
He kissed her again. “I gave the barn to the town because I want you to have your dreams in Nan’s house. I want to dream with you there, if you’ll have me someday.”
She slid her arms around his neck. He pulled her against him. He couldn’t get close enough, but he held her gently. She had to know she was more precious to him than anything. She was life and hope and his future.
“I love you,” he said.
“The most beautiful words I will ever hear.” Happiness glowed on her skin and in her gaze and the moist, full lips he had
to kiss again.
She surfaced first, tracing his face as if to memorize him with her fingers. “Megan suggested that if I’d tried harder to look beneath the surface, I might have noticed you felt more for me than I thought.”
“If you’d been less suspicious,” he said, easing them both onto their sides. “A lesson we both learned the hard way.”
Emma turned her mouth up to his with the perfect certainty of a woman who knew she was loved. They kissed. “Maybe we learned to accept each other just before it was too late,” she said when they pulled apart.
“Mmm-hmm. I wouldn’t have let you lose me.” He rubbed her back, delighting in the warmth of her skin. “Do we have to share Thanksgiving with everyone else?”
“Oh, no.” She shot to her feet, scrambling over him and the coffee table, leaving him bewildered and pretty disappointed. “I left your mom in charge of the kitchen, but she didn’t want to cook today. We have to go now.”
“She won’t mind. She’s probably hoping we won’t show up at all.”
“No.” Emma tugged him by both hands. “She isn’t hoping that. She’s looking through my unskilled preparations, deciding she could find a better woman for you. My cooking is hit-or-miss.”
“You’ve been practicing Thanksgiving dinner. You know how to cook it now.”
“If you eat it, the others will. They follow your lead.”
“Wait.” He managed to drag her to a stop at the door, and took her mouth with the longing of a lifetime, the commitment of a man who’d deliberately starved himself of love for all the wrong reasons.
She looked dizzy when he broke away. A satisfying response.
“I’ll need your hand getting to the car,” she said in a husky voice that went straight to his head.
“I’ll drive you,” he said, unsteady enough himself.
“Whatever.”
“If only I’d known I always had the way to make you hear me.”
Her laughter was his happiness. And while she laughed, Emma looked at him as if he was vital to hers. He pulled her close, tucking her head beneath his chin.
“I didn’t deserve for you to make it so easy for me,” he said.
Smiling, she shook her head. “All I need from you is us together.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THEY WALKED FROM Noah’s car to her house, hand in hand. Noah nudged her with his shoulder. “You’d better stay behind me when we go inside. Your father’s had it with me, and I’d hate it if you ended up between us.”
“Dad’s a hands-on father since I came home. Let’s get over the hard part first, and then we can eat.”
“Now that your heart’s in the right place, the stomach takes precedence?”
She loved his playful smile. “Happiness makes me hungry.”
He squeezed her hand. “Then brace yourself to be famished for the rest of your life.”
Emma laughed and tugged him up the stairs, eager to be with their families. She opened the door to find Megan and her father in the foyer, her father handing the baby to Megan, as if he had pressing business.
“Dad, everything’s fine,” Emma said.
He looked at Noah, who was, thankfully, amused. The Gage family spilled out of the kitchen, all curious.
“Are you sure?” Brett asked, studying Emma’s face.
She stepped back, wrapping her arms around Noah’s waist, reveling in his possessive hug. “We finally talked,” she said.
“With the right words,” Noah added, “not the easy ones.”
Owen left the others to administer a brotherly shoulder punch. “You had a lot of time to learn the right words.”
“I’m so glad.” Suzannah kissed first Emma and then her son. “So really, really glad. I thought Odell and I might have ruined your life forever, Noah.”
He patted her back. “We can put the past away, where it belongs,” he said. “Don’t worry about it anymore.”
Emma caught Suzannah’s anxious glance at her other children. She couldn’t blame her, but Suzannah had good reason to believe they could overcome all the trauma they’d lived through. Emma moved away from Noah to hug his mom.
“It’ll be all right,” she promised in a whisper, and she believed it.
Smiling, Suzanne nodded, businesslike. “Come into the kitchen. I’ve given everyone chores. Emma, you can chop up a salad for us. Noah, I think you should carve the turkey. Brett gave it a go, but his carving skills...”
“Thanks a lot.” Brett lifted his other daughter from Megan’s arms. “I have more important things to do now.”
“Darn right you do,” Suzannah said. “You have to tell us all about this deal we’ve made to have the clinic in our barn.”
