Your Dream and Mine (11 page)

“I’m wasting my breath, aren’t I?” Trace flung his hands in the air. “That’s it. I tried. Let her walk all over you if you want to. I won’t even say I told you so.”

But he’d think it. His blue eyes said as much. Thomasina wasn’t sure why he felt like he had to keep warning her. Or why it irritated him, to think she wasn’t listening. She was. She disagreed, was all.

Wanting to explain why she felt the way she felt without revealing too much about her own past, Thomasina sat down. The sofa was still warm from his body. He’d slept here. His T-shirt was rumpled, his cheek bore the imprint of the raised design in the sofa cushion. His untamed cowlick was boyish, his whisker shadow virile, his blue gaze unnerving. She caught her breath and came to her feet like a jack in the box.

“Thomasina?”

“I’ve got to go. I’m supposed to be at work by seven, and I’m a mess.” She flung an excuse over her shoulder.

“You look all right to me,” said Trace.

“I look like a raccoon!” she cried, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

A smile got away from him. “Tommy, you’re going to have to toughen up.”

“Shut up.”

“That’s the spirit!”

“I mean it. We disagree about Antoinette. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“You’ve never lived in a little town before, have you?”

“Just get the key.”

Trace got it and unlocked the door for her and went out on the porch. She streaked past a few moments later with a shoulder bag, an overnight case and a black dress dangling from a hanger.
A preview of coming attractions?
Trace knew he ought to feel guilty looking forward to tonight, when she looked so miserable. Instead, he had to tamp down his rising expectations.

T
he nursing assistant who relieved Thomasina at five-thirty was a close personal friend. They had shared an apartment several years earlier.

“Make yourself at home,” she said when Thomasina asked if she might change at her apartment.

It was a ten-minute drive to the haven of the cool apartment. Thomasina enjoyed a long bath in scented water. She relinquished Antoinette and the children to God in prayer as she wrapped herself in a thick thirsty towel.

The black, sleeveless dress she had chosen had a simple bodice and a straight skirt that closed down the back. The hemline struck below the knee, but a small slit revealed an additional inch of black-silk-clad legs. Trendy black heels completed the sleek line.

Thomasina swept her hair into a relaxed knot at the back of her head, leaving a trail of loose tendrils. She adorned it with a pearl comb that matched her earrings. An elegant silk shawl added a splash of color.

Seven Gardens was on the east edge of town, a mile from the airport where an air show was to be held the following
day. Trace was waiting when she arrived. Broad-shouldered, bronze and fit, he leaned against the door of his truck in his dark trousers, turtleneck and open jacket. She tooted her horn and pulled into the nearest available space. He uncrossed his arms and ankles and came to open her door.

“Am I late?” asked Thomasina.

“Johnny on the spot.” Smile crinkles framed eyes that lit up like neon as he handed her out of the car and caught a good look at her. “I was hoping this was what you had in mind when you left the house this morning, hanger in hand,” he said of her dress. “Wouldn’t want you giving your patients a heart attack.”

“No danger of that.”

With a wordless grin, Trace carried her hand to his heart. Heat swept up Thomasina’s cheeks at the strong swift beat beneath the sauna warmth of his jacket.

“An aspirin a day, and watch your cholesterol,” she quipped, and withdrew her hand under cover of his laughter. “So what are we having? American? Italian? Oriental? Greek?” she asked in a voice at odds with the topsy-turvy antics of her heart.

“Are you talking garden or food?”

“Both,” she said. “Or don’t you care about matching cuisine to setting?”

“It may get a little noisy,” he warned. “The fly boys are practicing for tomorrow’s show. Would you rather eat inside?”

“Oh, but the gardens are so much nicer.”

Trace smiled at the disappointment shaping her mouth. “All right, then. It’s your call.”

Pleased, Thomasina said, “Tell me first what you’re hungry for.”

“Anything on the menu, so long as it’s steak.”

“To go with your country music and your red…”

“Neck?” he inserted, looking askance.

“I was going to say truck,” she said.

“Sure you were.” Trace laughed to see her turn as red. He caught her hand. “Hold on a second. I almost forgot. I brought you something.” He turned her toward his truck, then freed her hand to reach across the seat for a florist box. Nestled in colored tissue was a cluster of red rosebuds surrounded by baby’s breath.

“Red roses. My favorites!” Thomasina noted the attached hair clip as she lowered her face to the cluster of buds. “Mmm. Here. Smell.”

Trace’s clean-shaven cheek grazed hers as he complied. She was petal soft, and wearing a scent as subtle as the roses. Her eyes shone with repressed laughter as they bumped noses over the rosebuds. She whisked the roses away, and tried by touch to nestle the clip in place in her hair.

