The Fountain of Infinite Wishes (Dare River Book 5) (27 page)

“That sounds like Gail,” he said, laughing, happy she could affect him so.

When Shelby checked her phone, her happiness seemed to fade. She turned her ringer off and flipped her phone facedown onto the counter.
 

“Who are you evading?” he asked, going over to rub her shoulders.

She tilted her head to the side to give him better access. “Mama.”

Shelby had told him about her and Sadie’s interaction with Mama at Rye’s house. It roused the suspicion Vander had held since he first took their case—Louisa was hiding something.
 

“What does she want?”

She moved out of his arms and opened the refrigerator, grabbing a pitcher of sweet tea. “Nothing.”

Shelby was one of the most outspoken women he’d met, one of the many things he enjoyed about her. “It’s not like you to hold back from me.”

Pouring the tea into not one but two glasses she’d selected from the cabinet, she made a face. “Trust me. This is one thing you’ll be happy I don’t share.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. “We agreed to be honest with each other. I don’t want that to change. Why don’t you let me be the judge of what I want to hear?”

She slid an infernal glass of sweet tea his way, and he took it because she was clearly on autopilot. “My mama is insisting you come to Sunday family dinner this weekend to meet everyone. She’s called me every day about it. I mean, she basically strong-armed Jake into coming even before he started dating Susannah, but this is ridiculous.”

Family dinner? Already? “Doesn’t she think it’s a little early for that?”

Shelby ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “Apparently not. I’ve…”

“You,” he encouraged, taking her hand and searching her brown eyes.

“I’ve apparently never looked like I do right now,” she said, releasing a huge breath. “I wish everyone would leave me alone.”

“How do you look?” he asked, although he knew. He’d seen her when she was all business at Gail’s, and on the other end of the spectrum, he’d watched her come undone over her father. Lately, all he’d seen was a happy, sexy, beautiful woman. Seeing her like that made him feel like he’d taken his own happy pill.

“Like I have someone special,” she drawled. “Are you having fun teasing me?”

“Shelby, I’m not teasing you,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, Charlie told me I was acting differently too.”

“She did?” Her question was flush with hope.

“Yes,” he said. “I was embarrassed.”

“I understand that,” she said. “I know we’ve just started dating—”

“But we both have said this is different for us,” he finished for her. “You know I’ll come on Sunday. My only concern is how we’re going to handle me already knowing your sisters and brother.”

“It’s an uncomfortable situation all around, isn’t it? That’s why I was trying to think of some way out of it.”

But if they kept seeing each other—and he had no reason to believe they wouldn’t—it was inevitable he’d meet her family. It was what people who cared about each other did, especially when someone’s family was as important to them as Shelby’s was to her.
 

“Maybe we face it straight away. Then it will lose its bite.”

“It’s as bad as a bite from a rabid pit bull, if you ask me,” Shelby said, making him laugh.

“You do have a colorful way of saying things,” he said, bringing her close to him and running his hands up and down her arms. “Why don’t you talk to J.P., Susannah, and Sadie about it? I think the cover Sadie gave Rye works just fine. Gail did refer you to me, after all. There’s no lie in that.”

“But it’s not the full truth, either,” she said, resting her head against his chest. “I don’t want to lie about how we met, Vander. It’s not a good way to start things off.”

“Do you see a way around it? Why don’t you ask J.P? He has a good head on his shoulders. We can talk to him together if you’d like. He’s a great guy.” Someone he could imagine calling a friend.

“Yes, he is,” she agreed. “I’ll talk to him. Dagnabit, I wish Mama felt differently about all this. Sometimes I want to yell at her.”

She was heating up in his arms. “Maybe yelling would do you good. You seem to have a lot of anger. How about you yell at me? Tell me what you’d tell your mother if you could say anything to her.”

There were tears in her eyes when she pushed away. He wanted to take back his words, but it was too late. “Never mind that,” he said instead. “How about I just hold you a bit? Then we can go to dinner and order a whole bunch of desserts?”

“I really must be worrying you,” she said, wiping at a tear.

She was, but only because he cared about her. “How about I find a way to make you feel better?”

He lowered his mouth to hers and made her sigh.

They were late for their reservation, but they made up for it by feasting on every chocolate dessert the restaurant had to offer.

Chapter 24

The prospect of meeting Shelby’s family made Vander’s belly quiver as he drove to her house. Normally, the only thing that made that happen was when someone pulled a gun or a knife on him when he was working, which was thankfully a rarity.

Was he really doing this? It seemed too soon if he took a step back and looked at things logically. Somewhere inside him, though, there was a deep certainty he was right where he was supposed to be.
 

Funny, that’s how he’d felt after retuning to Nashville against his mother’s wishes. He’d seen the Cumberland River and known deep down in his bones he’d been right to listen to his gut and return to the place of his birth, the place of his father’s murder.

He’d never regretted the breach his decision had caused with his mother and her family. They rarely spoke. She’d tried to forget everything that had happened in Nashville—like she’d tried to make him do—and stunted herself into a shallow, bitter woman. It hurt that she’d chosen to live that way, but he couldn’t do the same.
 

When Vander arrived at Shelby’s place, he was filled with a crazy sense of elation at the thought of seeing her, holding her, kissing her. He felt like hundreds of fireworks had exploded inside him when she opened the door after his first knock. There was a sassy grin on her face, and she was wearing a yellow cotton dress.

“Hi there,” she said in her most syrupy drawl, grabbing his tie and pulling his mouth to hers.

