Last-Minute Marriage

by Marisa Carroll

  But she couldn’t overcome her own doubts about her ability to love, wholly and forever, and so she stayed silent.

  “I do not,” Rachel said emphatically. “Not that there’s anything wrong with an honest day’s work done for a fair day’s pay. But I’ve watched you in the bookstore, and you always make a beeline for the history section. Is that where your interests lie?”

  Tessa placed her hands flat on the table. The wood was cool to the touch, gleaming with polish. She liked Rachel. She’d never known her grandmothers, either of them, and she doubted they were anything like Rachel Steele. But in a perfect world they would have been. “Yes, it is. I’ve almost got my degree. I…I wanted to teach. But for the time being I’ve put that dream aside. Making a home and as good a life as possible for my baby is what’s important to me now.”

  Rachel folded her hands on the book. They looked small and frail resting on the vibrantly colored paisley print on the page. “You can tell me to mind my own business if you wish, but I’m going to ask you this question, anyway. What about your baby’s father? Isn’t he going to face up to his responsibility and provide for your child?”

  “He’s in Central America playing baseball,” Tessa said.

  “I see.” Rachel’s pink lips firmed into a straight disapproving line. “He left you to go play a boy’s game. A real Peter Pan complex, eh?”

  Tessa looked down at her reflection in the table’s surface to keep from smiling at Rachel’s apparent indignation on her behalf. The urge to smile faded as she remembered how badly Brian’s desertion hurt. “He’s a very talented athlete.” She wondered why she felt compelled to defend him.

  “I know I was raised to think differently, but you’re better off without a man like that in your life. Not that I don’t think a baby doesn’t need a father. But just because God gave a man the means to reproduce doesn’t mean he should exercise them.”

  This time Tessa did smile, in fact, she laughed out loud. “I wish I’d known you when I first met Brian. I might not have fallen so hard or so fast.”

  “Swept you off your feet, did he?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Well, it happens to the best of us,” Rachel said cryptically. “Now. Let’s forget about men who aren’t worthy and talk about babies.”

  “I thought you wanted to look for wallpaper.”

  “That was just my excuse to come and see if Caleb was telling me the truth about your staying in town, or if he was beginning to go senile.”

  “He was telling the truth,” Tessa said guardedly. She’d caught Caleb watching her when she was talking to Mitch about things around the store. She suspected Mitch had told the old man he loved her. He and his grandfather were close, and she doubted they kept many secrets from each other, but Caleb hadn’t confronted her with his knowledge.

  She wondered how he felt.

  And Sam.

  How would the boy react to the prospect of a stepmother and a new baby in his life, if she suddenly threw caution to the winds and told Mitch she loved him, too?

  “Do you have everything you need for the baby?” Rachel was still talking.

  Tessa made herself pay attention. “Actually, no. I have very little. I…I thought I would be using my sister’s baby things.”

  Rachel thumped the forgotten wallpaper book with the tip of her finger. “That’s exactly what I told Ruth and Kate. I bet she was planning on using her sister’s baby bed and high chair, I said. She can’t have those big things stashed in the trunk of her little red car. Oh, and speaking of cars. You must have a car seat. It’s the law.”

  “Yes, I know. I guess I’ll have to start looking for all those things.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Rachel was beaming. “No you don’t have to start looking for all those things. We have them for you. Or at least Kate does. A baby bed. A high chair. A car seat. Well, to be accurate she has two of everything, but you aren’t having twins, are you?” she asked, looking hopeful.

  Tessa shook her head.

  “That’s too bad. Ruthie and I are always on the lookout for more twins to welcome into the world.” She laughed, and Tessa managed a smile, too. A bewildered one, she was certain, and Rachel’s next words confirmed it. “I’d better get to the point. We want to have a little party for you, Tessa. Ruth and Kate and me. A baby shower. Very small and friendly. We thought of asking Beth Pennington and Maggie Leatherman. Lily Mazerik and Reverend Lynn.”

