“Man, Pops. You don’t understand.” Zane looked at the clean tile floor. “I guess the thing is I love her and I’m scared to death to do this again. To get hurt again, especially the same way. I guess stupid is forever.” He lifted his gaze.
Pops was looking at him, actually focusing.
“But you think she’s worth it, don’t you? Worth the risk?” Zane glanced over his shoulder at the door. “She’s probably gone by now. Knowing her, she’s gone back to the office.”
Zane studied his grandfather’s face a moment longer. “Okay, fine, I’ll go out there and look for her, just to prove it to you. Will that make you happy? Fine.” He got off the bed and headed for the door. “I’ll be right back.”
To Zane’s surprise, he spotted Elise’s blue Toyota in the fading light of the parking lot. She was just sitting there. It didn’t even look like she’d started the engine yet. He glanced behind him at the doors that had closed. With a groan, he cut across the neatly manicured lawn and walked up to her car. She was gripping the steering wheel, staring straight ahead and didn’t even see him.
He knocked on the glass. “Ellie?”
Startled, she turned her head.
“Put down the window,” he said, motioning.
She looked at him, then turned the key and put down the automatic window.
“Ellie, what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?”
She looked as if she’d been crying.
“What’s wrong? You mean other than that my father thinks I’m a failure because I didn’t make top salesman. That either my best friend doesn’t like me anymore because she thinks I’m in competition for a partnership, or she’s jealous I found someone I care for and she hasn’t. That I’ve worked so hard to get that land deal for you, and it looks like the whole thing is going to fall through. That Meagan hates my guts.”
“She doesn’t.”
“Well, if she doesn’t, she gives a good impression of it.” Elise wiped her red eyes with her hand. “And then there’s you…” She glanced up. “But other than all that, there’s nothing wrong at all.”
“Me?” he said quietly, leaning in through the window.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” she declared, throwing up her hands. “You’re not at all what I wanted in a man, but…”
“Well, thank you,” he teased. One look at her teary face and his anger had melted away. He just wanted to hold her now. “But?”
She looked up at him. “I want this to work so badly,” she whispered.
He opened the car door, took her hand and pulled her out. Holding her in his arms, he closed the door with his knee. “I want this work, too,” he said, looking into her beautiful green eyes. “I want to make it work because I’m in love with you, Elise.”
“You are?” she sniffed.
He smiled and placed his hand on her cheek. “This would be the time to say something else, like maybe you love me, too?”
She laughed, choked and threw her arms around him. “Oh, Zane. I do love you. I’ve known it for weeks, I just…”
“You just what?” He brushed her blond hair off her forehead. She had started growing it out since they began dating and he liked it this way. Softer. More feminine.
“I’m just so afraid I’m going to screw it up. That I can’t make it work, that I can’t make any relationship with a man work.”
“Ellie, don’t say that.” He kissed her forehead. Her cheek. The tip of her nose. “Now listen to me. I don’t want you to worry about that land deal. If it comes through, it comes through.”
“But you wanted it so much,” she said, looking up at him, searching his eyes. She was so beautiful, so vulnerable right now that all he wanted to do was protect her. Hold her.
“I did. But it won’t be the end of the world if I don’t get it. Pops is going to love me just the same whether I buy that land before he dies or not.” He chuckled. “Shoot, I don’t know that he’d know the difference. As for Meagan, she’s just going to have to get over herself. She can’t tell me who to love.”
“I just want her to like me because I know how important family is to you.” Her lower lip trembled. “And I don’t have any family of my own. I’ve never had a sister.”
“I know.” He kissed her trembling lip. “And lastly, as for you screwing up this relationship, it takes two, doesn’t it? So what’s say we take it one day at a time, huh?”
She nodded.
He squeezed her tightly in his arms and closed his eyes, reveling in the feel of her, the smell of her skin and hair. “I love you, Ellie,” he murmured, liking the sound of the words on the end of his tongue.
“I love you,” she murmured.
Zane covered her mouth with his, kissing her soundly, and when he lifted his head, he heard the sound of clapping.
