A SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE BOXED SET

by Lewis, Laurie

  Ely’s response was more measured. “It’s . . . it’s much more than we ever expected.” He looked Noah square in the eye. “We can’t afford this. I know a thing or two about construction, and this deck will cost five times what was budgeted.”

  Noah launched his prepared reply. “This project is going to get a lot of press, and I could use the opportunity to win future clients. Just let me photograph it for my portfolio.”

  Ely shook his head. “It’s too much.”

  Noah knelt down in front of Ely’s chair. “You and Margot do wonderful things for people all the time. I don’t get these opportunities that often. Please. Let me build this for your family.”

  A silent wrestle ensued for several moments. Micah came in and stared at the plans. “A fire pit and a stream? It’ll be like camping on the deck, Dad.”

  Ely looked up. “You like that idea, eh?”

  “We can’t really get you into the woods. This would be close.”

  Ely turned to Margot whose expectant look sealed the deal. He offered his hand to Noah. “All right. It seems we’ll be forever in your debt.”

  It was more a surrender than a thank you, but Micah jumped, and Margot cheered, and Noah felt his heart would burst.

  Chapter 20

  When Noah arrived back at the farm, he found Tayte under Agnes’s tutelage, dressed in manure-smeared rubber waders. She laughed and smiled like a child as she followed along from stall to stall, carrying buckets filled with grain and water. Her dark ponytail bobbed with each chuckle. She was a sight, and Noah thought she had never looked more beautiful.

  She headed his way as he exited the truck. “You’re missing the fun, mister.”

  “I wouldn’t consider depriving you.”

  “I’m actually enjoying this. Imagine that. Me, the neat freak.”

  “I like you this way.”

  “Dirty?”

  “That too. I was going to say happy.”

  “I am happy. Grandma is having a good day. She’s excited about teaching the Eppley kids French. Her doctor even suggested something like this to me. And you know what? When she has a good day, my grandmother is amazing. She can rattle off information about these animals like a vet.” Tayte sobered. “It’s hard to believe that on another day she’ll hardly be able to remember my name.”

  “Don’t go there today, Tayte. Just enjoy this moment, okay?”

  She nodded and brightened again. “And how did the rest of your day go?”

  Noah pointed to the bed of the truck. “I rented a gas-powered auger and purchased the cement. I’ll start setting the supports tomorrow.”

  “I forgot to tell you. Some men came in the Anderson Nursery truck and dropped off a lot of tools and things. They’re in the barn. Did you find some workers?”

  “No, but I’ve got extra time now, thanks to you. And how are your plans coming along?”

  “I’m shooting the Eppleys’ photos tomorrow. I’ll take Grandma with me. Have you heard the weather reports? We’re expecting a bad storm. Tomorrow will probably end up being your only good work day all week.”

  Noah rubbed his fingers deep into his eyes. “That is not good news.”

  Tayte lowered her voice. “By the way, Lancelot hasn’t come in for the evening feeding. Do old horses just wander off to die?”

  “I don’t know. I’m a city kid. Has Agnes noticed he’s missing?”

  Tayte glanced at her grandmother. “She’s mentioned him several times. I keep diverting her attention on to something else.”

  A long sigh of resignation escaped Noah. “I’ll jump in the truck and look for him.”

  “Don’t be too long. How does eight thirty sound for dinner?”

  “Sounds great.” He pointed to a spot on Tayte’s forehead. “You’ve got a little something there. Would you like me to get rid of it for you?”

  “You mean like this morning, Casanova?” Tayte used her gloved hand to wipe at the spot herself leaving an even bigger smudge.

  “Suit yourself but you just made it worse.” Noah turned for the barn.

  “A little mud isn’t going to hurt me.”

  “That isn’t mud, Tayte.”

  * * *

  An hour-long search for Lancelot proved fruitless. Even with the truck, it was difficult to scour two hundred semi-wooded acres bounded by dilapidated fences. Tayte met him outside when he returned to the house. She wore a long skirt and a silky T-shirt, and her hair hung straight down her back. Noah wondered if she had dressed up for him.

