Her Perfect Proposal

by Lynne Marshall

  She shook her head, as if that might jiggle some sense into her brain, and stared at the computer screen on her desk.

  Over the past couple of weeks Gunnar had taken it upon himself to be her own personal guide around Heartlandia. Through the point of view of someone who’d lived here all his life, she’d developed a new respect and fondness for the place. What worried her the most was how much she genuinely wanted to be friends with the townsfolk, and how easily they accepted her. Which was a very foreign feeling coming from her family background. Some of her greatest ideas for articles came while touring the out-of-the-way spots in town with Gunnar. Yet she remained a little homesick for her sobo.

  All mixed up with these mostly good feelings, she stared at her desk computer in the newspaper office, nearly squirming in her chair from the lack of inspiration that Monday morning. How could she make her mark at the Herald? The most feedback she’d gotten was when she wrote stories about the locals. The townsfolk never seemed to get enough of those kinds of stories. Plus, she’d been told by a couple of the cruise-liner captains that they’d started buying and distributing to their guests her stories as a point of reference while touring Heartlandia.

  Emil Ingersson had told her just the other day that his tourist trade had almost doubled since she’d written the article about his bread factory on the outskirts of town. How he’d had to hire a couple of the local housewives to help serve the samples and collect the sales. In fact, his monthly production had increased by a quarter, and he pointed to Lilly as the reason.

  Since she’d shared Desdemona Rask’s interesting tale of returning home to a family she never knew she had, Lilly’d heard that Lincoln’s Place was packed on the weekend when she played piano there. And that Desi’s estranged father had become her biggest fan.

  She smiled, remembering how she’d choked up hearing about Desi’s search for her father and the loss of her Heartlandia-born mother. She wondered what it would be like to have a special relationship with her father, for her father to be her biggest supporter. As if that could ever happen.

  But she could pat herself on the back for other reasons. Truth was since she’d become the main reporter, the newspaper subscriptions had definitely increased, and deep in her heart she knew it wasn’t because of Borjk’s boring op-eds. But her father had always told her to remain humble in personal achievement, to never settle and always strive for more.

  She’d wanted to tell him the last time they’d spoken on the phone how excited she was about the newspaper’s recent surge, but knew it wouldn’t be enough. He wouldn’t get it, not something that subtle. Until she purchased the paper, she’d keep her mini steps of success to herself.

  Sobo’s soft-featured face came to mind, and Lilly had a yearning to make sushi with her. Maybe she’d share a personal profile about her roots and influences with the people of Heartlandia. Suddenly her fingers flew over the computer keyboard: I Dream of Sushi in Storybook Land. An Outsider’s Perspective of Heartlandia.

  Besides sharing a little about herself in the column, she could think of a dozen people to feature off the top of her head, starting with the mayor. The stories would be as plentiful as the population. And, bam, just like that she’d created her new column. Now all she had to do was convince Bjork the idea was a winner.

  *

  All the lectures in the world about single-minded goals didn’t keep Lilly away from Gunnar that Thursday night. She tapped on his door at nine-thirty, knowing he’d had yet another meeting at city hall. No, she wasn’t there to break him down and finally get the lowdown on those darn meetings. She’d promised and they’d called a truce; she was there to tell him her big news about the new weekly column.

  Funny how Gunnar’s face was the first and only one to come to mind once Bjork had given her the okay to run with the column.

  He opened the door, wrapped in a towel, looking surprised. “Hey, I was going to call you in a few minutes. What’s up?”

  “I’ve got a great idea and I wanted to run it by you. Have you got a moment?” The guy was wrapped in a towel, maybe it wasn’t the best time…

  “I was just going to jump in the shower.” He opened the door wide to let her enter. “Have a seat. I’ll only be a few minutes.” He pecked her on the lips and turned to mosey down the hall toward the bathroom. “Unless you want to join me? You can tell me all about it under the shower head..”

