by Mia Ross
With that, she spun on the balls of her pink ballet-style shoes and marched from the bakery without a single glance back at him. Rick sensed that someone was standing behind him and braced himself as he swiveled to find Ellie holding two platters of today’s special.
Feeling like a moron, he sighed. “I guess you heard that.”
He half expected her to set down the plates and leave the way her granddaughter had, but to his surprise she put them on the table and sat down across from him. “I’m not usually one to eavesdrop, but this place isn’t that big, so it was hard not to. I don’t mean to pry, but I have one question for you.”
“Sure.”
“What on earth were you thinking?”
She sounded more confused than angry, which Rick took as a good sign. “I was thinking that this is the big promotion I’ve been working toward for the past five years, and it’s finally here. Then I was thinking about how much I hate winter.”
Ellie smiled, and then pinned him with a knowing look. “And?”
She already knew what he wasn’t saying, Rick realized, and while he wasn’t keen on sharing his feelings with anyone just now, he recognized that it was pointless to pretend that they didn’t exist. “And I don’t want to leave Emma behind. She means a lot to me, and to the girls.”
“She means a lot to her family, too,” Ellie pointed out calmly. “Did you consider that, in asking her to move so far away, you’d be putting her in the position of choosing between us and you? Not to mention leaving the job that she loves so much. I know you didn’t intend to upset her, but quite honestly, I don’t blame her for storming off like that.”
Frowning, she patted his hand and headed back to the kitchen. Rick stared at the delicious-looking lunch she’d left him but didn’t think he could get it past the knot in his throat without choking. Ellie was right, he grudgingly admitted as he left money for their lunches under the sugar shaker and stood. He’d been so thrilled about making a professional change, he’d assumed that Emma would be as eager for one of her own.
He trudged out the front door, pausing on the sidewalk to take in the normally peaceful village around him. The sound of a loud conversation up the street got his attention, and he looked in the direction of the forge to find a loaded-down pickup parked out front. Obviously worked up over something, Brian was jawing with a tall man who stood with his arm around a very pregnant red-haired woman.
Rick’s curiosity got the better of him, and he headed up the sidewalk to find out what was going on.
“Jordan, I always thought you were the smartest of us cousins, but now I’m not so sure. Why didn’t you tell anyone you got married?” Brian demanded, sounding equal parts astonished and angry.
So this was Jordan Calhoun, Rick thought, the wayward cousin Brian had been waiting for most of the year. The plan was for him to join the staff of Liberty Creek Forge as an artisan and turn his expertise into one-of-a-kind iron pieces for their customers. When it dawned on Rick that he was intruding on a sensitive family moment, he stopped in his tracks and did his best to ease back the way he’d come. But his presence hadn’t gone unnoticed, and he found himself caught in the crosshairs of Brian’s sharp gaze.
“Don’t run off, Rick,” he called out, waving him over. When Rick joined them, he went on, “I want you to meet my cousin Jordan. He might be a moron, but you gotta admit, he has excellent taste in women.”
“Don’t make me pound you,” the tall artist threatened, although the mischievous twinkling in his hazel eyes gave away the fact that he was joking. Thrusting out a scarred hand, he said, “Jordan Calhoun. And this is my wife, Ainsley.”
“My pleasure, both of you,” Rick answered, shaking their hands. “Welcome to Liberty Creek.”
“See?” Jordan said to his cousin in an accusing tone. “That’s how you greet someone who’s just gotten into town.”
“Whatever.” Turning to Ainsley, he gave her a patented Calhoun grin. “You were telling me how you two met.”
“At the Faire,” she replied in a lilting Irish accent that was at once unique to this place but somehow seemed right at home. “I make costumes and sell them to the entertainers and fairgoers. Jordan had damaged his antique leather vest during a demonstration and asked if I could repair it for him. And the rest, as they say, is history.”
She rested a maternal hand over her plump waistline and beamed up at her husband, who returned the look without hesitation. When Brian’s wife, Lindsay, appeared in the open doorway of the forge with their daughter in her arms, Ainsley lit up in delight.
“Is this Taylor?” Lindsay nodded, and she went on in a gushing tone, “She’s growing up so fast! In the pictures Jordan showed me only a couple of months ago, she was just a baby.”
“It’s our fault,” Lindsay joked, laughing. “We keep on feeding her.”
“She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Ainsley complimented them, taking the hand that Taylor held out to her for a gentle squeeze. “It’s amazing to me how perfect such a tiny person can be.”
“It sure is,” Brian agreed, giving his cousin a less stern look. “So now that the shock has worn off, you have to tell me what you’re doing here. I wasn’t expecting you until the fall.”
“It’s my fault,” the expectant mother explained with a frown. “We planned to work the rest of the Faire season and then come here to surprise everyone. I still think we should have done that,” she added, slanting a disapproving look at her husband.
“The baby’s due in September, and I didn’t want Ainsley working those long hours outside in the heat that far into her pregnancy,” Jordan said in an even tone that clearly told them that he’d had to put his foot down for the good of his spirited wife. “So we both finished up a few outstanding contracts we had, and here we are.”
