Husband Under Construction (19 page)

For a moment, Roxie considered telling her uncle about losing the baby, only to decide he really didn't need to know, that it would only make things more complicated. He'd worry, is what he'd do. Or go after Jeff with a pitchfork. And heaven knew, neither of them needed that.

Leave the past in the past, cupcake,
she thought, looking outside at the gentle snow, like glittering pearls in the December dusk. Perfect for taking Stanley for a walk, to hopefully exorcise both the ickies from her brain and at least some of Stanley's puppy crazies. Not that she held out
much hope for either, but it might be the last time she got to walk in the snow for a while, Austin not being generally known for its winter activities.

Bundled back up, the dog turning himself inside out trying to chew his new leash, she called to Charley—who'd disappeared upstairs—“Taking the dog for a walk!” and let them both outside, where the crisp, cold air soothed her frazzled nerves. And the deep hush as they shuffled through the confectioner-sugar snow—well, she shuffled, Stanley bounced—seemed to penetrate her very being.

Now that Thea had taken the helm at the clinic, there really was no reason for her to stick around. All the eBay auctions were done and the pieces shipped, the rest of Mae's things sorted and in storage for the estate sale she'd hold in six months or so. And Charley was on the brink of starting his new life with Eden, which Roxie gratefully realized she was more happy about than not.

“Guess it's time, Stanley,” she said to the dog.

Then she shrieked when Noah said, “Time for what?” right behind her.

 

He hadn't meant to stalk her. Exactly. But when he walked out of his parents' house and saw her and the puppy starting down the street, something—sheer idiocy, most likely—pushed him after her.

“Where on earth did you come from?” she said, blinking at him as if he'd materialized out of thin air.

“Stopped by my folks' to give Dad an update. Saw you when I came out. Guess you didn't notice me in the snow.”

“Um, no.” She glanced away, then back. “How's your dad doing?”

“Excellent, actually. If the docs say it's okay, he and
Mom are going on a cruise, right after Christmas. To the Caribbean.”

“Aw…that'll be nice.”

The snow gently pinging their faces, they stood there like a couple of doofuses, Roxie apparently not knowing what to say any more than Noah. To break the awkwardness, if that was even possible, he squatted in front of the puppy, who bounded over to Noah like he'd been waiting to meet him his whole life. “Who's this?”

“Stanley. I got him for Charley. From the pound.”

“Hey, guy,” Noah said, laughing when the thing tried to heave himself into Noah's lap. “What is he?”

“Dog. Like one of those little sponge critters you put water on, you don't know what you've got until it's done growing.”

The puppy having abandoned him to bark at the snow, Noah stood, chuckling despite the sting of seeing her again. His own damn fault, to be sure, nobody'd told him to follow her, to stir up again all those feelings he'd tried so hard to bury in work. “He'll be a good friend to Charley.”

“Although he'll have to share him with Eden. She's moving in. As soon as I'm gone, apparently.”

“With the rat dog?”

Roxie laughed. “I know,” she said, watching Stanley chase his own tail, then fall over in the snow. “Should be interesting.”

“You are so evil.”

“I do what I can,” she said, grinning up at him. “Anyway, Charley and Eden seem happy enough. But…would you and your folks mind keeping an eye out? Make sure he's okay?”

“You don't even have to ask, you know that.”

She nodded, then they spoke together:

“So when are you going—?”

“I'm leaving tomorrow—”

Noah lost his breath. “Tomorrow? That soon?”

“Yeah, we found my replacement at the clinic. Everything's done here…there's no real reason for me to stick around.” The dog yanked on the leash, nearly knocking her off balance. “Toss my clothes into a few suitcases and…head out. Rest of my stuff's in storage, I'll get it after I find my own place.”

“Bet you can't wait,” Noah said. Grumpily.

He thought maybe her eyes watered. “That's why I'm not,” she whispered, then leaned forward, standing up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. As she lowered herself he grabbed her hand.

“I really do wish you the best,” he pushed past the pain in his chest. “Because nobody deserves getting what she wants more than you.”

