The "What If" Guy (33 page)

“Remember.” Helen handed me a dust rag. “My husband can do all of your electrical work in exchange for your homemade lasagna.”

I chuckled to myself. How many towns had electricians willing to work for lasagna? “Thanks. I’ll take him up on that. And Doris? You’re going to help me pick out paint colors, right?”

“As long as you like pink,” she replied, as the bell above the door jingled.

“You’ll have to fight with Elliott about that one.” I moved a box, and a shower of dust bunnies fell. “Oh, good grief. How long has it been since I’ve dusted up here? This is shameful.”

I waited for Doris or Helen to respond, but when no sound came, I shook my head. “I see how it is. When the going gets tough, you two are out of here.”

“What have I told you about staying off of ladders?”

The gravelly voice sent a jolt of electricity up my spine, underneath my hair to my forehead, then back down again. My hand froze in midair, holding a package of erasers. The Barry Manilow music being piped through the pharmacy turned into static, and flashes of color popped in my peripheral vision. I’d dreamt of that voice so many times over the last two months, I was now hearing it in my head.

Super. Now I’m schizophrenic
.

“Would you come down here, please?”

I turned around slowly on the rickety ladder. There stood Henry.

He was tan—much more tan than he’d been in June—and he’d cut his hair. His white T-shirt stretched obligingly over his arms, and was rumpled and untucked at the waist of his khaki shorts. He was every bit as appealing as he’d been the day I’d clocked him with an encyclopedia. And since I’d been fantasizing about this moment for weeks on end, he practically glowed in front of me. It could have been the morning sunlight pouring through the front windows of the shop, but I was pretty certain it was Henry.

My
Henry.

“I… Are you? I…” My mouth was suddenly filled with marbles. I stepped down from the ladder and lost my footing.

I slammed against Henry’s chest, jabbing an eraser package into his eye.

“Ow,” he said, stumbling backwards.

Doris and Helen snickered nearby, and one of them whispered, “Some things never change.”

Henry opened his uninjured eye. “No, they don’t, do they?”

I straightened my smock. “Sorry. What are you doing here?”

Henry’s other eye opened, and he smiled. “School is starting soon.”

“You…” I straightened my ponytail. “You’re teaching at Palouse Plains this year?”

His eyes crinkled at the sides. “I signed a three-year contract.”

My heart raced. Henry was back. He was standing right in front of me. And good lord, he smelled so good.

“Are you? I mean…” My face heated under Henry’s gaze. “You’re here for good?”

His eyes locked on mine, unwavering. “That was always the plan.”

What was? To talk your wife into moving here, too? Does she love you enough for that?

We stared at each other. I bit my lip. Where was Laurel? Was he divorced? Would his jaded wife show up in a few months with a pet rabbit to boil?

“So, that’s it?” I glanced nervously at Helen and Doris, who weren’t even attempting to hide their curiosity.

He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “I guess.”

Frustration simmered in my gut. I turned to the ladder and grabbed my dust rag. “Well, good for you. Welcome back. Is Laurel waiting outside?”

“What?”

I grabbed a stack of notebooks and started back up the ladder. “I’ve got to get back to work. It’s back-to-school season, you know.”

“I know what season it is. Would you get down here and listen?”

My stubborn streak took over. “Hey, Helen, would you mind turning up the radio? I love this version of ’Mandy.’”

“Stop it.”

I slapped the notebooks on the shelf, sending dust bunnies fluttering, and sang loudly. “Well you came, and you gave, without taking—”

“Dammit.” Henry grabbed me by the waist and pulled me off the ladder.

“Hey,” I yelped. “Put me down.”

“No. Doris, Autumn is taking her break now.”

“Fine by me,” she smiled.

“Doris. Helen.” I tried to wriggle out of his grip. “I am being forcibly removed from the premises. Call the cops.”

Helen smiled and waved.
Traitor
.

“Dammit, Henry, put me down,” I bellowed, as he carried me out the door to the sidewalk and plopped me down in front of his truck. He rested his hands on my hips, so I couldn’t escape.

“You’re going to scare people,” Henry said in a low, rumbling voice. “Half the town is out staring at us right now.”

