Flower Girl Bride (11 page)

“Yvonne also said that you and Luke have found each other.”

Because she couldn't have put it more succinctly, all I could answer was “oh.” I didn't have to acknowledge it because she already knew it was true. It had happened with a lot of pushing and shoving from Aunt Eleanor and from Yvonne, not to mention Sam's cajoling, but that couldn't change the truth that we'd found each other.

Or the truth that I'd have to leave soon. Every hour that Luke, Sam and I spent together seemed even sweeter because it could only be temporary. Colors were more
intense. Aromas, headier. Each moment was a potential memory, and I found myself hoarding all of them. Even this two-week reprieve was just delaying the inevitable.

“You're not happy?” Eleanor asked after a long pause.

I let out a long breath. “I don't know. It's probably such a mistake. Don't get me wrong. Luke's great. But there can't be any future—”

“How do you know what the future holds?”

“I don't but…” I let my words fall away. Until she interrupted me with the question, I didn't realize that I'd mentioned the future or that I'd given away my secret wish that there might be one for Luke and me.

“You're going to have to learn to trust and wait, sweetheart. God will help you figure it all out.”

“I'll try,” I told her. I wondered if she realized what a tough assignment she'd just given me. Trust had never come easily for me, and after all I'd lived through, I'd sworn off it completely for my own health. But God and I were beginning to have an understanding, and I would try.

“While you're meditating out there, why don't you try reading Proverbs chapter three verses five and six?”

I couldn't help chuckling. Aunt Eleanor had always loved trying to come up with a Scripture to match every situation. I wondered if she'd been madly flipping through a concordance for appropriate verses even as we spoke.

“I will.”

As soon as we ended the call, I got up from my chair and returned to the house. Apparently, my table of provisions wasn't complete because I didn't have a Bible
out there with me. I hadn't even packed one when I'd left Ohio, so I went on a hunt for one. I hit the mother lode in the great room's built-in bookshelves: New International Version, New American Standard, Revised Standard and King James, even a copy of The New Oxford Annotated Bible that looked intimidatingly like a textbook.

Not a regular enough Bible student to have a preference, I grabbed one with a pretty brown leather cover, fumbled my way to Proverbs, located the third chapter and started reading. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

I had to hand it to Aunt Eleanor. She had chosen well this time. She made it sound so easy, this trusting business. If it were so easy, then why did I feel as if I was jumping off a cliff into the unknown?

 

It was all I could do not to start skipping as the three of us walked along Mantua's tiny boardwalk later that night. Not four days anymore but eighteen. I knew that eighteen would eventually be four again and then three and two, but I didn't want to think about that now, not when we were surrounded by the sounds of laughter and carnival games and the strong and competing smells of Polish sausage sandwiches and deep-fried elephant ears.

Though it was still early, colorful lights flashed around us from the Ferris wheel and the Scrambler to the sprinkling of carnival games. This was no Cedar Point. It was even a far cry from the smaller Michigan's
Adventure Amusement Park in Muskegon. Still, Sam shook with excitement. I knew just how he felt.

“Can we ride all the rides, Daddy?”

Luke looked one way and then the other, scanning the five or so rides that would be appropriate for a four-year-old, before glancing at me mischievously. “We sure can. You can ride them all twice.”

“Boy, Sam, you're sure lucky. Your daddy's really generous.”

“Look, there's tickets.” Sam shot off toward the booth that already had half a dozen people in line.

“I guess we need some tickets.” Luke started after him and then stopped, turning back and extending his hand my way. I was reading too much into it, but it felt as if he was truly reaching out to me. Offering more than friendship. Offering….

Though I was kind of expecting one of those open arms greetings—not quite with a field of daisies but close—I got a rude awaking the moment his fingers closed over mine. He took off at a jog, dragging me like a weighted rag doll behind him.

I was convinced I would cough up a lung or two before we finished the fifty-yard dash to the ticket booth. Maybe I should have spent less time admiring the beach in front of my aunt's house and more time running on it.

“Here, Daddy, I'm up here.” Sam waved madly, though there were only two people separating us from his place in line. Those two waved us up to where he was.

“You're not asthmatic, are you?”

Listening to my labored breathing, I couldn't imagine why he'd asked. “Don't you think you should
have asked me that before you dragged me across the boardwalk?”

“You're not, are you?”

I shook my head. “Good thing for you I'm just amazingly out of shape.”