A tiny smile touched her lips. “Thank you,” she said, then tugged the puppy to continue their journey. A journey on which Noah was clearly not invited.

And he had nobody but himself to blame for that.

E
lise Sugihara-Dickson looked, dressed and sounded exactly the same as she had in college, even if her shorter hair and all-black wardrobe—velvet leggings, flats with rhinestone-studded toes and a cowl-neck sweater the size of a circus tent to cover her enormous baby bump—were definitely much spiffier than the grungy Salvation Army getups the gal used to sport back in the day.

And the store—Oh. My. God. Cozily snuggled between a trendy, upscale clothing boutique and an equally trendy Asian fusion restaurant in downtown Austin, Fly Away Home was the stuff dreams were made of. At least Roxie's dreams, she thought as she tried to take it all in at once. Lord, she'd never seen so many pretties congregated in one two-story space in her life.

“Would it sound hugely unsophisticated of me to say, ‘Wow'?”

Although the store was closed on Sundays, Elise had
brought Roxie to see the place without the distraction of customers and her other employees. Now she grinned. “Hell, I say pretty much the same thing every morning when I walk in,” she said in her rapid-fire Southern accent. “Fun, huh?”

“Fun? It's practically a theme park.”

“I know, right?” her old friend said, and they both laughed. From the moment they'd reconnected, it was as if no time had passed at all, their easy friendship picking up exactly where they'd left off. It had been nearly three in the morning before they got to bed, after Elise's husband, Patrick, finally lumbered out of their bedroom and pointed out the time. Roxie had forgotten how good it felt to have another gal to talk to.

“So you built this up all on your own?”

“Oh, Lord, no. Although the inventory's turned over several times since I bought the place about five, six years ago, from this dude who'd decided to retire. He had some neat stuff even then, and the location is
fabulous.
So when he offered me a deal I couldn't turn down, I jumped on it. 'Course, I'll be paying him off until I'm dead,” she said with a shrug, “but it's totally worth it.”

Her eyes as big as a kid's in a candy store, Roxie moved through a dozen vignettes, each one done in a different period, from early nineteenth century to art nouveau to midcentury modern to contemporary. “Where do you find all this stuff?”

“Estate sales, buying trips overseas. Wherever. You like it?”

“Are you kidding? I love it. All of it.” She picked up a gorgeous art deco painted glass vase. “Especially since this is so not our mothers' antique store.”

“You got it. Nice to know our tastes still mesh as well
as they did when we were sharing that dinky house near campus.”

Roxie howled. “Ohmigosh, now I'm gonna have nightmares for a week. God, that place was ugly.”

“Hey. At the time we thought we were seriously stylin'. That lime-green bathroom
rocked,
baby.”

“Because it went so well with the burnt-orange shag carpet in the rest of the house.”

“No, it
distracted
from the orange shag. As did the purple walls.”

Roxie held up one finger. “Not purple.
Grape Mist.
”

“Thank God there's no evidence. If there'd been Facebook then, my career would be screwed—”

Elise's cell rang. She pulled it out of a hidden pocket in her sweater tent, chuckling when she checked the number. “The hubster. Suffers from heavy-duty pregnancy guilt, poor baby. Checks in at least once an hour to see how I'm doing. This won't take long. Go ahead and keep looking around.”

The sting came out of nowhere. Honestly. Here she was, dream job landed, reconnected with a great friend…and about to tip over the edge from somebody else's domestic bliss? So lame.

Wasn't as if you left anything behind in Tierra Rosa, right?

If you didn't count her heart, not a thing.

She'd get over it, of course. Over Noah. Pining for what wasn't rightfully hers—and never had been—wasn't her style. God knew she was nothing if not a survivor, that for all its wounds, her heart kept on beating…and would find its way back to her, as it always had before.

Her life as a Celine Dion song. Yay, a new low.

“Rox? Hey. What's up?”

She spun around to find Elise frowning at her with don't
mess-with-me eyes. Too bad. “I think last night just caught up with me.”

“Tell me about it,” her friend said, yawning, then waved her toward the door. “Definitely seeing naps in both of our near futures. Oh, by the way…” She let Rox out first, then set the alarm before following. “Wanna check out a couple of local estate sales this weekend?”