  “Any luck?” she asked.

  “None, and I can’t look in the morning. I need to get an early start at the Eppleys’.”

  “Let’s just hope he gets hungry for his regular feed and shows up tomorrow. Dinner’s about ready.”

  “Great. Is Agnes asleep?”

  “Close to it. She started nodding off into her supper plate. The children wore her out.”

  Noah washed up. When he came out, the table was set with candles and Agnes’s good china. “The table looks nice, and you . . . you look amazing.” He glanced down at his jeans and worn polo shirt. I feel a little underdressed.”

  “I wanted my first dinner party in Maryland to be memorable.” She took his arm and led him to the table. “You look fine just the way you are.”

  Noah’s imagination started weighing every word to discern whether she was flirting with him. He cringed inwardly. He was so bad at this. To his relief, small talk, peppered with laughter, flowed easily during dinner, though it lapsed from time to time. Like whenever his attention meandered to a study of the flecks of gold in Tayte’s green eyes, or to the shape of her lips when she smiled, or to the way her hair caught the light when she flicked it from her shoulder. By the time dessert was served, he could hardly swallow past the lump growing in his throat from the nearness of her. He wanted to be close to her, but that would require a leap of faith on both their parts, and Noah figured it had to begin with him. Before he decided how to proceed, Tayte laid her fork down and leaned forward, her eyes bright with excitement.

  “Mr. Delacourte was fascinated by the photos of the art upstairs. I had no idea how connected he actually was in the art community. He called a curator at the National Gallery of Art. He offered to do some investigating. Isn’t that exciting?”

  Noah’s heart sank. “I see. You got that news this morning.” It all made disappointing sense to him. “So that’s what we’re celebrating. That’s great,” he said with mustered enthusiasm. “Congratulations.” He folded his napkin and laid it on the table. “I hope it all works out as you want.” He scooted his chair back and stood. “Thank you for supper. I ought to get to bed now. I’ve got a hard day tomorrow.”

  Tayte leaned back, and her face twisted in confusion. “What just happened here? Are you upset because I’m trying to identify the artwork? I thought we came to an agreement on this.”

  “I agree that you have to do what you must to keep this place afloat. I get that. And I trust that you’ll do it in a way that respects Agnes’s concerns.”

  “Then why the cold shoulder? The temperature just dropped thirty degrees in here.”

  Noah placed his hands on the table and leaned into them. His head hung as he searched for the courage to tell Tayte the truth. “I’m sorry. I misread things. I’m not very good at this.”

  “This what? Can you just sit down for a minute and tell me what’s going on?”

  He sat down and leaned back, giving Tayte a squint-eyed glance paired with a lopsided grin, “I thought . . . I assumed this was a . . . kind of a date.”

  Her shoulders tensed, and she absently traced a circular shape on the table top. “I already explained that I’m not good at relationships. We’ve been getting along so well, and you’ve been so great with Grandma. I just wanted to do something nice, to show you my appreciation.”

  Noah toyed with the edge of his napkin. “Is that all? Then why did you stop me from leaving a minute ago?”

  Tayte’s head popped up to face hi
m. “Why can’t you just leave things as they are?” She stood and then sat back down with a huff. “All right. I can’t say the same thoughts haven’t crossed my mind once or twice, but I’m not ready to go there.”

  “Okay.” The search for a suave reply failed Noah.

  “Okay then.” Tayte stared back at the table, glancing at Noah, who had folded his napkin into an origami shape. “For the most part, you’re still a mystery to me, but I have observed a few things. For instance, I know you play with things when you’re nervous. Am I terrible for pointing that out to you?”

  Noah gave a comic huff as his tight lips pressed into a timid smile. “It’s an old habit. My father ran dinner like a prison mess hall. No joking. No talking. I was hardheaded. I ended more than a few meals with a backhanded slap that landed me on the floor. After a while, I realized if I kept my hands occupied, my mouth was less likely to get me into trouble. When I started fiddling with the napkin or the salt and pepper shakers, my father knew he had intimidated me.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be hit. I was never even spanked.”