  “I’m good thanks,” she called after him. Girl! Why not take him up on it? She’d come here for one reason, to tell him about her new column, and showering with Gunnar wasn’t her goal. Maybe she should reevaluate that.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” he said, closing the bathroom door.

  She sat on the couch and briefly closed her eyes. She was too excited to settle down, so she glanced around the room. Wolverine mewed from his favorite spot on the rug by the elevated fireplace. Her gaze continued on toward the kitchen. Gunnar must have just finished a sandwich, judging by the crust sitting on a plate on the island counter. Leaning against the counter was a mailing tube, the kind that usually held blueprints.

  Her mind drifted back to the first night she’d been here, when Gunnar had told her about Leif and him working on the house design together, and how this was just the first phase. What would the rest of Gunnar’s house be like? Curiosity got the best of her.

  She walked across the room and, seeing that the tube wasn’t sealed, opened the lid, turned it upside down and pulled out the contents. Instead of the blueprints, like she’d expected, she found an aerial view of the portion of town that thanks to Gunnar she’d come to know as the Ringmuren, the great wall surrounding the northernmost corner of Heartlandia. The second page seemed like the same area, but it looked like some kind of heat map, like you’d see on those weather maps on TV.

  Intrigued by the pictures, and forgetting about the blueprint idea, she sat on a kitchen stool and studied them. A bright red spot stood out in the upper left corner on the far side of the long and ancient wall. What in the world did that represent?

  Completely engrossed, she jumped when Gunnar touched her arm. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh! I’m looking at your pictures.”

  He didn’t look happy. Nope, the guy looked disturbed and maybe a little angry judging by the creases between his brows. “Who gave you permission to go through my stuff?”

  Oh, gosh, he’d taken it all wrong. She wasn’t being snoopy, well, maybe she was, but it wasn’t for the usual reasons, those secret meetings. “I thought this might be your house-upgrade blueprints.”

  He took the documents from her, rolled up the aerial photographs and put them back into the tube. “You know, if we’re going to have a shot at a serious relationship, you’ve got to quit this stuff. Give it up. I’m not ever going to tell you about the meetings.”

  “I had no idea this had anything to do with the meetings.”

  He flinched. Now he looked ticked off at himself. Had he accidentally given away a big clue? He may have tried to put out a fire, but now he’d only made her more curious.

  “Does it?” she asked, his ironman stare looking right through her. She didn’t let it intimidate her. “Have to do with the meetings?”

  He popped the lid back on the tube and put it on top of the high refrigerator, a place Lilly would need a stepping stool to reach. “None of your business.” He turned toward her. “Did you even hear what I just said? About us?”

  About having a shot at a serious relationship? Of course she had, and her knees had gone rubbery, but he’d buried the statement deep in his reprimand and then she’d gotten caught up with those special meetings again.

  “Being exclusive? Yes, Gunnar, but first I need you to understand that I wasn’t trying to go behind your back about anything just now. I made an honest mistake thinking that blueprints were inside that tube. I got curious about your house addition…maybe because I was thinking about us…and the future. Can you accept that?”

  She’d stepped over the line an
d insinuated herself into his future. Talk about a turnoff to any guy, especially a contented bachelor like Gunnar.

  He inhaled, his broad chest going even wider beneath his tight white T-shirt. “Because of your history of snooping around my meetings, Lilly, you can’t fault me for thinking the worst.”

  She felt upset and huffy—a normally foreign feeling to her—but to add insult to injury the guy just blew off her admitting she was curious about their future. So right now, ticked off and not going to take it anymore, she blew off his willingness to be exclusive with her and decided to tell him how she felt about everything else. “Well, if all you can think is the worst about me, then I guess there’s no point in…”

  He grabbed her and dropped a quick kiss on her lips to shut her up. “I’m sorry,” he said, then took the follow-up kiss to the next level. She wanted to resist, to recite her full-blown speech about her hurt feelings and his riding roughshod over them, but her heart wasn’t in this fight, and he felt too damn good to stop kissing. By the time he’d made her go all dreamy-eyed, he ended the kiss. Tease! Why did he always have to take charge of things?