Roxie glanced back, her thumb jerked over her shoulder. “Because it's not crammed to the rafters already in there?”

“Believe it or not, it doesn't stick around. If a piece doesn't find a home with a client or sell off the floor within three months, I eBay it. So there's always room for more! So, you up for some shopping?”

“Bring it on,” Rox said, embracing the thrill of the hunt. That old optimism that everything she wanted was simply waiting for her to find it. And while she was at it? Maybe she could find a spare heart for cheap.

'Cause she needed to plug up this hole in her chest, fast.

 

For as long as Noah could remember Christmas mornings at his parents' house had been crazy. Factor in six grandkids under the age of seven, and it was flat-out insane. In the best definition of the word.

And normally Noah was right on the floor with them, tossing wadded up wrapping paper at his brothers and making Blue bark and his mom go, “Noah, for pity's sake!” at least every thirty seconds. This Christmas, however, even though he was still on the floor, still laughing when the kids crawled all over him, still genuinely touched by his mother's uncanny ability to give them all exactly the right gifts whether they'd dropped hints or not…he simply wasn't feeling the joy.

Nor was he doing a particularly good job of hiding it, if the not-so-subtle exchanged glances between assorted adult members of the family was any indication.

At long last the Great Christmas Carnage was over, the kids had all claimed assorted corners of the family room to play with their new toys, and all the females except Tess, who was feeding the baby, had swarmed into the kitchen where his mother was hollering out who wanted bacon and who wanted sausage, and did everybody want French toast or pancakes, she could do either, it wasn't any bother.

Exactly like every Christmas since he could remember.

Only this year, Noah felt as if somebody'd ripped a hole in his heart the size of the Grand Canyon. How the morning could make him miss Roxie so much, when she'd never been a part of his family's Christmases, he had no idea. But for damn sure, he wasn't “getting over” her. If anything, every day the painful irony only got worse.

Silas plopped beside him on the beat-up sectional, lightly slapping Noah's knee before crossing his arms high on his chest, his brows dipped behind his glasses. Groaning, Noah let his head drop back on the cushions.

“Let me guess—you drew the short straw.”

“Oh, they didn't even bother with straws, just pointed and said, ‘You're the oldest, you go talk to him.'”

“Nothing to talk about.”

“Bull. You look like a dog left behind at the pound. Come on.” Silas slapped Noah's knee again as he got up. “Get your coat, we're going outside.”

“And if I don't want to?”

“It's me or Mom. Choose wisely, grasshopper.”

Pushing out a heavy breath, Noah heaved himself out of the nice, soft cushions, grabbed his coat off the arm of the
sofa and followed his brother outside into the frigid, blue-skied morning, the sun glinting off patches of frozen snow.

“Here's a news flash, bro,” Silas said before they got to the end of the walk. “It's not a crime to be in love.”

Nothing like coming straight to the point. “What makes you think—?”

“You're not seriously gonna argue?”

Noah was quiet for a long moment, then said, “I honest-to-God never thought it would happen. Not to me.”

“So I gathered.”

Jiggling his keys in his coat pocket, Noah frowned at his brother. “Except…if this is love, how come it hurts so much?”

Silas quietly chuckled. “You remember how we used to wrestle? When we were kids?”

“Like I could forget. I've
still
got bruises.”

“As does Mom, I'm sure. But do you also remember that the more you struggled after you got pinned, the more it hurt?”

“And that if I didn't I'd get creamed. Or suffocate.”

“Okay, so maybe not the best analogy. Still. Love's a lot like that. Once you stop resisting, it stops hurting. So.” Silas crossed his arms. “You got any idea why you're fighting so hard?”

Another several seconds passed before Noah released another, softer, “I think so, yeah.”

“Care to share?”

Noah's gaze landed on Charley's house across the street, a house without Roxie, as he wrestled with himself, about whether or not to give voice to the phantom thoughts he'd kept locked up in the back of his brain for so long he'd almost stopped hearing them. Until some curly-headed gal unwittingly unlocked their cage and set them free to run amok, screaming like freaking banshees in his ear.

