by Sharon Sala
“My God. How far were you from home?” Duke asked.
“Two miles. Mama shouted and cried, and cursed at him to move because she couldn’t lift him, and finally we got him into the sled. She set me between his legs, wrapped the both of us up in the furs, and told Daddy to hang onto me for warmth, then mushed that sled like a pro and got us home. It was quite a ride. Mama stripped him in front of the fireplace, while I put water on the propane cookstove to heat for a bath. It was a scary time.”
“That’s like something out of a movie,” Duke said.
Cathy shrugged. “I guess. But life off the grid anywhere is hard. In Alaska, it can be deadly.”
Duke had no comprehension of that kind of hardship, and was in awe of the matter-of-fact way she thought about it.
“How old were you then?” he asked.
Cathy paused, frowning a moment, and then looked at him. “Probably close to eleven.”
At that point, the waitress appeared again to refill their glasses. They finished their meal and waved at the Baileys as they went back to the front lobby to pay, then left the building. But once they were in the truck, instead of starting it up, Duke sat for a few moments in silence.
“Is everything okay?” Cathy asked.
“Do you have plans for this afternoon?” Duke asked.
“Today is all yours, why?”
“I want to show you our farm. And I want to show you the house on the Bailey place.”
“Oh my gosh, yes, yes.”
He eyed her new clothes. “Want to go change first, so you don’t get dirt on your pretty clothes?”
She grinned. “You read my mind.”
Chapter 12
“Come in while I change,” Cathy said. “There are still molasses cookies if you want dessert.”
“I never say no to cookies,” Duke said, and followed her into the house.
“You know the way to the kitchen. They’re in that little plastic container on the counter. I won’t be long.”
Duke went one way while she went the other. She had never changed clothes so fast in her life, then headed for the kitchen.
Duke was working on his second cookie when she came in.
“I’m ready. This is turning into the best day ever.” She took a cookie for herself and a couple of bottles of water. “For us,” she said.
He followed her out the door, eyeing the sway of her hips and the bounce in her curls and smiled.
Us. She said us. I like the sound of that.
Cathy buckled herself into the seat of the truck and then set the bottles of water in the console between them as Duke headed out of town.
She glanced at his profile. There was such strength in the cut of his jaw and the breadth of his shoulders, but it was the kindness and the joy in him that filled her heart. Happy to be with him in this moment, she broke her cookie in half.
“Here you go,” she said. “I don’t like to eat alone.”
“I already had two,” Duke said.
“I’m not counting,” she said, and handed it to him.
He grinned and popped it in his mouth.
Cathy settled back against the seat to enjoy the scenery. Every now and then they’d drive past a house, and when they did, Duke would tell her who lived there.
“Oh, that’s a pretty house,” Cathy said, as they passed a big white farmhouse with navy-blue shutters.
“That’s where Jake and Laurel Lorde live. Jake works online for some big-city advertising agency, and Laurel has her own cleaning service. It’s grown from just her being a single mother trying to make ends meet to at least two full cleaning crews. The Lordes are good people,” Duke said.
“I’m beginning to realize that is the norm rather than the exception in Blessings,” Cathy said.
“What do you mean?” Duke asked.
“Good people. The town is full of them,” she said.
Duke’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Growing up here, I guess we take all that for granted. Sometimes it’s good to see the world through new eyes.”
“You have no idea how unique and special this place is,” Cathy said.
“Special enough to stay?” Duke asked.
Cathy glanced at him. “Yes, special enough to stay,” she said.
Duke reached for her hand and gave it a quick squeeze, then began slowing down enough to take the turn off the highway onto a blacktop road.
“Our place is about fifteen minutes farther. The road actually ends at the farm. Our grandparents homesteaded the place and built the original house, but our parents added to it.”
“So what’s going on at the farm today?” Cathy asked.
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Jack texted while you were changing clothes and said he was on the way to Savannah to pick up a part for Dad’s old truck he’s been working on, and Hope is at work. So it will be me giving you the grand tour.”
“I’m really looking forward to it. It’s been forever since I was on a working farm. We homesteaded, but farming wasn’t a thing. It was more about growing sustainable food, raising chickens, goats for milk and cheese, things like that.”
Duke glanced at her, then back at the road, but the animation in her voice matched the expression on her face. She wasn’t just being polite about seeing their place. She was really excited. This just kept getting better and better.
He didn’t realize he was holding his breath as they came around a corner in the road and the white two-story farmhouse appeared, but when Cathy gasped, he exhaled slowly.
She liked it, he could tell.
The house was nestled against a backdrop of neatly painted outbuildings, a big red two-story barn, and fenced pastures with silver-gray gates. Several head of cattle in the nearest pasture were eating from a round bale of hay, while others had grouped beneath a stand of oaks.
“Oh Duke! It’s beautiful! Picture-postcard perfect, right down to the grazing cattle.”
