Reunion Pass: An Eternity Springs novel (31 page)

Her heart thundered. The prize was obvious. One can of Del Monte corn was mixed in with the row of Libby’s. She inhaled a deep breath and reached for it. As expected, it was lightweight. A diversion can safe. Slowly, she unscrewed the lid and turned the can over.

A black velvet ring box fell into her hand.

“Oh, Chase.”

“I bought it when you were in college. I carried it in my pocket for months. The time was never right to give it to you. Now, it is.”

Lori’s throat went tight with emotion. The pressure of tears built in the back of her eyes. Chase took the box from her hand, went down on one knee and opened it. Held it up.

A simple solitaire on a plain gold band sparkled up at her. “Lori Elizabeth Reese Murphy, I love you. I’ve always loved you. I want to live with you and love with you and grow old with you. I want you to have my children. Glitterbug, will you marry me?”

She closed her eyes. So long. So long, she’d dreamed of hearing those words.

And yet, she licked her lips and met his gaze. “I’m scared, Chase. I’m scared to say yes. It hasn’t been that long. What if you get bored here again? What if I’m not exciting enough for you? What if once your spirit has completely healed you realize this is all a mistake and you’re ready to fly off to Zambia or Brazil or Yap!”

“Yap?” His brow furrowed. He came up off his knee. “Where’s Yap?”

“It’s an island in the South Pacific. You have wings, Chase. I sink roots. That hasn’t changed.”

“My wings brought me home to you, Lori. Home to my family. I’m not a migratory bird.” His warm brown eyes remained solid and steady with promise. “I’m home to stay.”

“I want to believe that.” Big fat tears spilled from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “In my heart, I think I do believe it. But I’m afraid. I’m like Nicholas. My head knows you are not a danger to me, but my heart … my heart fears you’ll rip it out if I let you close.”

The man actually laughed. “So am I a bird or a wolf?”

“You’re a hawk, Chase, and I watched that hawk’s broken wing heal and then he flew away.”

He reached out and touched her cheek. “Do you love me, Lori?”

“Yes. I do. I love you with all my heart.”

“And I love you with all my heart. That’s our bottom line. We can build from there.”

“But we tried to do that before! We failed.”

“That’s because we didn’t trust each other enough. We didn’t trust that we could overcome the obstacles we faced. I made a mistake when I didn’t give you this ring years ago. I’m correcting that now. Trust me, Lori. Trust us. We don’t have to set a wedding date now, but I want you to wear my ring.”

“No wedding date?” The idea intrigued Lori. Maybe that’s the way she could do this. Be engaged, but wait until she was sure. Until she was ready.

“No wedding date for now. We’ll figure out a way to introduce you to the idea. Give you time to get used to it. I predict that before long, you’ll be ready for the Mortimer test.”

She blinked away her tears and let out a short, soft laugh. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know. Probably something to do with our mothers. Shopping for a wedding gown.”

“Yeah. That would certainly be a Mortimer test. Mom and Ali would love it.”

He took it from the case and held out his left hand palm up. “Wear my ring, Lori. Promise to be my wife someday. Say yes.”

The word spilled from her lips like a love song. “Yes. Yes, Chase. I’ll marry you. Someday.”

He slid the ring onto her finger and took her in his arms and kissed her long and lovingly.

It was only when they broke apart and turned to go that Lori saw the heads peeking around the aisle end caps. Mom. Ali. Nic. Celeste. “I should have known we’d have an audience.”

“No way around it. This is Eternity Springs, after all.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Two weeks.” Sarah Murphy breezed into the kitchen at Angel’s Rest and set an empty tray down on the counter. Guests were due to arrive for Nic Callahan’s baby shower shortly, and as one of the hostesses, Sarah had just transferred two dozen cookies onto a plate in the dining room. “She’s been engaged two whole weeks and still no word about a wedding date. The girl is so hardheaded and stubborn. She drives me absolutely crazy.”

“Now, Sarah, don’t be so hard on her,” Cam said, following his wife into the kitchen with a second tray empty but for bread crumbs. He’d just unloaded a platter of sandwiches onto a table in Angel’s Rest’s front parlor, now utilized as a media room. Today’s baby shower was a couples event, but it was also the opening weekend of the college football season.

Lori’s dad continued, “She comes by her stubbornness naturally. Remember your father?”