I scoffed bitterly. “Story of my life.”

“Why are you acting like a freak?”

My mouth dropped open. “I’m
a freak? You’re the freak. You just dragged me out of the pharmacy. Literally.”

“Well, what did you expect?” He squinted at me in the sunlight. “You were ignoring me. Singing ’Mandy,’ for Pete’s sake.”

“I happen to like that song.” I crossed my arms and glared into Henry’s slate-colored eyes. They would
not
be my kryptonite today. “Where’s the little lady? Is she back at your house, hanging curtains?”

“I’m not married.” He dragged his hand down his face in frustration, and I backed away from him.

“It didn’t work out?”

“This is news to you? I went to San Francisco to get a divorce.”

“No,” my voice rose. “You went to San Francisco to make things work with Laurel.”

Henry pointed his finger at me. “That’s what
you
thought. That’s not what happened.”

I backed up further. “You didn’t go to California to get back together with Laurel?”

“Of course I didn’t,” Henry said. “I went to California because, despite how much of a bitch she was when she came here, Laurel made one point very clear.”

“What point was that?”

“That I couldn’t run away anymore. I needed to come back and settle things. Laurel and I had community property that we needed to sort through. We had an apartment to sell, and mutual friends to explain my perspective to. I owed her family an explanation as well.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but closed it again.

“We sold our apartment, most of our furniture, and our joint assets.” He looked at me so intensely, my knees started shaking. “I spent a lot of time in mediation with lawyers, hammering out details, and spent even more time with Laurel’s family and our friends, saying good-bye.”

“Good-bye?” A tiny bit of hope rose from the pit of resentment bubbling in my gut.

“This is my home,” Henry said, “whether we’re together or not.”

“So your divorce is final?” I tried to ignore Helen and Doris’ faces in the window, and Ramona Fisk’s in the store window across the street. “And she didn’t take you for a ride?”

“It was a fight,” Henry said, his tone serious. “But no, I don’t owe her spousal support. And, I got my dog back.” A beagle with irresistibly droopy eyes hoisted his head out of the open driver’s-side window, then yawned.

“That’s Sal.” He gestured toward the dog.

I stifled a grin. Sal was, by far, the ugliest, saddest-looking dog I’d ever seen. “Where will you and Sal stay?”

The magnetic pull between us tugged back to life.

“I’m not sure.” His gaze still held mine.

Be strong, Autumn.
After all, he’d spent the last few weeks finalizing his divorce, and hadn’t called. Not once.

“You didn’t call,” I said. “I was here this whole time, and you didn’t even call.”

The line between his eyebrows deepened. “Need I remind you that you
sent me
away?” When I didn’t respond, he took a step closer. “And I did call.”

“No, you didn’t,” I bit back.

“Yes, I did, a couple of times in the beginning. But not from
my
phone. And your voicemail box was full after your dad died.”

“You could have called Holly.” I bit the insides of my cheeks to stop myself from crying.

“I tried once, but one of the boys answered the phone.” He frowned at me. “He sang his ABCs and then hung up.”

“And you couldn’t call back? Or call the pharmacy?”

“I didn’t know what to say.” His broad shoulders drooped. “I wanted to tell you that I loved you, but I knew that wasn’t enough. You deserved more. You deserved to be told that I was free and clear to love you, and that we could be together without anything hanging over our heads. And since you didn’t call, I—”

“I
called you. Your phone was disconnected.”

“You called me? When?”

I groaned and pressed my hand to my forehead. “Right around the time I lost my damn mind, Henry.”

“What happened?”

“In a matter of forty-eight hours, I buried my father, saw my mother for the first time in a few decades, and lost the love of my life. I was a
little
depressed.”

Henry’s frown morphed into an expression of pure sadness. “I know. I’m so sorry. Words cannot express how sorry I am for the timing of all of this. But Laurel was threatening to go after my career next, and I—”

I jutted my chin. “You never told me that.”

He splayed his arms at his sides. “I felt like hell, Autumn. The last thing you needed to deal with, on top of everything else, was to worry about my career. You didn’t deserve to feel like the other woman. I couldn’t stand the fact that Laurel made you feel that way. That I’d made you feel that way.”