They looked toward the sidewalk of the nursing home and saw, in the twilight, three elderly ladies lined up on the bench clapping enthusiastically.
“It looks like we have an audience,” Elise whispered, touching her fingertips to her lips.
He threw back his head and laughed, thinking how good it felt to love again.
Chapter Eight
There’s a honeymoon time early on in every relationship. Don’t get sucked into it. The honeymoon always ends and cold reality sets in again. Keep your eye on the goal in choosing a mate. Life is cold reality, not a honeymoon.
Two weeks later, Elise hung up the phone and squealed with delight. Then, embarrassed by her unprofessional outburst, she glanced up to see if anyone in the hallway had heard her. She covered her mouth with both her hands, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “You did it!” she told herself, bouncing up and down.
She grabbed the phone again and punched in Zane’s cell number, knowing her name now came up on his phone when she called in.
“Hey, Sugar Pie.”
“Where are you?” she asked, when he answered. She was so excited she could barely breathe.
“I just left the office, headed home to pick the last of the sweet corn. Weatherman is forecasting rain, though it sure is beautiful out right now.”
“Can you come get me?”
“Now?”
She knew he was frowning, those pale eyebrows of his knitted in confusion.
“At three-thirty in the afternoon on a Tuesday?” he said. “You okay?”
“I’m great! Better than great. I’ll wait for you outside the office.”
Ten minutes later, Zane pulled up in front of Waterfront Realty in his car. Elise jumped in the front seat, tossing her purse on the floor. “We got it!”
“We got it?” Then Zane’s face lit up. “We got it!”
Grinning, she nodded.
“Ellie, that’s wonderful!” He threw his arms around her in a bear hug. “We got it! I can’t believe it! We got the land!”
She tightened her arms around his neck. “The tentative okay came in on the rezoning this morning, and the Jacobs’ estate lawyer just called to say your last offer was accepted by the family, and his clients will be signing the sales contract tomorrow. You’ll be settling on the land in a matter of weeks.”
Zane kissed her on the cheek, then on the mouth before letting her go. “I can’t believe you made this happen. Pops will be so happy—at least the family will be happy for him. You’re good. You’re very good.”
She settled back on the car seat and grabbed her seat belt, pleased that he appreciated her professional capabilities. And Liz said he’d never get it. He got it!
“So, I was thinking,” she said. “How about if we pick up Pops, grab something to eat and go have a picnic out on your about-to-be-acquired property? Right under that big oak tree where you said the old farmhouse used to stand?”
An hour later, Zane and Elise sat on a checkered blanket beneath that old oak tree. He had carried his grandfather from the car and Tom Keaton now sat under the tree where he once played on a tire swing and stared up at the tree branches with a joy on his face she hadn’t known was
possible.
“So what do you think?” Elise asked pushing a blueberry into Zane’s mouth. They sat across from each other, cross-legged on the blanket spread beneath the tree. They’d stopped at his place, grabbed the blanket, raided the refrigerator and picked up the dog. Now there was almost nothing left of their fried chicken, marinated cucumbers and potato salad feast, but a plastic butter dish full of blueberries Elise had picked from Zane’s hybrid patch in the backyard.
He kissed her fingertips and chewed on the berry. “I think this land is perfect for what I want it for, and Pops obviously thinks it’s perfect.” He motioned with his chin in the direction of his grandfather.
Pops sat in the grass, knees up, his back against the tree trunk with a cup of iced tea in his hand. He was grinning so hard she feared his dentures might come loose.
“I think he knows,” she said, running her hand down Zane’s broad back. “He knows where he is. Look at that smile.”
“He does, I’m sure of it.” Zane took her hand and lifted it to his lips, kissing each knuckle. “And I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You don’t have to.” She glanced at Pops then back at Zane. “That smile is enough.” Elise leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.
“Mmm,” he said, pulling her into his lap. “You taste like blueberries.”
“So do you.”