He groaned as her lips fitted against his and her perfume wafted over him. This whole week they’d taken a liberal interpretation of the goodnight kiss, devoting an hour to it each night, and while he was aching with desire for her, he wouldn’t have it any other way. But Christ, he had never wanted a woman this much. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

Since he didn’t want to start their outing with a hard-on, he pulled back. Her mouth followed, and he found himself kissing her again, that lush, sweet mouth that held nothing back.

“All right,” he said, finally putting his hands on her shoulders and creating space between them. “That’s enough.”

She gave a pout. “Oh, poo. You’re such a spoilsport sometimes.”

His brow rose. “Oh, poo?” he asked. “Tell me you just didn’t say that.”

“I don’t need you making fun of my colloquialisms.” Crossing to the entryway table, she checked her makeup and picked up her purse. “Are you as nervous as I am? I wish Mama hadn’t pushed this. She even asked me where you were this morning when I went to church. I told her I didn’t know if you were a church-going man. You aren’t, are you?”

He took a moment to answer, knowing this was the kind of question that could change things between them. But he had to be truthful. “No, I’m not. We went when I was a kid, but after my father’s murder, my mother stopped attending. I respect other people’s beliefs, but the whole God thing isn’t for me. I still can’t reconcile how a God who is supposed to be loving and kind would allow a man like my father to be murdered. Or millions of other people to suffer like they do.”

She nodded, and he could feel her mood shift as surely as the wind. “I don’t understand that either, honestly. I try and focus on the good things in life and ask God for help when times are tough. I find comfort in that, knowing there’s divine support.”

He needed to touch her, to assure them both that their different viewpoints weren’t an obstacle. His finger caressed her cheek. “Does it change how you feel about me?”
 

When she put her hand on his chest and looked into his eyes, he released the breath he’d been holding. She hadn’t said the words, but he knew she was falling in love with him—just as he was falling for her.

 
“My daddy was a church-going man. Look how that turned out. So was my only long-term boyfriend in college, and he showed his true colors too. I’d…rather be with a good, honest man. That’s what you are.”

Relief washed over him as he kissed her softly, slowly on the lips. “I’m glad.”

“I’ll warn you, though, Mama will work on you about the church thing,” she told him with a frown. “She did it with Jake, but then again, Jake was hurting pretty bad from PTSD. His best friend was killed in Iraq, and he survived. It’s haunted him, but Mama helped him find his way.”

“Violence and death leave deep scars,” he said, feeling the pain in his own heart. “It’s the twenty-fifth anniversary of my father’s death this year, and I’m…always thinking about it, especially this time of year.” Except he wasn’t as much. Suddenly he felt guilty for that.

She caressed his face. “How could you not think about it? He was taken from you in the worst way possible when you were just a boy.”

His chest was growing tight. The hurt he hadn’t been thinking much about since Shelby had come into his life loomed large in his mind, as if waiting for him to give it attention.
 

“Charlie thinks I need to let him go, but I can’t.” He looked into Shelby’s eyes and found himself wanting to share the memories he did have, the only ones he had left. “I remember how he’d come home in his uniform and read me a book before bed. He’d do all the voices. He was great at that.” And then he would call Vander his little bear and wish him happy dreams before kissing him goodnight.

Vander hadn’t had happy dreams since his daddy’s murder.

“He was a great dad. I wish I’d told him that more.”

Shelby wrapped her arms around him, and he felt comforted by the hands soothing the tight muscles of his back. “I’m not a good person to talk about letting go,” she told him. “J.P. said he’s mostly made his peace with Daddy leaving, but this search dredged things up. Mostly, I can’t seem to stop asking questions that start with why. Mama says they’re the worst kind you can ask. They kill your joy.”

Her mother wasn’t wrong, but it was human nature to ask them. “Maybe we can help each other let go. I haven’t thought about his anniversary as much because of you.”

She leaned back and gazed at him. “I’m glad.”

“I…don’t go to his gravesite to remember him,” Vander confessed. “Only Charlie knows where I go.”

Her hand came to rest on his cheek, and he found the courage to keep going. “I have a drink of his favorite bourbon—Bulleit—from his flask in the alley where he was murdered.”

“Oh, honey,” Shelby said, fitting him to her again.

“I remember teasing him about drinking something named after the bullets he put in his gun,” he continued, feeling raw to the core. “Dad used to say drinking bullets in liquid form made him invincible to the real ones. It was his way of assuring me he’d be safe on the streets when I’d cling to him before he left for work. Of course, it didn’t make him invincible at all.”

“What about your mama?” she asked.

“She wasn’t invincible either,” he said sadly and proceeded to tell her the rest, everything from their move to Boston and her and her family’s indifference about the past to their ultimate rift when he’d decided to go back to Nashville for college.

“Come with me,” Shelby said when he was finished, taking his hand and leading him into the family room. She laid on the couch and stretched out her arms. “You need some holding.”

His chest was growing tighter by the moment, and he needed to regain control of himself, especially before they left to meet her family. “I’m fine.”

The look she gave him could have scorched the sidewalk and left a mark. “Come here, Vander.”

He put his hands on his hips. “Shelby, I’m fine.”

“I said, ‘Come here.’ You don’t want to mess with me just now.”

There was no mistaking her will. He’d seen her assert it before, but never quite like this. He decided not to fight her and let himself settle against her on the couch.

“Put your head on my chest,” she said, guiding him.

“My favorite place,” he joked.

He couldn’t help but grin when she swatted him. “Be quiet and let me… Oh, you’re such a man.”

“Thank you,” he said, his head resting on the best pillows in all of Tennessee if not all of the United States of America. “I seem to remember you trying to talk Sadie out of crying.”

“That was because it was in front of you,” she told him, massaging his temples softly. “You were a stranger then, and it wasn’t professional.”