  “Oh, no. I—”

  “Of course you can. That’s what friends are for. A week from today. Is that okay? For lunch. At the bookstore.”

  “But you barely know me.”

  “We like you. Some friendships are formed more quickly than others. When you’re as old as I am, you’ll learn to relish them and not question the gift.” Rachel stood up. “I’ll look through this book another day. I have some shopping to do.” She gave Tessa one last sparkling look. “Do you know if the baby is a girl or a boy? It does make it so much easier to shop.”

  “No. Not really.”

  “But you have your suspicions.”

  Tessa nodded. “I think it’s a girl.”

  “But if it’s a boy, you’ll be just as pleased.” Her laughter trilled across the table. “It’s not as if you can change the outcome at this stage of the game, anyway. I’ll get back to you with the details of the shower.” She waved a cheery goodbye and left the building as regally as she’d entered.

  Caleb came over to stand beside her. He was limping a little, she’d noticed. The damp weather must be bothering his hip. “She didn’t spend much time looking at wallpaper books,” he observed, watching as Rachel passed the big plate-glass window at the front of the store. He continued watching as she climbed into her car and drove away. “She really came to quiz you about staying in Riverbend, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.” Tessa didn’t volunteer any more. Caleb hadn’t been as openly hostile as he had the first week she’d worked at the hardware, but neither had he gone out of his way to be friendly.

  “From the shell-shocked look on your face she did more than that.”

  “She and her sister and Kate McMann want to have a baby shower for me.”

  “That’s nice of them.”

  “Yes, it is. I’m still practically a stranger.”

  “One of the good things about small towns is if you treat people with kindness and fairness, they’ll pretty much do the same for you.” He cleared his throat. “That’s as good an opening as I’ll make for myself to say I’m sorry for my behavior toward you when you first got here.”

  “Mr. Sterling, that’s not necessary.”

  “The apology is necessary. The ‘Mr. Sterling’ isn’t.” He straightened his shoulders and folded his arms behind his back, then looked around to make sure they were alone in that part of the store. “I know about Mitch’s feelings for you. I also know you asked him to keep his distance.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. Not that I don’t want to be around him—”

  Caleb grinned and held up his hand. She’d rushed to Mitch’s defense when he didn’t need it, and this wasn’t lost on his grandfather. “I’ve got eyes in my head. I’ve seen the way you look at him when you think no one’s paying attention.”

  Tessa could feel her face grow warm. “I hoped it wasn’t that obvious.”

  “It’s not. I’m looking out for his welfare. And, well…” The tips of his ears grew red and he rubbed his palm over his white hair.

  “I’m an unmarried woman with a baby to raise, you thought, and Mitch would make a great catch.”

  “Well, yes. I can’t deny that was my original impression.”

  “A natural one, considering the circumstances.” Tessa smiled ruefully.

  “But I’ve changed my mind. I just wanted to let you know that.”

  “I don’t want Mitch to be hurt, but I’m not ready to make a commitment to anyone or anything but my baby right now.” Yet she wanted to so
badly she could feel it beating inside her as strongly as her baby’s heartbeat, as strongly as her own.

  “That’s as it should be. You and the little one will be snug as bugs in a rug in the boathouse this winter.”

  “I really ought to be paying rent.” It had been on her mind lately. She couldn’t turn away from Mitch as she had and remain at the boathouse as his guest.

  “That’s for you and Mitch to work out.” Caleb was no longer actively hostile, it was true, but he was still wary of her. And well he should be, if the uncertainty of her feelings was as easy for him to read as her initial attraction to his grandson had been. “That’s all I’ve got to say.” He gave her a quick nod of dismissal and limped away.

  Tessa closed the wallpaper book and was about to lift it onto the shelf, then left it where it was. It would attract more attention on the tabletop. It really was a wonderful book of patterns. She’d looked through it first thing that morning.