He pulled our joined hands wide so that I came around to face him. His gaze lowered from the filmy, cap-sleeved blouse I had tied at the waist over an orange tank top to my faded jeans shorts to my no-back sneakers and then back up to my face.

“I think you're in great shape.”

I was about to get all flustered and red until the next comment came out of his mouth.

“You've gained some weight since you've been here—”

“What did you say?” I yanked my hand from his.

Luke had glanced at the front of the line, but now he looked back to me, a slow smile spreading. “You didn't let me finish. I was going to tell you how much healthier you look now. How much prettier. That first night you looked so pale and underfed I wondered if you were okay.”

“Did I ever tell you how much your effusive compliments embarrass me?”

“I said you looked prettier now.”

“That's true, but I doubt anything you said would read well in lines of poetry.”

“What I'm feeling just might.”

I just stared at him. I would have asked him what he meant, if we hadn't reached the front of the line right then. Luke pulled his wallet from his pocket and
plunked down enough money for an all-rides bracelet. By the time Sam was done tonight, even he would probably be sick of the motorcycles, race cars, boats and carousel horses.

After the string bracelet with its metal tab was clipped around his wrist, Sam grabbed both of our hands and pulled us to his first-choice ride. It was the motorcycles, of course. Should I have guessed anything different?

Luke directed Sam to the entrance in the circular fence surrounding the ride, and we both waved to him as he climbed aboard a metallic blue motorcycle. The chopper-style cycle was paired with another of lime-green in a bike rally that ran in circles but never reached a destination.

As the ride started and Sam and four other boys and girls two-wheeled along, blaring horns and waving all the while, a lump formed in my throat. Was this what it would be like if Luke, Sam and I stayed together forever? No, I couldn't think about that, couldn't dull the brightness tonight by asking for more than was possible.

Still, I was dying to know what Luke meant by his comment. That he loved me? Or that lines of verse could be written as an ode to my beauty?
What I'm feeling might.
I shouldn't ask, yet I had to know. I would come out of my skin tonight if I didn't.

When I turned back to him, I caught him watching me again, his expression so stark and unguarded that my hand might have reached up to touch his face if I hadn't stopped it in time. Did I look as vulnerable when he
caught me watching him? He blinked away whatever I thought I'd seen.

Luke cleared his throat a few times. It squeezed my heart to think that the awkwardness between us had returned. You would think that our discussions of bed-wetting and motion sickness would have put an end to all that.

Still, I waited. He had to have something on his mind, and I wanted to give him the chance to say it before Sam came racing back. I had a little something to tell him, too.

“These past few weeks have been great,” he said finally.

“Why do I feel a big old
but
coming on?”

He looked surprised that I'd asked it, but he gripped the round metal bar in front of him tighter. “No
but.
I've really had a nice time. I hate to admit it and I'll deny it if you ever tell her, but I'm glad my mom coerced me into coming to that anniversary party.”

What would he think if he knew I wanted to kiss his mother for making him come that day almost as much as I wanted to kiss him again? The truth was he hadn't kissed me again since those sweet moments on the boat, and I was long overdue.

“But?” I prompted again.

He shook his head, frowning. “
But
I've enjoyed our time together, and I wish it didn't have to end.”

“That's great because it doesn't have to. Not yet.”

Luke looked perplexed with a little deer-caught-in-the-headlights thrown in for good measure. I tried to ignore the deer part, concentrating on clearing his confusion instead.

“Uncle Jack and Aunt Eleanor called this afternoon from Paris. They've decided to extend their vacation for two weeks. I've agreed to stay, too, to take care of Princess. I'll be here until at least Sunday the ninth.”

Okay, I hadn't really expected cartwheels. Luke had never struck me as the cartwheel type. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect a little more than the “oh” that came out of his mouth then. Sure, he covered it with a less-than-enthusiastic “that's great,” but the “oh” hung between us and sank like a helium balloon filled with peanuts instead.

“Sunday the ninth, huh? That's great.”

I just wished he'd stop repeating it if he wasn't going to force a little enthusiasm into his voice. This wasn't making me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Cold and scratchy, maybe, but definitely not warm and fuzzy.

Eighteen days and holding…but why?

His hands gripped the rail again, and he looked as if he might say something else, but Sam saved him from another platitude by racing out the ride's exit.

“That was cool. Can I ride it again?”

Luke smiled the smile he couldn't spare for me over my so-called good news. “Why don't you ride all of them first and then come back to the ones you've already ridden?”