“What difference does it make?” he said, his voice as harsh as the wind whipping down their ice-covered street. “I'm here. She's not. I can't leave, and I sure can't ask her to come back. Especially since…”

“Go on.”

Noah looked away, his breath frosting around his mouth. “Since I seriously doubt I could ever live up to the example our folks set.”

Silas gawked at him. “You're kidding me, right?”

“Nope.”

“Wow. Nothing like being a little hard on yourself.”

“It's called being realistic. And honest. And Roxie…no way would she ever settle for something half-assed. Or should she.”

Silas flipped up his jacket collar against the back of his neck, the wind ruffling his hair. “So…the feelings are mutual?”

“Yeah,” Noah said, already irritated for having said as much as he had. Although the release felt good, too. Then he laughed. “All the boneheaded things I used to do without even batting an eye? This makes me feel like I'm gonna hurl. That I don't know
how
to love somebody, that I'd screw it up, that I've
already
screwed up. That…” He pushed a swallow past his constricted throat, the wind making his eyes sting. “That I've lost her.”

His gaze swung to Silas, who was angled away from him with his hands shoved in his pockets and his head bent, his mouth set. His brother's “thinking hard” pose, he knew. “Before,” Noah went on, his heart knocking against his ribs, “either I knew I'd succeed or it didn't matter. But this…” The frigid air scraped his lungs when he hauled in a breath. “I don't have an idea in hell whether I'd be any good at this or not. And failure's not an option.”

Several beats passed before Silas released a breath, then
looked at Noah again, his expression more relaxed. “For what it's worth, we've all been there. Nothing scarier than putting your heart out there.”

“But you got married anyway. All of you. Even Jesse, and he was only
eighteen,
for God's sake.”

“Don't discount ignorance,” Silas said on a short, dry laugh. “It definitely has its uses.” He glanced out at the street again. “What about kids?”

Yeah. That. Noah gave his head a sharp shake. “How one woman could turn everything I believed about myself on its head…I don't get it.”

“Nobody does,” Silas said, sympathetically clamping a hand on his shoulder. “Not that everyone who falls in love automatically thinks ‘I wanna make babies with this person,' but it happens often enough to keep the species going.” He let go to lean against the chunky stone pillar housing an old gas lantern that hadn't worked in years. “All of us go into this commitment thing blind,” he said, “even when we think we've got a clue. And Mom and Dad would be the first ones to say that.”

Noah frowned. “But…after Amy…?”

“How did I find the courage to try again?” He shrugged. “I don't think it's so much about finding it, as it is not ducking fast enough before it clobbers you over the head. It's just this voice that says…this is right. Along with, I suppose, a determination to
keep
it right. Of course, both people have to be on the same page about that,” he said with a slight grimace, referring—Noah assumed—to his first wife's definite lack in that department.

“Dad! Uncle Noah!” Sunlight glanced off Ollie's straight blond hair when he opened the front door. “Gramma says to tell you breakfast's ready!”

“Coming, squirt,” Silas said, then looked back at Noah. “So what are you going to do?”

“Hang myself?” Noah said, plowing his fingers through his hair. “It's not like I can simply up and leave, is it? All those years I've busted my buns to prove to Dad he can count on me…what
can
I do? Tell him, after less than a month, I've changed my mind? That some
girl
is more important than the business he spent his entire adult life building?”

“Is that all Roxie is? Some girl?”

His face heating, Noah looked away. “If she was, we wouldn't be having this conversation.” Air left his lungs in a huge rush. “Man, am I between a rock and a hard place, or what?”

“Sure looks like it,” Silas said, not being helpful at all. “But on the upside, at least now we all know you're human.”

“Butthead,” Noah muttered at his brother's grin, hugely tempted to cram a fistful of snow down his collar.

 

“You sure you don't want me to help?” Roxie asked Elise's husband, Patrick, as he carted off what was left of the ham to the kitchen. Both sets of Elise's and Patrick's boisterous, energetic parents had already gone, leaving behind a startled calm and a boatload of dirty dishes.