“She’s just like him. But now she’s totally upped her game. I swear she’s channeling his ghost to tap him for added stubborn strength. Chase has the patience of a saint.”

Ali Timberlake laughed and checked the hors d’oeuvres in the oven. She was relaxed and happy—just like her younger son had been of late. “Chase loves Lori and he’s confident she’ll come around sooner rather than later.”

“Well, she’d better,” Sarah groused. “I’ve been looking forward to planning her wedding all her life, and this refusal to name a date is putting a real kink in my plans.”

Judging that the coffee had finished brewing, Sage Rafferty began to fill the antique silver coffeepot Celeste had brought in from its display spot on the dining room sideboard. “Maybe we should roll out one of our interventions,” Sage suggested, a teasing note in her voice.

Entering the room with his daughter, Caitlin, Mac Timberlake observed, “You might be onto something there. You’ve had an excellent success rate with your interventions.”

“What are you talking about?” Caitlin asked.

The older women shared a look and a laugh. Celeste said, “It started with Nic and became somewhat of a tradition with us.”

Sarah shot Caitlin a grin. “Sometimes, some of us needed a little … well, I’d call it encouragement from our girlfriends when it came to our seeing the truth about our romantic relationships.”

“Encouragement?” Celeste scoffed. “Honey, we were outright buttinskys. And it’s a good thing we were, I will say. It worked, didn’t it? Every time. Cam, would you get a bag of potato chips out of the pantry and fill that wooden bowl on the butler’s pantry? It’s for the media room.”

“Consider it done,” he replied with a wink toward Celeste.

“Well, Lori doesn’t need an intervention,” Ali said. “She has good reason to question the steadfastness of Chase’s decision to make his home in Eternity Springs. She doesn’t need us to tell her she’s being foolish, because she’s not.”

Sarah whipped her head around and stared at Ali, her eyes widened with alarm. “You think he’ll leave Eternity Springs?”

“No. Not at all. But we’re not the ones to convince her of that. It’s Chase’s job and he will do it. His mind is made up, and once that happens, he doesn’t give up. That’s why we called him Terrier when he was a little boy.”

“I don’t know, Mom,” Caitlin said. “He gave up on her before, didn’t he? He got engaged to Lana.”

Celeste shook her head. “No, Alison is right. He did that before he earned his wings. Lori is still working toward winning hers. You can’t rush the girl. Remember how she was when it came to accepting Cam?”

“Like I said,” Sarah grumbled. “As stubborn as her grandfather.”

“You’re talking about me again, aren’t you?” Lori said as she walked arm in arm with the guest of honor into the kitchen.

“They are talking about doing an intervention,” Caitlin said.

“I know about their interventions.” Lori gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Don’t do that, please?”

“We need to do something,” her mother said, her violet eyes snapping with frustration. “Each and every person here loves you. Each of us thinks you’re making a huge mistake. You have a chance at a second chance, Lori Elizabeth. And you’re still young! Do you know how much I’d have given to have a second chance with Dad at your age?”

“Mom, I love you, but I’m not you. Chase isn’t Dad. The situations are totally different.”

“Then why are you treating him … treating the situation … like he is your father? Don’t hold Cam against Chase. Don’t blow it.”

“I don’t hold Cam against Chase,” Lori protested, but a note of doubt had crept into her voice.

“Yes you do. And it reminds me of something you need to hear.” Sarah shifted her gaze toward Celeste. “Celeste, do you remember what you told me when I was afraid to trust Cam? About taking a leap of faith?”

“Of course. I told you to leap like a lunatic.”

“Exactly!” Sarah snapped her fingers triumphantly. “That’s what I did. I leaped like a lunatic and look what I have now—a wonderful husband, two fabulous sons, and a beautiful, accomplished, granite-headed daughter who needs to take a leap so we can get the church reserved!”

Lori turned a long-suffering glance toward Nic. “Make them stop.”

Amusement lit Nic’s eyes. “Honey, you can shut them up with one little word. Well, I guess it’s two words.”

“Like … December twenty-fourth?” Sarah rolled out.

“I’m not getting married on Christmas Eve, Mother.”

“Okay, then when
are
you getting married?”

“That’s not the date we’re concerned about today,” Chase said in a placating tone as he strode into the kitchen and went to stand with Lori. “The date that matters today is the one when the next Callahan man joins the world.”

