Husband Under Construction (16 page)

“Donna. Please.”

Naturally, Noah immediately jerked to attention when she came out of the room. Her brain going a mile a minute, Roxie delivered the message to Donna, then walked a little apart from the others, figuring Noah would follow.

“The nurse shooed me out before he could say very much. And he wasn't making a whole lot of sense, really.” Which was true enough. “Although…” She looked up at him. “I think maybe this experience has made him think differently about you.”

“What's that supposed to mean? And why tell you?”

“I have no idea, and I don't think this is the best time to look for logic.”

He exhaled. “No. I guess not.”

Searching for an excuse to leave, to give herself space to figure out what the heck to do about this responsibility Gene had dumped on her, Roxie spotted her uncle and Eden. “I hate to do this, but there's no real reason for Charley and Eden to stay, and I drove them here. So if it's all the same to you…”

“No, no, that's okay. We're going to try to get Mom to go
home in a little while,” Noah said with a small, tired smile, “although nobody's holding their breath on how well that's gonna work. But thanks for coming. I'm sure it meant a lot to Dad.” He rubbed his mouth, then crossed his arms. “And to me.”

Roxie stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, breathing in his scent, which ignited a sweet ohmigod-I-wanna-make-babies-with-this-man ache in the center of her chest, and she thought,
Biology blows
. “Tell your mom if she needs anything, anything at all, I'm right across the street.”
For now, at least.
“And call me when you get home. Anytime, even if it's late,” she said.

He said, “Okay,” even though she knew he wouldn't.

“Nothing more to do here, let's go home,” she said, waving Eden and Charley over, ignoring their puzzled expressions as best she could as she said goodbye to the rest of the Garretts and started down the hall toward the elevators, Noah's questioning gaze burning a hole in her back the entire way.

Fortunately—deliberately?—once back in the car, Eden dragged Charley into a conversation about old movies Roxie couldn't even begin to take part in, followed by her uncle's dozing off almost immediately after they dropped Eden back at her place.

Leaving Roxie with nothing but tacky arrangements of Christmas carols on the car radio and her own thoughts to keep her company as she drove. Blech.

“Charley? Charley!” she said after pulling up into his driveway some time later.

“Wh— Huh?” Her uncle jerked awake, blinking like a sedated owl.

“We're home.”

Well,
he
was anyway, Roxie mused as she pulled her
phone out of her purse, halfheartedly checking her Facebook page while keeping an eye on her drowsy uncle as they climbed the steps. Because hell if she knew where her home was.

Oh, joy, a friend request. Probably some friend of a friend of a friend she'd never met in her life. Yawning, she clicked on the icon, only to let out a shriek of delight when a very familiar face popped up on the tiny screen.

 

It was well after midnight before Noah and his brothers finally convinced their mother to go home, get some rest, they'd bring her back as early as she wanted in the morning. Meaning, by that point, he wasn't about to call Roxie. A good thing, all told, since he wanted to hear her voice way too much.

By the next morning, though, when they'd all trooped into Dad's room to find him sitting up and eating oatmeal and fake eggs—and moaning and groaning about it the entire time—yesterday's scare already felt like a bad dream…leaving a new reality in its wake. Because even if Dad took care of himself, lost some weight, exercised more, he couldn't keep driving himself the way he'd been.

Amazingly, Gene was the first one to admit that life as they'd all known it was never going to be the same. “I'm glad you're all here, because we need to talk about the future—”

“Dad,” Silas said, his eyes bleary behind his glasses. “This can wait for five minutes.”

“No, it can't. Because if you all want me to rest easy, then I need to have this settled in my head.” As Donna, seated beside the bed, wrapped her hand around their father's, his eyes landed on Noah. “Well, son…you wanted more responsibility? You got it. From here on out, you're in charge.”

Noah flinched. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. You're the boss.”