He kissed her again, running his hand over her bare suntanned legs. She’d actually worn a short jean skirt and a lime-colored T-shirt to work today, prompting Liz to ask her if she hadn’t gotten a chance to go by the dry cleaners.
Elise was still upset that her friendship with Liz seemed to have disintegrated, but she hoped that with a little time, once Liz saw how happy she was with Zane, her friend would come around. Even so, Elise suspected that as long as they worked together the competition in the office would always create a strain in their relationship.
“Whoops, just a second.” Zane got up and went over to the tree where his grandfather sat. The old man had fallen asleep, still holding his iced tea. Zane took the cup gently from his hand and set it safely aside.
“I wish you’d known him before,” Zane said. “Before his memory began to go, Pops loved baseball. He took me to my first Major League game when I was seven. Pops was a hard worker, but some days, he’d take a notion and come looking for me. ‘Zane, boy,’ he’d say. ‘All work and no play makes life no fun at all. Let’s run off and do something that makes us laugh.’ And we would, Ellie. We’d go fishing, or clamming, or even roller-skating. Once, he picked me and Meagan up early from school, and we spent the afternoon looking at mummies in a museum in Philadelphia. Pops might have been a chicken farmer, but he opened windows to the world for me and all of his other grandkids.”
“You must have had a wonderful childhood,” Elise said. She’d toured Europe one summer with a group from her private summer camp. She’d enjoyed the experience, but her father hadn’t considered the trip “fun” for fun’s sake, and his only participation had been paying the bill.
A crack of thunder sounded overhead and Zane glanced up into the sky. “Dark clouds. Weatherman was right—I think we better hit the road.” He slid her off his lap, got up and offered his hand, pulling her to her feet.
They kissed again and she swayed in his arms, wanting to prolong the moment. She liked it out here on Pops’ old farm. She’d never considered herself a nature girl before, but over the last weeks, between coming here and exploring Zane’s farm, she discovered that she loved the smell of fresh-cut grass. She found that she liked picking blueberries and tomatoes, liked the feel of the freshly turned dark soil under her bare feet. She even enjoyed hunting for eggs in the henhouse. It was a like treasure hunt!
Another crack of thunder sounded overhead and Elise thought she felt a drop of rain. “You better get Pops,” she said. “I’ll clean up the picnic.”
Zane released her regretfully and clapped his hands together. “Scootie! Let’s go, boy! Train is pulling out!”
Elise laughed as the dog came bounding through the weeds, dragging a branch behind him that was bigger than he was. She packed up the remains of their dinner in an old picnic basket Zane found in the pantry. She folded up the blanket and tucked them both in the trunk with Pops’ wheelchair.
The rain began to fall in earnest as Zane slid his grandfather into the back seat of the car and came running back to the tree to help her with the cooler of drinks and the dog dish they’d left behind.
“Oh, no,” Elise laughed, lifting her palms heavenward. The sky seemed to open up and dump buckets of cool water on them.
“Run,” Zane shouted above the thunderclaps, taking the cooler from her. Bright streaks of lightning zigzagged the dark sky.
Elise clutched the empty water bowl to her chest and made a run for the car. By the time she and Zane were safely inside with Pops and the dog, they were both soaking wet.
“Look at us,” Zane said, wiping his wet face. “We look like drowned rats.”
She glanced down and realized she was so wet that it made her T-shirt see-through. “Oh, no,” she groaned.
He lifted a brow. “I don’t know, I kind of like it. My own personal wet T-shirt contest.”
She laughed and gave him a push as she tried to conceal the outline of her bra and breasts from him.
“What are we going to do with her, huh, guys?” Zane started the engine and laid his arm on the seat to look over his shoulder and back down the drive. “What are we going to do with Ellie?” he asked the dog and his grandfather. “Marry her before she wises up and runs away?”
A shiver ran through Elise’s body and she hugged herself tightly, her eyes wide. Had Zane just said what she thought he’d said? She was so afraid to look at him that she just stared straight ahead through the wet windshield.