“I still can’t believe it,” Brian commented, shaking his head. “After all those years of wandering around the country like a gypsy, you’re finally gonna settle down.”
“Can’t think of a better place to do that,” Jordan said, looking around him with a satisfied expression. “This place is like a living piece of history, and I’m looking forward to raising our family here.”
Any other time, Rick would have felt odd being included in such a personal conversation. But as the three of them discussed children and the Calhouns’ legacy blacksmith shop, it occurred to him that they weren’t including him just to be polite. It was because Brian viewed him as a close friend and felt comfortable talking in front of him this way. Once the conversation shifted to catching up on Calhoun news, though, Rick felt that it was time to go.
“Jordan, it was great meeting you and Ainsley. I hope we’ll see each other again soon.”
“At Gran’s for Sunday dinner, probably,” the artist said, shaking his hand.
Assuming that he was still invited, Rick thought as he turned and headed back to the bank. Emma had been furious with him at lunch, and he wasn’t sure where he stood with her at this point. As he walked, several people stopped to chat with him, thank him for his help in getting them a loan or commend him for his work at the school.
The sensation of belonging in this charming hamlet hit him, and not for the first time. When had it started? he wondered, searching his memory for the answer. When he found it, he wasn’t surprised to discover that Emma was involved. That day in the town square, when he stopped to see his daughter’s favorite teacher and purchased some jewelry for Mother’s Day. It didn’t seem like that long ago, he mused, but in some ways, he was a different person then.
Emma had brought out a part of him that he’d put away years ago, reluctant to risk losing himself in someone else who might leave him too soon. He liked the changes that he saw in himself, but for longer than he could recall, it had been his dream to be in charge of his own bank. Being the boss, choosing his staff and in this case, even the decor that would surround his custome
rs on a daily basis.
The trouble was, his daughters had blossomed here in Liberty Creek, and while they were familiar with Charleston, these days their visits to his hometown were short and full of grandparent time. He knew that if he was going to move them, he needed to do it now before Caitlin became too attached to her classmates. And Aubrey. His timid little girl, who took so long to open up to anyone, had flourished here with Emma and the friends she’d made in Sunday school. So the choice was a simple one, but also the hardest one he’d ever had to make.
Stay in Liberty Creek, happy in his personal life but already at the top of his professional ladder? Or move back to Charleston and fulfill a goal he’d set for himself when he entered college at eighteen?
Emma had made her position painfully clear, and while he wished that she’d reconsider, he respected her choice. Envied her, in fact, because she hadn’t had to mull it over for even a second.
Unfortunately, his situation was more complicated, which made his decision more difficult. And this time, he didn’t think one of his pro-con lists was going to help.
Chapter Ten
Two long, difficult weeks later it was time for kindergarten graduation. Since her blowup with Rick, Emma hadn’t spent any time with Caitlin outside school, and she hadn’t seen Aubrey at all.
And Rick. When she saw him, it was in passing, usually as he drove by in his car on his way to somewhere. Whether he noticed her or not, she couldn’t say, but he didn’t acknowledge her, so she’d been left to assume that their tense conversation at the bakery would be their last. After getting so attached to the Marshalls, being so distant from them was a difficult adjustment for her to make.
Once they were gone, it would be easier, she reasoned as she sprinkled more sugar over a tray of Gran’s famous cinnamon twists. At least that was what she kept telling herself. Fortunately, she wasn’t the only Calhoun woman on the food committee, and her family’s lively conversation was a welcome distraction from the darkness of her mood lately.
“How’re you doing, sweetheart?” Mom asked, giving her shoulders a sympathetic squeeze.
“Fine.”
“I know that kind of fine,” her mother teased, laughing. “It doesn’t work any better on me now than when you were little and had a bad day at school.”
Emma shrugged and focused on her task as if it was the most important thing she had to do.
“I know it’s hard, but he’ll be gone soon,” Lindsay said in an obvious attempt to make her feel better.
She wasn’t one to brood, but her lunchtime encounter with Rick—someone she thought she knew well—had left her so rattled, she still hadn’t gotten over it. When she recalled how it had gone, she got mad enough to chew iron and spit out nails. The old-fashioned saying had been one of Granddad’s favorites, and while it didn’t often apply to her, in this case she thought it summed things up perfectly.
“It was like he never even met me,” she fumed, stabbing a poor, defenseless pig in a blanket with a toothpick to hold it closed. “What on earth would make him think that I’d leave my family for a job teaching a bunch of rich strangers’ children a thousand miles away?”
“Challenge?” Holly suggested while she slathered icing on a batch of sugar cookies. “Money? I hate to say it, Em, but South Carolina is beautiful, and Charleston is downright breathtaking. All that history, and the grand old buildings. I actually think you’d like it there.” Emma glared across the table at her sister-in-law, who shrugged. “Just being honest, honey. I mean, here you’re already on top of the mountain. At a bigger school with better funding, you’d have opportunities that you could only dream about here.”
