A Date With the Other Side (13 page)

Gran huffed a little as she walked faster to keep up with the mob. The road was pitted and gravel strewn, so Shelby put her hand on Gran’s elbow to keep her steady.

“Shelby, I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s Boston who’s causing all the activity in the house.”

“Like he’s a psychic or something?” God, that was a horrible thought. If he could conjure up dead people, she was really going to have a hard time relaxing around him. Imagining a spectral vision hanging over her shoulder while they were getting intimate was definitely going to cause performance anxiety.

Not that it appeared he wanted to get intimate with her anymore, given the fact that he was as absent as the ghosts.

“I just think maybe he’s agitating the house somehow, with-out meaning to. I think maybe you should ask Boston to help you out with the tour.”

Shelby actually laughed out loud. “Gran, he hates the tour. He’s not going to join me as co-host.”

“Well, just ask him to be in the house for the later tour. He’s a nice man, honey, he’ll help you out if he thinks you might lose business. If it’s one thing that man understands, it’s the bottom line.” Gran gave her a sharp look. “Besides, if a man’s going to stick his hands down your pants, the least he can do is help you out now and again.”

Stumbling on a rock, Shelby felt her face heat. “Uh…” She’d suspected Gran had seen her with Boston on the porch, but she had never wanted to
talk
about it.

Gran smirked. “Now don’t be embarrassed. I know all about the birds and the bees, Shelby Louise. And I was thinking you might want to run to that new CVS and buy yourself some condoms.”

Even better. Her grandmother was recommending birth control. Shelby just nodded, not sure what the right thing to say was when discussing your sex life with a geriatric relative.

“Now, are you going to be home for dinner tonight? I was thinking of having you pick up some chicken.”

“Actually, I’m having dinner out at the farm with Danny. He called me yesterday.”

Thoughts racing ahead to the fact that she should probably pick up some dessert to take, she was only half listening to Gran.

“Smart idea. Play one off against the other.”

When the words finally filtered through, she stared at her grandmother. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing.” She smiled with a smugness that wasn’t all proper for an old lady, in Shelby’s opinion.

Gran’s old Pontiac took all the bumps in the dirt road with a loud rattle, a heaving bounce, and the threat of just dying altogether. Shelby figured if the car quit, it wouldn’t matter at this point. She could walk the rest of the way up the road to Danny’s house.

The farm lay silent, baking in the summer sun, the soybeans pushing toward the sky, looking hearty and hale. She drove past the big farmhouse where Danny’s parents lived and waved to Mr. Tucker on his tractor. She’d always loved her in-laws, the warm stable way they ran their lives, unlike her flighty mother and never-to-be-seen-again father.

In fact, she’d loved a lot of things about her years as Danny’s wife. She had been young, and more than a little frightened, but she’d wound up enjoying her role as housekeeper, cook, and occasional beer-fetcher. She’d figured that if she was happy, what did it matter that she didn’t have a thriving career?

Sure, she worked hard around the house, but Danny also worked hard in the fields, and at the end of the day it had all been equal.

It wasn’t monotony, or drudgery, or hatred of the farm that had driven her to a divorce. And if she hadn’t miscarried, she was certain she never would have left him. But she didn’t have a child, and had put off Danny every time he’d suggested later in their marriage that they give parenthood another go. Because she had known if she had a child, she couldn’t leave.

And while she loved Danny and the farm, she had just known something was missing. He didn’t make her toes curl, never did, and didn’t a girl deserve a shot at some toe-curling before she died?

It had seemed fair enough, but as Shelby let the car wheeze to a halt in front of the smaller ranch-style house Danny lived in, she wondered if she was just a fool. It had been three years and her toes hadn’t even so much as wiggled until Boston had come to town. And while he could curl her toes clear back to her heels, he couldn’t give her much more than that.

With a sigh, she hauled her melancholy self out of the car, cherry pie in hand, and went to the door.

Danny let her in with a grin and a hug, and she forced a smile back. It wasn’t his fault she was a wreck.

Sniffing the pie, Danny took it from her. “Cherry? Man, that smells good. Did you bake it yourself, sugar? You always had a way with pies.”