  If the boathouse was going to be her home, she’d seen a border of egrets and herons, stalking their prey along a riverbank, that would look great in her tiny utilitarian bathroom. Paired with a new shower curtain in blues and green, and some thick soft towels, and a throw rug to take the chill off the tile floor—

  She pulled herself up short. She was staying in town, but she wouldn’t stay at the boathouse. She’d almost made up her mind about that before her talk with Caleb, but now she was certain she would have to find someplace else to live. She couldn’t tell Mitch she needed time and space and then stay so close by that she could see his every coming and going. When he turned out his bedroom light at night. When he got up in the morning. She didn’t want to leave the little apartment any more than she wanted to leave Riverbend, but it wasn’t fair to either of them if she stayed.

  She needed time. And Mitch had promised her that. But she needed some distance, too.

  “Tessa.” His voice interrupted her thoughts. She looked up from the cover of the wallpaper book she’d been staring at but not seeing.

  “Yes?”

  He was wearing heavy work boots, and she should have heard him coming from several aisles away, but she hadn’t. Now that he was standing in front of her, he filled her senses. The scent of his aftershave, the breadth of his shoulders, the warmth of his skin radiating from him.

  “Would you get me the printouts of the last order we got from Midwest Distributing? We’re sending back a couple dozen defective roof joists, and I need the purchase-order number for them.”

  “Of course. It’ll only take me a moment.” He could have called her from the yard on the intercom, but he hadn’t. He’d come back inside to do it. It was the first time since the pumpkin party that he’d sought her out for any reason. And his nearness had thrown her so off balance she could scarcely think.

  He followed her to the counter but stayed on the customer side as she fed the information he needed into the computer. “Are you ready for trick or treat tonight?” he asked her. She avoided his eyes, fixing her gaze on the computer screen as they waited for the file to download the purchase order to the printer.

  Her head jerked up. She was immediately lost in the gold-flecked brown eyes, drowning in their depths. “Excuse me, what did you say?” He was watching her too closely. She could barely breathe.

  “Trick or treat. Are you ready for Halloween? If you don’t want to pass out candy, just leave the porch light off in the boathouse.”

  “Not on your life.” She took a step back, away from the temptation of his nearness. “I bought two bags of candy. Sam said that would be enough. He said that since your house is almost the last one on River Road, some children don’t come that far.”

  “Sam should know. He’s an expert. Although I think this is the last year he’ll be going door to door. Some of the other boys his age are already saying they’re too old.”

  “But he’s only ten.”

  “He’ll be eleven in January.”

  The printer began its work with a series of beeps and gurgles. It was an older model, a little slow, a little noisy. Mitch fell silent, perhaps contemplating how fast time went by. Or was he looking into a future that stretched out too long to spend it alone, as she so often did?

  “Here you are,” she said, just to break the tension she could feel building between them as the seconds ticked by. She handed him the printout. “Anything else you need?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But you’re not ready to give it to me.” He turned on his heel and walked away.

  “Mitch,” she called after him.

  He lifted his hand in a wave and kept on walking.

  MITCH PULLED ON the knee-high black boots and stood up. The boots were stiff and pinched his feet. They’d been sitting in an upstairs closet since last Halloween. He probably should have tried them on earlier, to break them in a little, but he’d been busy at the store right up until six, when he left Bill Webber to hold down the fort for the last hour. He checked the mirror above the fireplace to make sure his eye patch was straight, then gave a tug to the sleeves of his flowing white shirt and reached for the long black cape that completed the pirate outfit.

  “I’m heading out, Granddad,” he called, stomping into the kitchen. Trick or treat started in about ten minutes, and he needed to get to his post on the corner of Main and River Road. The Chamber of Commerce recruited members to act as safety patrols for the two hours the town reserved on Halloween night for trick-or-treaters, and this year was no exception.