Zane turned the car around and pulled forward, down the dirt lane toward the road. He glanced at her.
Elise still stared straight ahead, watching the wipers, not sure what to do. What to say. What if she’d misunderstood him? What if he was just joking? But surely he knew she’d heard him.
They were several minutes down the road before she finally got the nerve to steal a peek. He looked over at her, that silly, handsome grin on his face. “This is the first time I think I’ve ever heard you this quiet,” he teased. “I didn’t mean to put a damper on the party.”
She shivered and reached out to turn on the heat.
Zane looked at her again. “I love you,” he said, sliding his hand across the leather seat as he focused on the road again. “I didn’t mean to spring that on you that way. It just came out. We’ll talk later, without the audience.” He eyed the rearview mirror and his grandfather who was still smiling.
“I love you, too,” Elise whispered, still waiting for her heartbeat to slow to a reasonable pace.
He squeezed her hand and she turned her head to look out the window at the passing fields, the rain running along the pavement. To her amusement, all she could think of was, Well, Edwin, it sure paid to leave work early today….
Elise and Zane took Pops back the nursing home and she waited in the front lobby while he gave his grandfather a warm bath and tucked him in bed in his favorite pj’s with an episode of Gunsmoke playing on his TV. Elise kissed the old man good-night and to her surprise, he reached up and caressed her cheek. It was just like that first day at Zane’s house when he had grabbed her arm.
“I love you, too, Pops,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes.
Zane gave his grandfather a kiss on the cheek, and then arm in arm he and Elise walked out to the car together. The rain had stopped and the night air was cool and humid. She could hear the sound of crickets in the wet grass.
“I’ll take you back to your car or we could just go back to my place,” he said, slipping his arm casually around her waist.
She eyed him, feeling a little more comfortable now that her shirt had nearly dried. “Let’s go to your place.”
They were quiet on
the ride to his house, but it was an easy, contemplative silence. Elise had never known anyone else that she could just be with without conversation or entertainment and be so content. At his place, they released the dog from the back seat and then walked up on the porch to sit side by side on the old-fashioned wooden porch swing that hung from the rafters.
Zane slid his arm around her shoulder, and they stared out into the darkness. The Lab ran in circles through the grass barking and then took off into the darkness.
“You know, I meant what I said today,” he said smoothing her hair at the back of her neck, sending pleasant shivers down her spine.
“What you said?” She looked to him. Of course she knew exactly what he was talking about. She’d thought of nothing else since he said it, but she wanted to hear it again.
“About wanting to marry you.” He rested his hand on her far shoulder and looked down at her.
She met his gaze and she could feel herself trembling inside. She had never gotten to the chapter on “The Proposal” or “The Wedding” in the book because she hadn’t seen the point. Now she wondered if she should have read ahead.
“Are you asking me?” she whispered, holding her breath.
He thought for a moment and then grinned. “Yes, Ellie, I’m asking you. I’m totally unprepared.” He laughed lifting his hand from her shoulder to gesture. “No ring, no speech. But it just hit me tonight in the car that I want us to be together. Always. I want to be your husband and all that means.” He waited a moment. “So what do you say?”
She exhaled, dizzy from lack of oxygen. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, I want to be with you. Yes, I’ll marry you.” Her chest was tight, and she could feel her heart pounding, her pulse racing. “But only if you really mean it,” she heard herself say. “I think you know me. You know who I am and what I am. Can you love me anyway?” Her voice caught in her throat.
“Ah, Ellie. I do love you for who you are.”
She lifted her mouth to meet his and felt her pulse quicken again. She parted her lips, inviting his tongue and drew closer. He threaded his fingers through her hair and kissed her until she was breathless, then kissed her again. His warm arms around her, he pulled her onto his lap and she ran her hand over his chest, reveling in the feel of his warm skin and his heart beating. As he lifted his hand to push the hair from her face to kiss her again, his finger brushed her breast and she sucked in a great gulp of air. The lightning that had been in the sky earlier now seemed to arc between them.
Barefoot and Pregnant? Page 10