  She reached a hand across the table to touch his wrist and felt the leather band. “You always wear that. Is it sentimental?”

  He slid forward and met her eyes. “Are you sure you want to know me, Tayte? Really know me?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t hesitant in her reply.

  He rolled up his sleeve and watched her face melt in sympathy as the round pocked scars appeared within the tattoos. Then he unfastened the band, revealing the healed cuts on his wrists. He pointed to his arms. “These were gifts from my father.” Then he touched his wrist. “And this is how I dealt with them.”

  Tayte covered his wrist with her hand. “Is that all of them?”

  He shook his head. “There are more burns on my shoulders and my back.”

  She gave a silent gasp. “Oh, Noah. He was a terrible father.”

  The comment was underscored by a firm squeeze of Noah’s wrist, and then the removal of her hand. Noah missed her touch immediately. The warmth. The connection. He rolled his sleeve back down, savoring the memory.

  “That day at the park, you told me you had only been in love once and that it was a long time ago. Did she know about this?”

  “Her name was Esther. She was Amish. Yes, she knew everything and loved me in spite of it all.”

  Tayte laid her cheek in her palm as her elbow rested on the table. “How did you meet?”

  “I was working on Uncle John’s farm. He and I didn’t get along very well back then. I was difficult, and he wasn’t accustomed to being challenged.”

  She sighed, her sarcasm evident. “I can’t imagine you being difficult.”

  He chuckled. “People adapt to survive. If you tell a child he’s a dog often enough, he’ll try to grow a tail.” The admission was met with a compassionate squeeze on his wrist.

  “What about your mother? Did she try to defend you?”

  Noah heard the ache in her voice. “Despite all my father did to us, she loved him. As crazy as it sounds, I did too.” He chuckled again. “I kept making excuses, telling myself he really did love me and that when push came to shove, he’d stand up for his boy, but when a day finally came that I really needed him, he threw me to the wolves.”

  The compassion in Tayte’s eyes contrasted with the bitter memory playing in his mind. He remembered the clutch of the store security guard’s hand on his scrawny arm and the sweaty smell of the police car that hauled him to jail. He could hear his father’s refusal to come down and bail him out, followed by the slam of the metal holding cell’s door, locking him in a one-hundred-square-foot hell with five devils who degraded him, making him wary of human touch.

  He felt cold and shivered. Then he glanced up at Tayte. “Adversity made you strong. It turned me to stone for a long time.” Neither of them spoke until the crushing weight of the silence sent Noah seeking a way out of the moment. “How did you cope?”

  “My art, I guess. People assumed my shoddy clothes and mangy hair were all part of my being avant-garde, so I decided to play the role. It gave me an identity, I suppose.”

  Noah reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, from which he withdrew an old driver’s license. He smiled and studied the image, then handed it to Tayte. “First driver’s license. How’s that for mangy hair?”

  She took the photo and studied it. “No way that’s you.”

  Noah grinned and nodded. “Cross my heart.”

  “I would never have believed that this skinny, pink-haired kid was you.”

  “I tried bleaching it but it turned light red.” He tucked the photo back in his wallet. “Needless to say, Uncle John had low expectations of me when I showed up for work the first day, looking like that. I was lost. I suppose it explains why I fell in love with Esther so quickly. She was so good, and yet she made me feel . . . special. That’s also Agnes’s gift,” he added.

  “I couldn’t understand how Esther’s parents could know her and be so hard on her. The Amish relatives who took her in were kind, but they planned to send her back to her folks at the end of the summer, so we eloped. We agreed to keep our wedding secret, just pretend that nothing had changed until I got my last paycheck. Then we were going to run away together. We stole a few hours for a honeymoon before heading home to begin the charade. She got cold feet and we fought. There was an accident, and we both blacked out. When I came to, she was gone.”