Hot tears defied my will, and filled my eyes. “Why did you disconnect your cell phone?”

“Laurel did it to spite me,” he said grimly. “Before she even left the Spokane airport, she called and convinced the kid at customer service that her husband’s phone had been stolen.”

“Why didn’t you get a new one?”

Henry combed his hand through his hair, making it stand in all directions. “Because I bank with Fairfield Trust. I lost my wallet in the airport, and I had to wait three weeks for them to send me a new debit card.”

I scowled at him. “That only accounts for three weeks, Henry. If you missed me so much, why didn’t you call after you got a new phone?”

Henry glanced at our growing audience self-consciously, and took another step closer. “After I thought things through, I figured that I needed to finalize my divorce and settle everything with Laurel so I could come back home and completely commit to you. I hated that you and Elliott were here without me, but even more than that, I hated the fact that you felt so terrible about us. There was no way I could convince you that I loved only you, not until Laurel was out of the picture for good.”

“I…” I struggled to find the words. “I was so unhappy. It was awful.”

He’d stepped close enough to touch me. His hand enveloped mine warmly, sending sparks of recognition up my arm. “I’m so sorry.”

“I thought I was doing the right thing.” The overload of emotion made my voice quaver. “I thought she deserved you more. I didn’t know my heart could hurt so bad. I wanted to curl into a ball and die. And what was worse, I hurt Elliott, too. He was incredibly mad at me. You were the closest thing to a father he’d ever had, and I’d let you go without a fight.”

Henry’s eyes filled. “I know. I missed him so much.”

My heart pitched. “I thought you’d moved on. And I wanted to be happy for you. I really did. But I was completely heartbroken. Watching Elliott struggle was crippling.” Tears backed up in my throat like a sink clog. “He’s the one who made me see what I was doing to myself. Elliott brought me back to life.”

Henry took my other hand and moved his body closer to mine. I swear, heat radiated off his skin. “He’s a smart kid. And so much more mature than you give him credit for. He loves you.”

Henry cupped my cheeks and forced me to look him in the eye. “Being apart from you was never what was best for me. It was awful. Do you understand me?
Awful
. I sat in a hotel room every night, alone, worrying about how you and Elliott were coping. I was physically sick.

“I thought my heart was broken the first time you left me. I thought I would never experience pain like that again, but I was wrong. Because when you sent me packing the second time, you sent me away from two
people I love. Do you understand that?”

I bowed my head and wept. “All I’ve ever done is hurt you.”

“No.” He lifted my chin and closed the space between us. I could feel his heart racing through his T-shirt. “You’ve shown me what happiness feels like. You taught me how to love, and you’ve shown me that I can be in love with my best friend. You’ve got me imagining things like sitting on a porch, looking out at the fields while our grandkids run around in the yard. You made me believe in the fairy tale.”

He stroked my lower lip with his thumb, making it tingle, then he embraced me tightly. “Don’t send me away again. I swear, I won’t go. I’ll camp on your front porch until you hear me out. But you won’t have to worry about that.” He pulled away enough to smile at me, tears streaking his chiseled face. “Because I will never hurt you. Do you hear me? I will never walk out on you.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I pressed my lips against his with urgency. This was it. He was back. My Henry was here with me. “I love you. I’ve been in love with you for so long.”

“I’ll never love anyone the way I love you,” he said against my lips, then dived back in for more. I arched my back and pressed against him, his able hands supporting me. “It’s only you, it’s only ever been you, and it will only ever be you.” His lips moved against mine as he struggled to get his words out.

Henry loved me so wholly that he’d allowed me to push him away—not once, but twice—and he still wanted me. He accepted me despite my flaws, in spite of my imperfect figure and unruly hair. He’d held me while I was curled up on the floor after my father had died. And he’d ached for my son as much as he’d ached for me while we were apart.

Henry Tobler was a real man. A man who didn’t give up and walk away. A man that my father could look down on from heaven and know that Elliott and I were safe, happy, and above all, loved.

“I love you.” My lips tasted salty from our tears. “I’ll spend the rest of my life showing you. I promise.”

He buried his face in my hair, kissing my neck. “I know, my love.”