“What? No…the doctor said you'd probably be back at work in a week—”

“I know. But I made a promise to your mother, even after the docs give me the all clear, to cut my involvement way back. Oh, I'll still keep a hand in, retirement would drive me insane—and her, too, even if she won't admit it—but I'm turning the day-to-day stuff over to you.”

Stunned, Noah looked at Eli and Jesse, standing in almost identical, arms-crossed poses at the foot of the bed. “But you guys—”

“Come January, I'm going back to school, remember?” Jesse said, his pushed-up hoodie sleeves revealing almost solidly tattooed arms. “So I'll only be around part-time.”

“And with the baby,” Eli said, “I'm already behind in furniture orders as it is. I can't possibly catch up and oversee everything else.”

“Besides,” Gene put in, “you're right. Nobody knows the business like you do. So—it's yours. Since we're closed until Monday, anyway, we can work out the details after I get home.”

Noah could imagine what some of those “details” might be. “That's…it?” he asked. Prodding. “No stipulations?”

His father regarded him in silence for a moment, then said, “Only that you remember whose standard you're bearing. And that I have the right to change my mind at any time.”

“Like hell,” their mother muttered, earning her a chorus of soft laughs.

“I won't let you down,” Noah said.

“And I'm counting on you to keep that promise,” Gene said, and Noah could still see flickers of doubt in his eyes,
that while Noah may have been his only choice, he still wasn't necessarily his best.

Then his brothers said their goodbyes, with promises to stop by later, before easing back into their own lives. Their own brands of crazy. Noah was the last to give hugs, the last out of the room. And as he stopped by a water fountain to get a drink, he wondered…what did
he
have, besides new, hard-won responsibilities that came with enough entailments to sink a battleship? A sink devoid of female clutter? Nights uninterrupted by an infant's cry? The satisfaction of knowing that when he sat down to watch a movie he'd actually get to finish it?

That so-called “freedom?”

At which point, a thought that had been poking and prodding and trying to find a way into his brain showed its face in a dingy window, waving like mad to get his attention, its voice faint but insistent.

“Hey, bro,” Silas said as they all piled into the elevator. “You okay?”

“Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't I be?”

Silas and Eli exchanged a glance before Eli said, “You don't exactly look happy about that conversation. Even though you've been after Dad for years to give you more authority.”

“Because I'd always pictured that happening because he wanted to,” he ground out. “Not because he didn't have a choice!”

The conversation died a quick death when a yakking family of five piled onto the elevator on the next floor…and when they all got off Noah strode away from his brothers, hopefully sending a clear message that he was in no mood to pick it up again. Not that they wouldn't at some point, but right now all he wanted was to be by himself.

Which wasn't exactly true, he thought, as he started
back to Tierra Rosa. Right now, all he wanted was to hang out with Roxie. To somehow absorb some of that level-headedness, to hear her laughter. So when he noticed her car clinging like a mountain goat to Charley's steep driveway as he drove past, a nice little inner battle ensued as he reminded himself that what
he
wanted wasn't fair to her, that it was self-centered and childish.

And that he was better than that.

Except no sooner had he passed than he remembered it was the day after Thanksgiving. Meaning, in Garrettville, the day the Christmas decorations went up—his mom decked the halls from top to bottom, while his dad set up an outside display easily rivaling the Chevy Chase
Christmas Vacation
movie. Which, Noah thought as his eyes stung, along with
Muppets' Christmas Carol
and
It's a Wonderful Life
, they'd all watched every year.

His gut clenched. Because suddenly, he felt like a planet jettisoned from orbit, flung far, far away from its solar system.

Like hell,
he thought, the brakes squealing as he made a U-turn and returned to his parents. Twenty minutes later, a good two dozen boxes marked “Christmas —outside” sat on the porch or in the yard, along with an untold number of heavy-duty extension cords and plugs-on-a-stick.

Take that, world,
he thought as he dumped out enough icicle lights to doll up the Empire State Building.

 

“What on earth is the boy doing?”