“No, no time. I bought it.” Though his offhand compliment made her suddenly want to cry. As did the familiar furnishings and knickknacks around the little house.

They’d picked out those plaid sofas together at a going-out-of-business sale in Wilmington. Moving into the L-shaped kitchen, she saw he’d never taken down the green gingham curtains she’d hung, and the little rooster painting she’d found at a garage sale still perched over the two-person table. It had been well over a year since she’d been in the house, and at the time she hadn’t even noticed he hadn’t changed a thing, but for some reason now it landed on her like a tipped cow.

“Want anything to drink?”

“Just some water.” Shelby peeked out the back door window and saw that the garden was full of weeds and hadn’t been planted that year. She’d spent many pleasant days fending off dandelions and slugs in that plot of land. “No garden?”

“No time to keep up with it. My mom still has hers and I snag some fresh stuff from her.”

Shelby opened the back door and stepped out onto the deck. Danny already had the grill fired up, smoke pouring out from under the lid. She smiled at him, taking in the view of the endless acres of fields, alternating between fallow and thriving with soybeans. “So, what’s on the menu?”

Plopping herself down on a plastic lawn chair, she listened to the steady mechanical spray of the irrigation system watering the crops, and the underlying hum of insects.

“Steak and potatoes. And a salad, but I mangled the tomatoes trying to cut them, so it doesn’t look pretty.”

Shelby laughed. “If it’s edible, what do I care what it looks like? Let me help you, though.”

When she went to stand back up, his hand fell on her shoulder. “No, you sit. I’ve got it.”

Something about the tone of his voice made her look closer at him. Danny had actually never invited her to dinner before. He wasn’t much of a cook. Plus he was wearing a green polo shirt stretched a little tight across his broad chest, with nice khaki shorts. Danny almost never wore anything above the waist but a T-shirt or his bare skin.

The picnic table was set too, with a cheerful yellow plastic tablecloth, held down by plates and a pitcher of lemonade. The paper napkins sported little red cherries on them. Alarm rushed through her. Either Danny had been watching
Martha Stewart Living
during his free time, or he wanted to tell her something.

Like maybe he was getting remarried.

Alarm kicked up a notch to extreme agitation, which didn’t make sense, but she didn’t stop to dissect her reaction. Who would Danny marry? As far as she knew, he hadn’t dated anyone in six months or so, and he didn’t really have the opportunity to meet women outside of Cuttersville.

Was he dying? No, he looked just as healthy as always. She sipped the water he gave her and pondered the possibility of him selling his house and clearing out, heading off to Vegas to be a blackjack dealer or something.

That was probably what Brady would be doing in a couple years, but it wasn’t Danny. He loved the farm, and wouldn’t leave it.

They talked about the weather and the crops and Shelby’s tour while Danny cooked the steaks, and the whole while she was thinking, worrying, wondering.

Finally he sat down across from her, a full plate of food in front of each of them. Shelby took a bite of her juicy steak and started to chew.

“Shel, what would you think about getting back together? I really want you to come home.”

The meat stuck in her cheek, and Shelby stared at Danny. That was absolutely the one possibility she hadn’t considered. “I’m so glad you’re not dying!” she blurted out. Not to mention she was secretly a little bit thrilled he didn’t want to marry someone else, which was just tacky of her.

His brow wrinkled. “Dying? Why would you think I’m dying? Shoot, I haven’t even had a cold in over two years.”

Looking at his brawny, sunburned body, she thought death did seem a little far-fetched. “Well, you invited me over for dinner, and here you are, wearing a nice shirt that looks like you even ironed it. There’s cute little napkins and steak. I figured you had to tell me something.”

Danny’s face turned pink like the inside of her filet. “Damn, I’m that obvious, huh?”

“Not totally, since I thought you wanted me to help you plan your funeral, and it doesn’t seem that’s what you had in mind.” The whole impact of what he’d said finally hit her. Get back together with Danny.

Oh God. She didn’t want that.

Her cheerful gingham curtains fluttered at the window behind Danny’s head. Or did she?

Shelby tried to evict the obnoxious little doubts. Of course she didn’t. Nothing had changed in three years. She loved Danny like a brother, and coveting comfort and drapery was not a reason to remarry him. There still wouldn’t be any passion between them.