Sam appeared to consider the logic in that before agreeing to the idea. “I want to ride the boats next.”

I had to agree with his choice. I wanted to go back to my aunt and uncle's boat again, too.

Everything had seemed so clear while Luke and I were under that so-blue sky and floating among the
gentle waves. How strange that it would be on dry land that I felt trapped in muddled waters.

“Lead the way,” Luke told him.

We followed close behind him, and I was surprised when Luke took my hand again. The temptation to yank it free and hurry for the car was strong, but I couldn't do it. Even protecting my heart didn't seem a strong enough motivation. What could I say? I was a glutton for pain.

As Sam climbed to the front seat on one of the six tiny boats that floated in a doughnut-shaped metal tub, Luke leaned close to my ear.

“I'm really glad you're staying longer,” he whispered.

I tried to ignore how good his breath felt feathering across my cheek and how desperately I wanted to believe what he was saying. I had to be earning my gold medal in the Pitiful Female Olympics.

Still, I had some dignity. “Well, you didn't sound like you were.”

“You took me by surprise is all.”

“Remind me never to give you a surprise party. You wouldn't make an attractive surprisee.”

“I guess not.”

I'd done it again, making reference to a future we both knew didn't exist, but he let it pass without comment.

The clamor from Sam and several other preschoolers ringing the bells next to their individual steering wheels made it impossible for us to hear even if we had more to say. We didn't. Luke just kept holding my hand, sometimes brushing his callused thumb over the back of my hand, and I kept letting him.

Before long we were back to our regular selves, talking and laughing together and watching Sam go round and round by motorcycle and race car and boat. I became determined to take it all in, to sip every taste of the day and breathe in every scent. I was determined to enjoy every bit of the now. There was a good chance that now was all we had.

W
hen I heard the car door outside the house that Monday night nearly two weeks later, I jumped up from the couch and glanced at the clock. It read 8:23 p.m. What happened to
five o'clock sharp?
So much for reservations for three at Gino's Taste of Italy.

So much for my big date on this all-important third of July.

Still, for a reason I couldn't understand let alone defend, I patted my hair that I'd fussed with earlier and smoothed my hands down my powder-blue floral sundress. If I still cared what Luke thought about my appearance when he hadn't bothered to show up before I started to wilt, I had more serious problems than being nearly stood up for a date.

I crossed the room, not even bothering to turn off the big-screen television, where Warren Beatty played opposite Natalie Wood in
Splendor in the Grass.
Too bad real-life romance couldn't be more like the old Hollywood version.

Was I allowed to be angry here? How soon into a new relationship was one of the partners allowed to make demands? Was the first month too soon? But then wasn't the first month also too soon to be taking a person for granted?

Ever since I'd announced that I would be extending my stay, Luke had been pulling away from me. Not a clear break like a “Dear John” letter, Luke's defection had been far subtler. He still called every day to make plans with Sam and me, but he just took his sweet time showing up for them. Each day it was a little later, until tonight he might as well not have shown up at all.

I stepped back into my black heels and crossed to the front door. The bell rang just as I reached it. Keeping my expression blank, I pulled open the door. Instead of the very late Luke Sheridan who I expected to be standing there, Yvonne stood on the stoop, holding Sam's hand.

“Hi, Miss Cassie.”

No matter how frustrated I was, I couldn't help smiling down at the sweet little boy. “Hi, Sam. What are you doing with your grandma?”

“Grammy came to pick you up.”

I turned to Yvonne, lifting an eyebrow. “Oh she did, did she?”

Yvonne pressed her lips together, her gaze darting from one side of the room to the other. “Luke had to work late again. He wanted me to bring you to the restaurant so he could meet you there. Sammy's already eaten.”

“I see.” I couldn't keep the disappointment out of my
voice. I wanted to believe it wasn't for myself but for the child who was once again spending too much time without his daddy, but I was feeling selfish. Besides the boy who was supposed to be suffering from this separation appeared as happy as a clam, while I was downright crabby.

“No, I don't think you do see,” Yvonne said simply. “Do you mind if we come in for a minute?”

I shrugged and let them pass before closing the door behind them. By the time I reached the great room, Sam was already planted in front of the television. On the screen, a mentally fragile Deanie Loomis was raging against her young love, Bud Stamper, a hint to the bad ending ahead in the movie. Okay, sometimes art did imitate life. At least my life.

“Miss Cassie, can I put on cartoons?”

Sam already had the remote in his hand, but I took it from him and switched the channel myself.