Taking a moment to let the buzzing in her brain subside, Roxie broke her gaze from her phone to see Charley standing at the brand-new, double-paned window. Around which hung motionless draperies, praise be. Eden, who'd arrived with her dog before Roxie was even up, was in the kitchen—which she'd declared “a miracle”—chopping vegetables
and whatnot for stew. And singing a tune from
Oklahoma!
Things would most definitely never be the same.

In many ways.

As if in a dream, Roxie got up to peer out the window. Across the street, Noah looked like a fly caught in a web of icicle lights, desperately struggling to break free—a sight that tickled her almost as much as it made her want to weep.

“It would appear he's putting up Christmas decorations,” she said. “Trying to, anyway.”

“That's Gene's job…oh. Right.” Charley paused. “I'm gonna guess he has no clue what he's doing.”

Roxie laughed, despite the weird, tight feeling in her chest. “I think that's a safe bet,” she said, heading to the closet for her heaviest sweater-coat.

“Where you going?”

“To help. Wanna come?”

“Not on your life. Although I might dig out the Christmas wreath if the mood strikes.” Her uncle settled into his overstuffed chair, grabbing his glasses and half-read mystery off the table beside it. Then he looked over the glasses at Roxie. “You gonna tell him?”

“I don't know. Because it's not settled yet,” she said to Charley's raised brows.

“Sounded pretty settled to me, from what I just heard.”

“Then not settled in my head. I need some time to get used to the idea myself, before I go blabbing about it to all and sundry.”

“Noah's hardly all and sundry. And that didn't keep you from telling anyone who'd stand still long enough about the Atlanta thing—”

“I am capable of learning from my mistakes,” Roxie said, grabbing her mittens off the table by the front door and heading out into the cold, crisp morning, where all those
mistakes she'd declared herself so capable of learning from taunted her mercilessly from the sidelines. Creeps.

Noah glanced over the minute the front door closed irrevocably behind her, and she wondered how it was possible to be this conflicted and still function.

“You look like you could use some extra hands,” she called as she trooped down the steps.

He grinned the grin of the completely beleaguered, and her stomach went all disco fever on her. “Only if they're yours.”

Now across the street, she forced herself to traverse his lawn, the dry, brown grass crunching underfoot as she came closer, telling herself turning tail right now would be totally lame. “How's your dad?”

“Doing pretty good, thanks. Should be home tomorrow, in fact. But…” Noah's gaze swept the house. “But ever since I can remember, the decorations went up without fail the day after Thanksgiving. And since Dad can't…” Noah cleared his throat, then looked at Roxie again, one side of his mouth lifted. “Do you remember what the yard looked like? When you were here in high school?”

“Like the mother ship had landed,” she said, hating the gentleness in his voice, her susceptibility to it, as she bent over to open one of the boxes. “Wow. Inflatables?”

Noah chuckled. “We'd gone to Wal-Mart a few years back to get some replacement bulbs. I still remember the look on Dad's face when we walked through the door and spotted the display. Like a little kid, I swear. I also remember the look on
Mom's
face when we came home with not, one, not two, but
three
of the damn things. There's also a lit-up train that goes around the whole yard. On tracks.”

“Ohmigosh,” Roxie said on another laugh. “You're kidding? No wonder he starts so early—it must take a week to get it all done!”

“Something like that, yeah. Depending on how many of us he can strong-arm into helping him.” He scanned the yard, as though envisioning the scene. “Dad gets a real kick out of watching the kids when they come to see it all,” he said before his eyes touched hers again. “And I know he'd be disappointed if they showed up and there was nothing to see. Here. Take this end.”

He handed Roxie the plug end of the lights, slowly walking backward, patiently untangling as he went, just as he patiently dealt with his father's foibles every day…and she understood. Why he was out here freezing his butt off, why he put up with Gene's nagging, all of it. Because for all their differences, their bond was indissoluble. Although to be honest, it almost made her mad, that someone so obviously devoted to his family couldn't see his way clear to start one of his own.