“No.” Danny reached over the table and lifted her hand into his. “I want you to come back, Shel.”

“It’s been three years,” she said weakly, her thoughts as mucked up as her old garden.

“So? It’s no secret between us I never wanted you to leave in the first place. I was hoping that now that you’ve been on your own, you’ll see that there wasn’t anything wrong with what we had.”

She started to open her mouth, to what purpose she didn’t know, since she couldn’t think of a thing to say, but Danny stopped her by holding up his hand.

“Hear me out, honey. Look, we dated in high school, got married right after, and I can understand that maybe you never had a chance to be on your own, look after yourself, and I respected your wanting to do that. But sometimes being on your own is just lonely.”

Shelby tried to remove her hand from his. She wasn’t lonely. She was perfectly fine living with Gran and running a two-bit tour.

“I’m lonely, and I think you are too. You loved being here on the farm, I know that, and I think you still care about me.”

She stopped tugging and said softly, “I do, Danny. You know that.”

He nodded. “I know. And I also know you’ve got the hots for that city boy.”

Pinned in his grip, she sank into her chair and glanced back down at her plate. This was surely embarrassing. If Danny was on to her feelings about Boston, who else knew? “What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on, I see him sniffing around you, and the way you look at him. You get all nervous and giggly.”

What? “I do not giggle!”

“Yes, you do. And it doesn’t matter. Because you know and I know and he knows that anything between the two of you is just about sex. He’s leaving in just a couple months and men like him don’t marry girls like you.”

That sounded insulting.

“With you and me, it’s never been about sex.”

Hah. That was the whole damn problem. She wanted it to be about sex.

“We’re about building a home together, a life, a family. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have as the mother of my children.”

Dang it. Just when she was all set to be mad at him and tell him to shove it, he had to go and be sweet. “Oh, Danny.”

“So here’s what I’m thinking. You go and have your little summer affair with Fancy Pants, get it out of your system, and then when he dumps you, we’ll talk again.”

Shelby was surprised when her jaw didn’t actually make contact with her plate. It certainly felt like it had free-fallen. “Danny Tucker!”

“What? It’s a good plan.” He used his free hand, the one that wasn’t holding her hostage, to unbutton his top shirt button. “Damn thing’s strangling me.”

Better his shirt than her. “So you’re saying you don’t mind if I go off and have a wild sexually experimental affair with a Samson executive.” Shelby didn’t bother to contain the sarcasm in her voice, but Danny didn’t seem to notice.

His eyebrow twitched a little, and his jaw locked, but he shook his head. “I don’t like the idea, but I can live with it, if we get back together in the end. I’m trying to be mature about the whole thing, and I don’t want you to feel stifled or have any regrets. Especially since I’d like to work on getting you pregnant right away.”

Mature wasn’t what she called the whole idea. It was preposterous, insulting, bizarre, doomed to failure. And on some level, appealing.

Shelby stuffed a forkful of potato into her mouth so she wouldn’t voice that little psychotic thought out loud. What was the matter with her? Sane women didn’t go around contemplating reuniting with the husband they’d left. Certainly not after indulging in a decadent sexual fling with a man all wrong for them, allowing them to cling to the memories for the rest of their long, happy, loving, calm, and sexless lives.

Obviously she wasn’t sane, because she was considering just that.

Danny raised some good points, damn him. She could never have a relationship with Boston, wasn’t even sure she wanted one. He was a controlling workaholic who’d rather be anywhere than Cuttersville. Even if he did suddenly lose his mind and decide she was more interesting than all the skinny career women he knew, she couldn’t leave Cuttersville.

But if she had an affair with him, and he left, she’d be worse off than before. Alone and sexually awakened, to boot. Unless she fell in with Danny’s nuttier-than-a-fruitcake plan and married him again. Hadn’t she just been feeling nostalgic for the farm?

It was a great place to raise kids…

“Oh, Lord, I need some time to myself to think about this. I’ve gotta go.” Shelby stood up so fast she knocked over her white chair, and the plastic bounced on the deck.

“Shelby.” Danny came around the table but she was already cutting through the kitchen, desperate to escape.