  “Let’s start over,” he said. “I’m sorry I accused you of snooping, even though technically you were.”

  Why could he make her crack a smile at the craziest moments, especially when she was upset and didn’t want to? He’d given her a mini ultimatum—either forgive or make a big deal out of it. Hot off his superkiss, smelling the sporty soap on his clean skin, having just run her fingertips over his ultrasmooth, fresh-shaven jaw, she’d be nuts to go with door B. “I promise to never snoop around your stuff without your okay, again.”

  Crap! She’d just become Christine to his Erik in Phantom of the Opera. Somehow he’d gotten her to do exactly what he’d wanted.

  He watched her for a few moments, those green eyes invading all of her barriers, as if studying her face for the first time and liking what he saw. “You know I’m nuts about you, right?”

  He was? Well, sure, they’d been sleeping together about every other night since she’d moved into her place, and they’d been spending just about all of their spare time together, too. But he’d never, ever talked about being exclusive. Besides, that wasn’t the way of the modern San Francisco woman whose profession came first. This was all too confusing.

  Wait a second, wait a second, did he just say he was nuts about her?

  “You are?” Could she sound more lame? Why not be honest and tell him she was crazy about him, too, but suddenly her tongue had knotted up.

  “Against my better judgment, I am.” He moved one longer lock of hair behind her ear. She knew her ear tips gave her true reaction away, feeling hot and probably being bright red.

  “Oh, man. This changes everything.” Without giving it a second thought, in a very un–San Francisco sophisticated woman way, she leaped into his arms, straddling his hips with her legs. Catching her didn’t even faze him. It felt like hitting a boulder, he was that rock solid. She kissed him as if she’d never wanted anything more in her life. She might not be able to tell him how she really felt just yet because something about saying the words scared her witless. She sure could show him how she was feeling, though, how she was falling…gulp…in love with him.

  *

  Gunnar sat in roll call Friday morning a bit stunned. He’d left a sleeping Lilly in his bed, and had taken a few extra moments standing and watching her before he’d left. This wasn’t good. If his plan was to become chief of police down the road and move on to mayor once he was in his forties, he needed to show he was a solid Heartlandia citizen. Which meant he should get serious, settle down and quit sleeping around. In his mind he and Lilly were exclusive. He just hadn’t gotten around to saying anything about it until last night. When he had, from her reaction, she was very receptive to the idea.

  The take-out coffee turned bitter in his mouth. Yeah, he was crazy about Lilly, but he had to face it, Lilly wasn’t a “stand behind your man” kind of woman the way his mother had been. Lilly was out for Lilly—and honestly a little of that mind-set sure would have been helpful for his mother. But Gunnar wasn’t like his father, and if he wanted to become chief of police then mayor one day he needed a woman who’d support him all the way. A woman he could trust with every single secret. Was she capable of that? Was she capable of saying one thing and doing another, like his father who’d sworn his innocence right up until they’d led him off to jail? Later, the Norling family had learned how involved his father really was, taking hush money and turning his head while the smugglers did their transactions, nearly running the legitimate factory into the ground.

  As a type A personality himself, Gunnar recognized an overachiever when he met one. Lilly was single-minded about taking over the newspaper—how proud she’d been to tell him last night amidst crumpled sheets fresh with the scent of their sex, about her new column with the catchy name. I Dream of Sushi in Storybook Land. It was also clear that she treated the Heartlandia Herald as a stepping stone to her future—which meant her future might not be around these parts.

  Either the coffee or the day’s police log had made Gunnar queasy. If he were to bet the feeling had more to do with a pair of perfectly placed dark eyes, and short, crazy-to-run-his-fingers-through hair. Not the ongoing dock mayhem and cruise-line robberies.