“So you're into tearjerkers?” Yvonne indicated the TV screen that was now covered with little green Martians.

“Reflected my mood, I guess.”

“Luke's really sorry he had to work late. He got called into a meeting with his boss.”

I stepped over to the dinette and took one of the chairs, indicating for Yvonne to take the other.

“He said that when he called.”

He'd also said he would be over just as soon as he could possibly get away, and I could see how well that had worked out for him. Now he was sending his mother over to do damage control with me, and I wasn't in the mood to be placated.

Even sitting still turned out to be impossible, so I popped up from my seat and went over to the coffee-maker to pour two cups. I'd been sipping caffeine since the first hour Luke was late, and now my insides sloshed and my hands trembled.

“Thank you.” Yvonne accepted one of the heavy mugs between her hands.

“Cream or sugar?” I asked as an afterthought. If she asked for coffee cream, I wasn't even sure there was any in the house.

“Black. I prefer to keep things simple.”

I was about to find out how simple, I had the feeling.

“I suppose Luke told you how important this job is to him, how Clyde Lewis put such trust in him,” Yvonne said.

“He told me all of that, but I don't see how it makes a difference right now.”

“Then you weren't listening.”

I stared at her, trying not to be annoyed but failing. This was the second time she'd hinted that I was partially responsible for tonight's fiasco when blaming me was like holding the wet tennis shoes responsible for being left out in the rain. First, she'd told me I didn't see what was laid out in front of me, and now she was accusing me of not listening.

“Come on, Yvonne. I know it's hard for a parent not to take her child's side in an argument, but isn't this a little over-the-top?”

She only smiled, but then her expression grew serious again. “I loved my daughter-in-law. Don't ever question that. But I never thought she was good for my son.”

I had just sipped my coffee, so I felt fortunate that I
didn't spew the brown liquid across the table. With effort, I managed to swallow it. Yvonne's revelation surprised me, but what did that have to do with Luke pulling away from me? “He told me about Nicole,” I said, guessing she expected me to say something.

I'd surprised her, too. I could tell by the way she lifted her cup toward her mouth and then lowered it without taking a drink.

“He doesn't usually talk about her,” she said finally.

“He said that, too.”

Yvonne nodded and then pressed her hands on the edge of the table. “My son's been killing himself, trying to prove himself to someone who's no longer alive to appreciate his efforts. He's thrown himself into his work at the expense of everything else in his life.”

“He said she always thought of him as a disappointment.”

Settling back in her seat, Yvonne crossed her arms over her chest in a self-satisfied gesture. “Then you do understand.”

Wait, had the two of us just participated in two parallel conversations? We must have. Otherwise, why would she guess that I understood something we hadn't even discussed as far as I could tell? “No, I don't think I do.”

She frowned at me as if I was missing something incredibly simple. “In the last month since you've been here, I've seen more of my son in daylight hours than I have since his wife died. You reminded him to take the time to enjoy his son. To smell the roses, so to speak. To live his life.”

I shook my head, as much to dispel her assumptions
as to deny the truth in them. “He didn't do those things for me. But it doesn't matter why he did it now because he's back to his workaholic ways, anyway. He comes later and later every day.”

“Only because his boss demanded that he be there if he planned to keep his job.”

I had been ready with a retort, but it died on my lips. I would have called it an “aha moment” if “duh” didn't seem to define it better. Luke had based his self-esteem on this job; of course he would panic if that job were in jeopardy. Would he ever learn not to judge himself based on everyone else's expectations?

“Do you see the problem now?” she asked.

I could only nod. That I did see didn't change anything, but I chose not to tell her that.

“Can you give him a break just this one time? I know how much he looked forward to tonight. Just let me take you to the restaurant. You two can have a nice quiet dinner and maybe talk a little.”

“Why does this matter so much to you?”

“Because you're good for my son,” Yvonne said. “It's been a long time since he's been around someone who's good for him, and I don't want him to mess this up.”

Because she'd made a good mother's argument and because, let's face it, I'm a pushover, I agreed to go. I hadn't eaten dinner, either. And, if I gave myself some time, I would come up with a dozen or so other reasons why this was a perfectly rational decision. Maybe the biggest reason was that I enjoyed feeling as if I'd been run over by a pickup because I was well on my way to experiencing the first tire tracks.

 

Dinner couldn't have been more uncomfortable if Luke and I had sat cross-legged on a bed of nails, eating linguini. Even the checkered tablecloths, the globed candles and soft music failed to wrap us in a romantic cocoon.