He pulled around to the back of the house and then parked.
“I know you’ll be here day after tomorrow for Thanksgiving, but I wanted to show you the house first, as it normally is.”
Cathy jumped out of the truck without waiting for him to help her, then went in the back door with his hand at the small of her back. Her first impression was of all the modern conveniences in the kitchen, and how perfectly they’d blended them into the character of the house. From a long oak table and chairs in the kitchen to the antique sideboard and an old cuckoo clock hanging above it, ticking away the time.
“It’s perfect,” Cathy said, running her fingertips along the surface of the old table.
“Nobody has ever lived in this house but Talbots. I was born in a room down the hall.”
Cathy stopped, and then put a hand on Duke’s arm. “Are you going to be sad to leave?” she asked.
Duke shook his head. “Not like you mean. I’ve never lived life for me before.”
Cathy slid her arms around his neck. “I wouldn’t mind if you saved a little spot in your life for me while you were at it.”
Duke pulled her close. “Fair warning…I’m saving more than a little spot.”
“Is that a promise?” she asked.
“No. It is a fact,” Duke said, and then kissed her—softly at first, and then longer…harder—until they were lost in the feel of being in each other’s arms.
Pillow-soft breasts pressed against a hard, muscle-toned chest—both of them forgetting to breathe—then the sensation of floating in the passion building between them.
A gasp of wonder. The undertone of a moan from the want for more. The ache of unfulfilled urges.
All it would have taken was one word, and Duke would have taken her to bed right there and then. But she didn’t ask, and he wouldn’t push it, so he ended it with a deep, heartfelt sigh of longing.
“You
destroy every ounce of good sense I ever had,” he said softly, and brushed one last kiss across her lips. “So if you want to see the rest of the farm, I suggest we get as far away from my bedroom as possible.”
Cathy laughed out loud.
“What?” Duke asked.
“That was the most perfect invitation not to make love that I’ve ever heard. And I’ll go along with it…for the time being.”
Duke grinned. “What do you want to see first? The chickens or the—”
“The chickens! We had chickens when I was a kid. They were my pets.”
Duke sighed. “Doesn’t do much for a guy’s ego to know the woman he’s falling for chooses chickens over making love.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cathy said. “I’ve been practicing being naked for you in front of my mirror. I’m not choosing chickens over you, but I am chicken about the big reveal.”
Her honesty was a suckerpunch to the gut.
“I’m pretty sure anything I say right now is gonna be wrong, but I can relieve your worries about that. I dream about you…about making love to you. I’ve already seen you in my dreams, and you’re too beautiful for words, so no more talking about being naked unless you’re ready to get that way.”
Cathy slipped her hand in his. “Show me your chickens, please.”
He led the way out and pointed to the chicken house and the chicken-wire fence around it.
“The henhouse awaits,” he said.
Their arrival set a few hens to clucking, thinking it was time to eat, but Cathy was enchanted with the fat red hens.
“What kind of chickens are these?”
“Rhode Island Reds. Hope started them because she wanted brown eggs,” he said. “She likes tending to them and gathering eggs when she can, but her work schedule doesn’t always permit it.”
Cathy squatted down beside a chicken feeder, eyeing one big fat hen pecking at the scratch scattered about.
“Just look at you,” she said softly. “You’re a beauty and you know it, don’t you?” Cathy stroked the chicken’s head and down the back of its neck with her fingertip, cooing and talking in a singsong voice until the hen was clucking back at her.
“I think she likes you,” Duke said.
Cathy gave the hen one last stroke on her back and then stood and looked up at him.
“You are so lucky to have grown up in this place,” she said.
“Come walk with me,” he said. “There’s far more to see.”
And so she did…from the barn to the machine shed, and then the corrals and the stanchions where they used to milk, to the farm pond just below the house.
“Are there fish in it?” Cathy asked.
“Oh sure,” Duke said. “Dad stocked it years ago with large-mouth bass and catfish. We fish out of it and usually have a big fish fry for our neighbors at least once a year.”
“I’ve never been to a fish fry, but I’ve cooked fish over an open fire.”
“The fish at a fish fry are cut-up chunks that have been dipped in batter or breading and deep-fried. You’d like it, I think,” Duke said.
“I love this place!” Cathy said. She threw her arms up in the air and turned in a full circle. “I love everything about it. It’s beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” Duke said. “And before I forget the rest of why I invited you up, I want to show you the old Bailey place.”
“And I want to see it…I want to see it through your eyes…your vision of what you want it to be.”
Within minutes they were headed back to the house to wash up before leaving the farm. Cathy went down the hall to the guest bath, and when she got back to the kitchen, Duke was waiting for her with cold bottles of Coke.
“Do you want something to snack on?” he asked, as he handed her the pop.
“I don’t. This is perfect,” she said, and took a quick sip. “How far is it to the Bailey property from here?”