  He raked his fingers through his hair. “I completely lost it. The police hauled me to jail on reckless driving charges, and the next day, her uncles came to the jail with an annulment form. They told me Esther had changed her mind. That she wanted to end our marriage. They convinced me I was ruining her life, so I signed. And that was that.”

  Tayte closed her eyes. “You never saw her again? Oh, Noah . . . I’m so sorry.”

  “No, I’m the one who should apologize. My tongue usually isn’t this loose.”

  “I want to get to know you. At least all you’re willing to tell me.”

  “We were young, but there was nothing childish about what we felt. I loved her. I wanted to die after she left, and I very nearly got my wish. I shut down for a while, did drugs, slept on the street. I was a mess.”

  “What pulled you back?”

  “She did, in a way. She wrote to me a year later to tell me she had another proposal of marriage, but before she accepted, she wanted my forgiveness, and she offered me another chance to make us work if I wanted to try again.”

  “But you didn’t take it, did you?”

  Noah broke their gaze and looked away. “I never even answered her. I was a disaster, and I didn’t want her to find out. I took a good look at myself. That was the day I started digging out. I got a construction job, and things started getting better, but I traded one drug for another. I worked every waking minute to block out the loneliness and the regret until I had forfeited ten years of chances to be happy.” He met her gaze again. “I don’t want to repeat that mistake.”

  “You sound like you’re still in love with her, even after she broke your heart.”

  Noah heard the tentative tone in Tayte’s voice. “I suppose I’ll always love her for loving me.” Tayte waited expectantly for more, and Noah continued. “Before Esther, I wasn’t sure I could or if I even wanted to love anyone. I fell back into that trap, but Uncle John and Sarah and Agnes pulled me out again.”

  Tayte shifted and stared off into space. “I know that fear. People try to love you, but because you’re so programmed to expect disappointment, you find reasons to push them away.”

  “Like Miami guy?”

  She shrugged and shifted to the edge of her chair. “We were never a good fit.”

  The revelation sent his heart thrashing against his ribs, but there was a hint of finality in her voice. She started to stand, so Noah reached for her hand to hold her there a moment longer, but the touch ignited a firestorm of want in him. His breathing slowed as h
e asked, “What do you want, Tayte?”

  She looked down at their intertwined hands. “I don’t know. I’m glad you’ve figured things out, Noah. I still haven’t. I’m a mess. I’m not good at loving people.”

  She stood and picked up her plate, ending the conversation, but Noah refused to let go of her hand. A long moment of silence passed as the two studied each other’s reaction to the contact. Slowly, warily, Noah moved to her until he could feel her shiver from his closeness.

  “You’re wrong,” he said softly. “I see how you are with Agnes. You’ve turned yourself inside out to be what she needs.” He squeezed her hand. “That’s love, Tayte.” He dropped his gaze to the floor before meeting her eyes once more. “You’re the first woman I’ve dared open up to in ten years. Maybe all you need is someone who makes you feel safe so you can do the same. Maybe we could be that for each other.”

  Tayte shivered again and set the plate down softly. “I don’t know. I like what we have now. We’re just beginning to be comfortable with each other.” She met his eyes with honesty. “What if I couldn’t care for you equally? I don’t want to hurt you or disappoint you.”

  His heart pounded, fearing her retreat. “That’s why they call it taking a chance.”

  “But you fell apart when Esther left you. That’s a lot of risk for people like us.”

  “I’m not eighteen anymore, Tayte. I choose risk over regret.”

  The sound of his voice seemed foreign to his ears—husky, graveled, certain. His eyes broke contact with hers as they slipped down to her mouth, which parted in response. When their eyes met again, her brow was softer and her lips relaxed.

  Years had passed without so much as a tender touch by a woman. The hand that held Tayte’s felt her pulse increase under his thumb like a drumbeat, driving the moment. His breathing slowed and deepened, every nerve firing as he imagined his mouth coming down softly on hers, but the old voices returned, telling him he was a fool. That he wasn’t worthy of such a woman.