He reached into his pocket and fished out a twenty-dollar bill. “I call dibs on September twenty-seventh. Four-fourteen
P.M.
”

Nic beamed with pleasure. “Why, that’s a full week before my due date. Chase, my man, I like the way you think.”

“I’m going to win the baby pool this time. I’m due.” He winked at Lori and added, “Besides, I’m feeling lucky.”

Just then Colt Rafferty arrived carrying a cooler full of drinks. “These go where, Celeste?”

“The parlor.”

“There are fruit drinks in there for the kids, right?” Sage asked. “Not just beer?”

“I have another cooler for the kids. Chase, it’s in the bed of my truck. Would you grab it?”

“Sure.” He returned a few moments later carrying a white cooler. “Water and juice boxes here. Where would you like them, Celeste?”

“Hmm…” Celeste tapped her index finger against her lips. “The front porch, I think. You know how the children always congregate in the front yard.”

“Best place to play hide-and-seek in town.” As Chase carried the cooler through the house, he called over his shoulder. “Gabe’s brothers just pulled up. I hope we smoked enough ribs. Those Texas guys like to eat.”

“We have plenty of food,” said Ali. “Everything from jalapeño poppers to petits fours to serve with tea and coffee.”

“It’s a strange mix,” Lori observed as the front doorbell chimed. Her mother went to open the door for the first shower guests. “Football and baby showers and free play time for the children.”

Chase returned to the kitchen in time to snag a sausage ball from the plate his mother carried toward the parlor, which earned him a slap to the hand. He grinned and popped the meat into his mouth. “It’s football and friendship. A perfect mix. A perfect compromise for this afternoon. Laid-back and easy. I love that about this town. I love how people pull together. They appreciate established traditions, but they don’t mind change when change is needed. They identify a problem and figure a way to fix it. They treasure friendships that have existed for a long time, but they don’t hesitate to make room for new ones. This town has the perfect mix.”

A half-dozen more cars pulled up and the party got started. For the most part, the men gravitated to the media room and the women to the library where Nic was opening baby gifts, but there was also a good bit of back-and-forth between the two rooms.

It was a fun afternoon. One time Lori wandered into the media room and saw Celeste and Sage high-fiving over a touchdown by Air Force. She then drifted into the library to see Colt Rafferty and Zach Turner grinning like fiends as they held up onesies that touted their favorite college team. Minutes later, seven-year-old Meg Callahan wandered by holding Michael’s hand. “Have you seen your mom, Lori? Michael needs a new diaper.”

Lori wrinkled her nose. “Yes, he certainly does. I’ll take him.”

He chattered like a magpie as she carried him upstairs to do the deed, but just when she finished the odorous task, the sound of cheering children out on the lawn snagged both her and her little brother’s attention. Lori toted him to the window where she saw Chase with a blindfold tied around his head playing blindman’s buff with a gaggle of young children.

He had a grin on his face as wide as the Rio Grande, and watching him, Lori felt her heart swell. This man had parasailed off a mountaintop. He’d ridden a kayak over a waterfall. Someday, she imagined, he would surely tackle his Everest and ride the Hidden River Gorge. Chase Timberlake was an adventurer.

“Well, so am I.”

“You’re what?”

She turned to see her mother standing in the doorway, smiling at her. “Happy.”

She set a freshly diapered Michael down and the boy padded over to his mother. Sarah picked him up.

“I’m happy, Mom. For you and Dad and Devin and Michael. For our family. We’ve figured it out.”

“Yes, we have, but it will always be a work in progress. That’s the way families are. The way relationships are. They change, they grow, they adapt. They have bumps along the way. As long as you love and trust in that love, you’ll do just fine.”

Lori went to Sarah and wrapped her arms around her. “You’ve always been my hero. I’ve apologized before, but I need to say it again today. I’m sorry I was so hard on you when Dad came back to town. I didn’t understand second chances.”

Sarah smiled tenderly and kissed her daughter’s brow. “Now you do?”

“Now I do. Mom, I’m ready to leap like a lunatic. Right here, right now.”

“Go for it, girl.”

Lori flashed her mother an impish grin and opened the door that led out onto the balcony. “Hey, Chase,” she called. “Come over here. Stand below me.”

“Lori!” Her mother moved forward, concern clouding her eyes. “What do you think you are doing?”