  As usual, he and Charlie Callahan had paired up for duty. Charlie dressed as a country bumpkin, in coveralls and an old straw hat his dad had thrown out twenty years earlier. After two hours of making sure a couple of hundred kids on a sugar buzz didn’t dart out into traffic or trip over lawn gnomes, they usually stopped by the Riverman Lounge for a beer. But probably not this year. Charlie and Beth were picking out wedding invitations tonight, and he’d told Mitch on the phone two hours earlier that his life was in jeopardy if he missed showing up. So Mitch would be on his own.

  But where he really wanted to be was with Tessa—the one place or person in Riverbend that was off-limits.

  “I’m ready, too,” Caleb said, hefting a big metal washpan he kept on a hook in the pantry. “I hope we get rid of most of this. It’s too big a temptation to have lying around in the cupboard.” He looked down at the assorted bite-size candy bars that almost filled the big pan.

  “It’s a nice night, so I imagine we’ll get our share of kids.” A breeze had come up in the afternoon and blown most of the clouds away. The evening promised to be clear and still.

  Mitch pushed the button that activated Sam’s pager. A minute later his son came stomping down the stairs. He was dressed like a hunter, in some old canvas pants of Mitch’s, with a safety orange hat and vest and his BB gun slung over his shoulder. He’d blackened the lower half of his face to resemble a three-day growth of beard, and carried a khaki knapsack to hold his booty.

  Sam was caught between childhood and growing up. He wanted to trick-or-treat, but he didn’t want to seem like a little kid doing it. Mitch caught his granddad’s eye and kept his smile from reaching his lips. Caleb looked down at his pan of sweets just in time to mask his own amusement. When he lifted his head, his face was perfectly serious.

  “Good-looking outfit, boy. Made sure the gun’s not loaded, right?”

  “Thanks,” Sam said, beaming. He showed Caleb the gun. “Not a BB in it.”

  “Good. Safety first with guns.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ready to go?” Mitch asked. “Want to walk as far as the corner with me?”

  “I have something to do first,” Sam said. He slapped his knapsack on the kitchen table and hurried out to the back porch. When he came back, he was holding a big pumpkin carefully in both hands. “What do you think?” he asked, turning the pumpkin so that the carved side was facing Mitch and his granddad.

  “It’s great,” Mitch said, marveling at the detail on the teddy bear and the grinning jack
-o’-lantern he held between his legs.

  “Did you have a pattern for that?” Caleb asked.

  Sam watched him form the words, then grinned more broadly. “Nope. I did it myself. It’s for Tessa. Do you think she’ll like it?”

  “I think she’ll like it a lot.”

  “I’d better get it over there. Want to come along, Dad?”

  “Uh, no. But I’ll wait for you, if you want to come with me.”

  “Ty’s mom is dropping him off here.”

  “Then I’d better be going. You guys stay in the neighborhood and take your pager, okay?” He held Sam’s attention with two knuckles under his chin. “And watch for cars.”

  “Okay.” Sam pivoted carefully and headed for the boathouse.

  Mitch watched him go, then looked back across the kitchen at his grandfather. “The boy’s smitten,” Caleb said, shaking his head. He narrowed his faded brown eyes in Mitch’s direction. “He’s near as moonstruck over her as you are.”

  “I’m not moonstruck.”

  “You could have fooled me. You make up any lost ground with her the past couple of days?”

  Mitch shook his head. “I don’t have time to talk about it. I’m late.”

  “Don’t give her so much lead she slips the leash and runs off,” Caleb advised as the doorbell rang. “Here they come,” he said. “I’d better get out on the porch or they’ll have the doorbell worn out.”

  Caleb shrugged into his jacket. Mitch grabbed his stuffed parrot off the kitchen table, stuck it on his shoulder and opened the door to the first wave of ghosts and goblins. Or Ninja warriors and Star Wars characters, as it turned out.

  “Avast, ye hearties,” he bellowed as he swirled his cape over his shoulder. “Ye’d best be gettin’ out of me way, or it’ll be the plank for ye.”

  The kids looked at him and giggled, then held out the glow-in-the dark goblin sacks they’d been handing out all week at the grocery store, for Caleb to fill with candy.