“About fifteen minutes by road. But the land abuts to the back of ours, so if I do buy it, it will just be a drive through the pastures to get from one house to the other. Are you ready?”
“Always,” she said.
Duke leaned down and kissed her. “Couldn’t resist,” he said, and ushered her back to the truck.
Cathy watched in the side-view mirror until the farm was out of sight, then leaned against the seat and sighed.
“I know there’s a lot of hard work to keeping a farm running and looking that good, but it’s amazing. You and Jack are obviously very good businessmen, too, or it wouldn’t be that successful.”
“We have our down years. So much of farming and ranching depends on enough rain, but not too much rain…on good cattle prices…on drought-free years…keeping animals free of disease. It’s a full-time job, for sure, and doesn’t appeal to a lot of women.”
“It’s my idea of heaven on earth,” Cathy said.
Duke smiled. “Yet another thing we agree about,” he said, and then took a right turn at the next section line and pointed. “The Bailey place is just up ahead. You’ll see the old house as we top the hill. When we do, I want you to give me your first impression. What does it look like, and how does it make you feel?”
“Okay,” Cathy said, then sat up straighter and leaned forward, watching intently as they reached the top, revealing the two-story redbrick edifice sitting about a hundred yards off the road. It had two single-story wings, one on either side, that had once been painted white and a deep porch that ran the length of the two-story structure.
Breath caught in the back of Cathy’s throat. “Oh, oh, oh…she looks lonesome…like she’s waiting to belong again. And those two white wings are like open arms, waiting to welcome you up onto that porch. I cannot wait to see inside.”
Duke was speechless. What she’d just said was how it made him feel, but he’d never been able to put it into words.
“It’s pretty overgrown,” he said, as he pulled up to the front of the house.
“Nothing that a good mowing wouldn’t cure,” Cathy said. “Is it okay that we go inside?”
“Yes. Rhonda already told me once where they hid the key. The place is old. It needs to be remodeled…updated…but the structure is sound. I think Mr. Bailey kept it up pretty good until his last year here. That’s when his health began to fail. Alzheimer’s made the final decision for him.”
“So, let’s get out,” Cathy said.
“Wait. You’ll be walking in grass and weeds up to your knees,” he said, and jumped out and circled the truck.
Cathy opened the door, but before she could jump out, Duke scooped her up in his arms and carried her through the yard and up the steps.
Cathy was holding onto him with both arms and laughing as he set her down on the porch. Then he retrieved the key and let them in the house.
“It’s stuffy…and dusty…and kind of weird. All the furniture is here, like he left to go to the store or something and never made it home.”
“Family heirlooms here,” Cathy said. “They’ll be wanting to reclaim those before the house sells.”
Duke nodded. “So, what do you think?”
“The possibilities are endless. How high are these ceilings? Twelve…maybe fourteen feet? And look at the crown molding, and I love the arched doorways.”
“Come look at the kitchen,” Duke said. “It’s really big, but of course it would need to be gutted. And I’d like to widen the opening between the eat-in kitchen and the formal dining room.”
As they began going from room to room, their ideas for what needed to be done began to mesh. By the time they reached the second floor, Cathy was already seeing the finished product in her mind as she listened to his plans.
“There are five bedrooms up here, but they’re small. I’d pick the first two, knock down a wall and make a big master bedroom with a master bath and a big wal
k-in closet, and then move some walls around to make a couple more decent-size bedrooms for guests.”
“Yes, and downstairs, make the east wing into a butler’s pantry, laundry, and mud room, and the west wing into an office.”
Duke turned to her then and put his hands on her shoulders.
“I’m going to ask you something, and if it makes you uncomfortable, or I’ve asked this too soon, will you be honest with me and tell me?”
And just like that, all the fantasy of playing house was gone, and the reality of what was growing between them was back again.
“Yes…I’ll always tell you the truth of how I feel,” she said.
“Will you do this with me? For us?”
Cathy’s heart skipped. “For real?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyes welled. “Oh, Duke…”
He groaned. “Too soon. I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“No, no, no, it’s not that. I just never thought I’d be happy again…until you. Yes, I’ll do this with you…for us.”
Duke sighed. “Thank you, Jesus,” he whispered, then wrapped his arms around her and kissed her.
Cathy was lost in his touch, matching him kiss for kiss and wanting more. But the rumble of thunder shifted the moment from wanting to weather.
“It sounds like we have rain coming. I’d better get you home before it hits,” Duke said.
They hurried back downstairs, then out the door, pausing long enough to lock it back and return the key to its hiding place.
Then he went down two steps and stopped. “Hop on, and I’ll take you piggyback,” he said.
Cathy climbed onto his back, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.
“Hang on,” he said, and made a run for the truck through the knee-high grass as the wind began to pick up.
She was safely inside and buckled up, and he was turning around when the first raindrops splattered on the windshield.
“We’re good,” he said. “It’s either gravel or blacktop all the way back to the highway.”