“Money isn’t everything,” Gran pointed out as she pulled a tray of fresh biscuits from the cafeteria’s oven. “I think our girl should do what she thinks will make her happy. Whatever that is,” she added, tapping Emma’s head with an oven mitt.
“May I say something?”
Ainsley had been silent up till now, artfully decorating cookies made in the shape of graduation caps while the rest of them had been complaining about the general cluelessness of the male species. When she spoke, Mom laughed. “Of course you can. You don’t even have to agree with any of us if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Well, my grandmother—God rest her—used to say that if you’re doing something strictly for money, it might make you happy for a while, but not for long. She was a maid for a wealthy family in Dublin her entire adult life, and although she made good money, she detested going to that job every single day. So I’m thinking she knew what she was talking about.”
“That’s the truth,” Lindsay put in, scowling at some unpleasant memory or another. “I can’t tell you how many idiots I made look good while I was a temp at those law firms. I saved the bacon of at least a dozen Harvard graduates, and they treated me like the dirt under their shoes.”
“Now you’re a full-fledged partner in the family business,” Holly reminded her brightly. “You’ve come a long way.”
“And you run your own design firm,” Mom commented proudly. “Not to mention you two keep my stubborn sons in line and make them happy at the same time. I don’t know how you manage it.”
That was what she wanted, Emma thought with a mental sigh. She had a fulfilling career and was surrounded by an amazing family that supported her no matter what was going on. But there was something missing from her life, and as she’d grown closer to the Marshalls, she’d gotten a glimpse of what else she might be able to have. The trick was for her to find the courage to reach out and grab it.
“Mom?” Her mother glanced up and prompted her to go on. “What do you think I should do?”
“Well, that depends. How interested are you in trying something new in a different place?”
“I’m not sure. It’s kind of intimidating to think about leaving home. What if I’m terrible and the kids hate me?”
“What if you’re fabulous and they love you?” Holly asked in her usual pragmatic way. “And for the record, I think it’s great that Rick went to the trouble of setting up that interview for you. Men don’t do things like that unless they’re serious about you.”
Emma had to admit, the way Holly phrased it made it sound really sweet. Since their romantic dinner and first kiss, he’d definitely been more attentive to her, and she’d begun to wonder if they’d make a good couple. Sadly, his proposal at lunch the other day had set her off, and she hadn’t reacted well to it. Now that he’d backed away from her so completely, she wasn’t at all certain that she could make things right again.
While she was brooding, Mom said, “It’s not like he asked you to move in with them. He suggested that you might like to try making a new life for yourself in Charleston, where he and the girls will happen to be living. As for the different school, you’ll never know how it will work out unless you try.”
“But I don’t want to leave Liberty Creek,” Emma protested, stubbornly holding her ground in a circular argument that she suspected she couldn’t possibly win. Because debating with yourself usually turned out to be a pointless exercise in frustration.
“Then stay,” Lindsay advised. “If you decide to take the leap later on, there are plenty of fancy private schools out there who’d jump at the chance to hire you.”
Suddenly tired of the discussion, Emma thanked her and picked up a tray to carry into the gym where the reception was being held after the brief ceremony.
It felt very strange to be discussing another job when she was getting ready to celebrate kindergarten graduation day, one of her favorite events of the school year. She always got a little choked up, but usually she comforted herself with the knowledge that she’d be seeing the kids again next year as first-graders, so the day was a bittersweet one.
This time Caitlin Marshall was leaving for good, and Emma wouldn’t be able to see her grow up and turn into the amazing young
lady God had obviously designed her to be. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Aubrey, who had more creative talent in her little finger than a lot of folks ever showed, would never be part of her class. Emma wouldn’t be surprised if the shy, sensitive child eventually grew into a remarkable talent who would go on to wow people with her art.
And then there was Rick. Just when they seemed to be getting closer, he’d shown her the side of himself that had made people mistrust him when he first came to town. More banker than art lover, that very businesslike man wasn’t someone she was interested in spending any more time with than absolutely necessary. The art lover, however, appealed to her tremendously.
Her internal debate came to a screeching halt when she turned to find the object of her confusion standing a scant couple of feet away. Her current frame of mind must have been showing on her face, because he held up his hands in front of him in the surrendering motion she recognized from when her brothers were attempting to appease their wives.
“I didn’t mean to startle you, Emma. One of the other teachers told me I’d find you in here.”
Her thoughts were so topsy-turvy that she had no clue how to respond. Then, from out of nowhere, she heard herself blurt out, “Where’s Aubrey?”
Apparently, that wasn’t the reaction he’d expected, because he frowned. “In the auditorium with Mrs. Fields. Why?”
“No reason. I was hoping to see her.”
“You can,” he replied with one of those dashing smiles of his. “We’d be happy to have you sit with us during the ceremony.”
“I’ll be on stage with the rest of the staff.”
“Oh, right.”
Totally out of place with his personality, his downcast expression made her regret her curt tone, and her conscience nudged her to try to smooth things over. “I’ll be in here afterward. We can all get together then, if you want.”
“Is that what you want?”