  Was he ready to let himself completely fall for someone? To completely trust her?

  Though making inroads with Heartlandia, Lilly was still an outsider with big plans for her future. Would having a real relationship, like Kent and Desi had, with a lady like Lilly be wise, considering his goals? Or the dumbest venture in his life…

  He knew how his body felt about her, but it was time to check in with his mind and figure this out. Maybe Kent could set him straight since he’d been through a lot worse, getting divorced and feeling abandoned, yet he’d still managed to fall in love again. With an outsider. To look at Kent and Desi these days, they were the perfect pair planning their wedding and seemed nothing short of a miracle.

  Was it out of the question to think Gunnar and the tiger lady, Lilly, might be right for each other?

  “You ready?” Paul, his partner, prodded Gunnar’s foot with the tip of his boot.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, sure. Where’re we heading?”

  “I knew you’d checked out. You were all but drooling.”

  “I was not.” Gunnar stood, ready for the day. They walked in friendly banter out to the car.

  Like radar, Gunnar’s eyes went right to the red car pulling into a parking space, and the woman who expunged herself from behind the steering wheel. Lilly. He’d never admit it in a court of law, but his pulse did a little blip at the sight of her. Wearing a girlie version of a suit—straight-legged, tight-fitting black pants showing off all the right parts, and a waist-length matching jacket looking more like something Michael Jackson might wear back in the day, with gold epilates and brass buttons down the front, totally San Francisco—she walked with her usual good posture toward the newspaper office.

  Warmth spread across his chest as he waved. Her serious face brightened the moment she noticed him and waved back. Damn, she was something.

  Who knew what would pan out between them? All he knew for sure was he liked being with Lilly. Loved being with Lilly. And yeah, he was crazy about her on more levels than in his bed. She was a go-getter, just like him, she had goals, just like him, she was confident in her abilities despite her old man, just like him. And nothing would stand in the way of her getting a story. That was the part that got stuck in his throat.

  And that’s where they were different. His father would always be his point of reference for making a choice or going too far. He hoped Lilly’s conscience knew when to stop her, too.

  He believed she’d made an honest mistake looking at the latest bombshell from the committee—buried treasure smack in the middle of sacred Chinook burial ground, according to Ben Cobawa.

  Leif had funded the special aerial study using something called infrar
ed thermography. The way he’d explained it, the special camera recorded the energy emitted from objects. No one wanted to invade the burial ground, but the next step would be utilizing a high-tech metal detector to gauge whether the dense infrared image was in fact a sea captain’s trunk, and if so, precisely how far down in sacred land it was located.

  Paul started the police unit and backed out of the parking spot. Gunnar watched Lilly open the door and go inside the building, realizing a broad smile stretched across his face again.

  There was just something about Lilly…

  “What’re you smiling at?” Paul chided, knowing full well the direction Gunnar had been looking.

  He didn’t bother to answer.

  For a guy with a questionable track record as a player, maybe he’d surprise everyone and work something out for the long term with Chitcha.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lilly thumbed through the Rolodex—yes, Bjork was antiquated enough in his record keeping that he still used a Rolodex—looking for the contact information for Mayor Gerda Rask.

  What better way to kick off her new column than with an interview with the mayor pro tem?

  To her surprise the mayor, who insisted Lilly call her Gerda, graciously invited her over for tea that very Tuesday afternoon. Lilly parked in front of a huge Victorian-style house painted bright yellow and with soft green trim, reminding her of the colorful painted ladies back home. The house was on a huge lot with plenty of space between it and the next house, unlike San Francisco. As she knocked, she glanced across the yard to Gerda’s neighbor, a bland white Victorian house in the early stages of being brightened up with jazzy lavender trim.

  The stunning mocha-colored young woman she’d interviewed for the newspaper a couple of weeks ago opened the door. “Hi.” Desi hugged Lilly like they were old friends. “Come on in.” Desi was Gerda’s granddaughter.