Though I had a little in common tonight with Molly Ringwald's character in
Sixteen Candles,
Sam's sweet, tabletop birthday cake scene this was not.

“How's the lasagna?” Luke asked to break the silence. His own fork kept twisting in his plate of spaghetti and meatballs, but he hadn't taken a bite.

“Fine.” Nothing against Gino's lasagna—it was probably scrumptious—but I might as well have been gnawing on cardboard for all I tasted it. “How's yours?”

He took a bite, chewed and swallowed so he could offer an opinion. “It's good.” He spun his fork in the spaghetti for a long time before he spoke again. “I'm sorry about being late. It couldn't be helped.”

“Your mom told me.”

“I'm glad you agreed to come even though it was so late. I really wanted to see you tonight.”

Really? If that was so, then why had he spent the whole time since he'd met me at Gino's acting as if he preferred to be right back at the building site he'd left an hour ago? He was so nervous, distracted. You could take a workaholic out of the office, but you couldn't take the office out of his head.

If I knew I was going to be this lonely at dinner, I would have stayed at home with
Splendor
's Deanie and Bud. Even if they didn't end up together and she did
have a nervous breakdown, at least they could argue passionately instead of being so annoying civil—the way we were.

“Really, I'm sorry.”

I chewed and swallowed another bite. “It's fine.”

“Is it?”

No,
I wanted to shout. It wasn't okay for him to forget it was my birthday, as he so obviously had. When I looked up from my plate, Luke was studying me, his eyes narrowed.

“It's the new habit, anyway,” I said.

“I should have explained before.”

“Explained what? That you didn't want to see me anymore?”

I stabbed my fork into my lasagna.

He was shaking his head, but I was on a roll and couldn't stop.

“Ever since I told you I was staying on, you've been—I don't know—distant.”

“Not distant. Just busy.”

“Aren't they the same?”

“No, they're not.” He shook his head to emphasize the point. “That would imply that I had a choice here, and I don't. Clyde has been breathing down my neck about cutting out of work early ever since you came here. I told him I would make it up after…”

Though he let his words trail off, I understood that he'd meant after I went home.

“So I messed up your plans by staying too long and wearing out my welcome?”

“No.”

He started to reach for my hand across the table, but I went for my napkin and wiped my mouth instead. For a few seconds, he rested both hands on the table, palms up and fingers partially curled in, but then he returned them to his lap.

“I don't see it that way at all,” he told me.

“Then how do you see it?”

I crossed my arms and waited for his answer. The waiter started toward us, but when he saw my tense pose, he wisely turned away, giving us a few extra minutes to decide whether our dinners were satisfactory.

“I'm glad you're still here. I want you here. But there was only so long I could let my work slide. Believe me, Clyde noticed it was sliding, too.

“I had to buckle down and make up for all the hours I was cutting, and when you said you were staying another week, I realized I couldn't wait any longer.”

“What do you mean ‘make up' for them?” But even as I asked it, realization dawned. “You mean you taking the time to put your family first—that was all just an act.” Was the time he'd spent with me an act, as well?

“It wasn't like that, and you know it.” At the edge of the table, his hands clenched and unclenched, showing his frustration.

I shook my head. Obviously, I didn't know Luke at all.

“Don't you get it? I'm doing the best I can.”

“I don't know what I think, Luke.”

“But I know.”

I looked up at him. Was it hurt that I saw in his eyes? “You told me I was a good dad. I liked it that you thought so. I didn't want to lower your opinion
of me, but I couldn't lose my job just to preserve that opinion.”

“I never asked you to do anything.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Didn't you? Your approval comes with a price, and that's doing things your way.”

“That's not fair, and you know it.”

“Maybe not, but it's true.”

I would have protested again if the waiter hadn't tried a second time, approaching the table and glancing nervously at our barely touched dinners. After assurances that the food was wonderful and hints that we couldn't take our lack of appetites out on his tip, he retreated to the kitchen.

Needless to say, our dinner date went downhill from there, and I'd thought we'd already reached the southernmost point of lousy. Only I would end up on a crummy date that was determined to be all it could be. Luke wouldn't even look at me, but I wasn't looking back, either. He'd hurt me, and I'd hurt him back. We were even, so why did it feel like we'd both lost?

The waiter didn't even bother to ask us if we wanted any spumoni. He just brought the check, processed Luke's credit card and packed both our dinners into to-go bags.