“Who’s building it?” Emma asked, hoping Owen would be the one.
“My brother,” Noah said. “We’ve presented the council with preliminary plans and an estimate. He hasn’t slept, getting the package ready for them.”
Emma hugged Owen on her way to the vegetable crisper in the fridge. “I’ll hate to lose you,” she said to him. “But they’ll probably pay better.”
“I’m not counting on that.” He shared a grin with Noah.
At last they sat down to dinner. They ate, laughing and talking and sharing their moments of gratitude. After everyone helped with the cleanup, Celia was the first to decamp. She said she had a study date, but Chad betrayed that it was more date than study.
“I hope it’s not one of the tutors, then,” Noah said. “Unless her grades are improving spectacularly.”
Chad and Owen left next. Chad wanted to see the plans, determined now to stake his place as Owen’s best apprentice. Suzannah yawned her way out the door, saying she had to prepare small plates for her guests. Emma was willing to bet those plates had been in the fridge since this morning, and Suzannah was just being discreet.
Megan and Evelyn had gone upstairs to nap, and Emma’s father kept glancing at the television they’d turned on so he could learn the score of the football game.
Noah took pity on him. “Why don’t you give in and watch that, Brett? As I recall, Nan’s Thanksgiving traditions ended with a walk up the ridge. Want a hike, Emma?”
“You remembered!” Emma let her delight shine.
Her father grabbed a second slice of pumpkin pie and a cup of coffee and planted himself in front of the TV. Emma and Noah left by the kitchen door.
They climbed between skeletal trees on a carpet of fallen leaves, purple and orange and red. Wet and dry, crushed and soft. In perfect, loving silence.
At the top, they looked down on the spires and rooftops of Bliss, the chairlifts climbing from downtown to the resorts. Her own roof, now new and dark-shingled.
“The house looks a little strange from here,” Emma said.
His arms wrapped around her from behind, Noah nodded his chin against her head. “It was in such disrepair. It needed a lot of work.”
“I came home just in time for that, too,” she said. “I miss Nan today, and my mom. I wanted to make it the same, but I can’t.”
“Your mom?”
She nodded, understanding his bemusement. “She’d bury her weapons on Thanksgiving, and after we cleaned up from dinner, she and Nan and I would climb up here. They’d gossip about the neighbors or show me plants I still can’t identify without them. On Thanksgiving, they were mother and daughter, the way I longed for them to be every day.”
“You’ll make your own traditions, Emma, and they’ll become just as important to you.” He tightened his arms. “Next year, ask your mom and whomever she’s seeing then. We’ll make it work.”
“You’ll be with us?”
“I’ll always be with you. We have lost time to make up for, too.”
“Being here with you seems like a dream.”
“I’ll make this dream come true.” He kissed her cheek, smoothing her hair with his hand. “You’re shivering.”
“Not because I’m cold.” Emma tipped up her chin to laugh, grateful for the freedom to run her hands over his muscular arms. This man she loved belonged to her now. “I’ll never run away again. You’ll never know how much I missed you.”
“I won’t give you reason to miss me again,” he said. “From now on, you and I come first with each other.”
That was enough. They might both still have things to learn about not making decisions for each other, and not struggling for some definition of perfect, but they’d learned to trust.
She was home finally. They were home in each other’s arms, and when they both grew too cold to stay outside a second longer, they wandered back down the ridge to Nan’s house, through that rustling blanket of leaves on the ground.
EPILOGUE
ON CHRISTMAS EVE, Emma fell into bed, exhausted after wrapping presents, helping to empty forgotten goods from the Gage barn all morning, and cheering her father on as Santa in the town parade that evening. Just before midnight, she tucked the final preparations for another family dinner into the fridge. Megan had promised to do Christmas dinner next year.
Emma had made good use of her sous chef, Noah, who was inept enough in the kitchen to admire her skills.
She’d barely fallen asleep, with lovely visions dancing in her hopeful head, when there was a banging noise on one side of her house.
She awoke, staring into darkness, broken only by the shadows of tree limbs pecking aimlessly at the far wall of her bedroom. The banging came again. Raccoons? A family of raccoons had moved into the house while she was gone, but Owen promised he’d blocked all methods of ingress.
She slid out of bed, anxious not to meet an angry raccoon, but then she realized the banging was on the outside of the house.
Then she recognized the sound. It was a ladder, squeaking now as someone climbed each rung.