“Let me,” said Trace, stepping behind her.

His breath fanned goose bumps from the base of her neck. It spread to the hollow between her shoulder blades as he worked, securing the clustered rosebuds in her hair. Thomasina lifted her shoulders to dispel the tingles.

Misunderstanding, he asked, “Hard day?”

“No. Just a long one,” said Thomasina.

A light brightened the blue sea of his eyes as he reached for her hand. Fingers laced, he asked, “Ready?”

She answered his smile and the pressure of his hand.

Seven Gardens was a popular evening spot, offering outdoor dining in the summertime when the gardens were in full bloom. The menu featured ethnic specials that correlated with gardens from different parts of the world. The restaurant was like a jewel within a seven-garden setting.

At Thomasina’s request, the hostess lead them to a table in the Biblical Garden. A fountain was the centerpiece of the garden. Lush greenery surrounded it. The setting was so lifelike, it was hard to believe that a parking lot lay just beyond the low-stone wall and the vine-draped wroughtiron fence enclosing the garden on the west.

Tables were arranged on cobblestone in cloistered spaces fragrant with anise, corriander, mint and cumin. There was hyssop, too. Once used in the temple for ceremonial cleansing, it bloomed blue on square sturdy stalks. A mideastern lamp burned fragrant oil on the linen-spread table tucked amidst the lush greenery. Harp music and soft choral chants played in the background.

“Warned you,” said Trace, and tipped his face as planes droned overhead.

Thomasina followed his glance. Rectangles of light shone through the green arbor overhead. Beyond was a patchwork of silvery clouds and two open-cockpit biplanes. “Winged angels in the heavenlies. All part of the ambience,” she said.

“Noisy ambience.”

Thomasina smiled and fingered the costmary leaf flanking her napkin and thought of Mary, who kept such a leaf in her Bible as a bookmark. “Bible leaf. That’s what Mary calls it,” she told Trace, after the waiter had taken their order, “Have you seen anything of Mary and Milt?”

“Just yesterday. I dropped by Milt’s before going to work. They’re busy making plans,” said Trace.

The waiter brought lentil soup, teeming with olives and thyme, crumbled marjoram and lovage leaves. When he had gone, they resumed their conversation, “Milt’s going through with it, then? He and Mary are going to sell out and move to town?” she asked.

“Yes. I think Will and the girls are relieved not to have to make the decision.”

There was no mistaking his growing anticipation. Thomasina had to confide her competing interest in the farm. But how did she broach it? Why did the dread of contention silence her tongue?

“The retirement village you took Mary to see last Saturday phoned to say they have a vacancy.” Trace gave her another opening a short while later as they were finishing watercress salads smothered in an olive oil and chive vinegar dressing.

Thomasina pushed her salad plate aside and fished for words that never came. The waiter came with Trace’s steak and Thomasina’s lamb in dill sauce. When he had gone, Thomasina picked up the thread of the conversation. “Spanish Cove was Mary’s first pick. But they had a waiting list”

“They usually do, from what Milt said. He figures they better move in while they can. The girls are going to stay and help them pack.”

“So soon?” Thomasina felt pressured by the speed at which things were progressing. “What about the auction? Will it be right away?”

“No, not until after harvest.”

“Which is?”

“November,” said Trace.

Relieved, Thomasina buttered a slice of fresh-baked cinnamon bread. “So the house will be empty right away?”

“Milt doesn’t plan to let it sit empty for long,” said Trace. “With rural vandalism on the rise, an empty house is an invitation for trouble.”

“Oh, dear. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Milt has. He was hoping Will would move in until the sale. But Will’s business is pretty demanding. He doesn’t
want to be that far out of the
city.
I was Milt’s second choice.”

Thomasina lowered her fork to her near-empty plate. “You’re going to move out to the farm?”

“It might be a good idea, before word gets around that we’re going out. It doesn’t take much to get the old boys at the store started,” he said, his blue gaze as direct as his words.

Thomasina remembered Emmie’s uncle and friends misconstruing a few moving boxes. She crushed lavender underfoot as she shifted in her seat. Its aroma wafted on the evening air. “What will you do with your side of the house? Rent it out?”

“I wish it was that simple.” Before he could explain, the waiter appeared with the dessert sample tray. “Did you save room for some chocolate pie?” Trace asked.

“None for me, thanks.”

“Humor me,” he persisted. “I’m softening you up for the
rest
of the story.”

Thomasina smiled and acquiesced. A bevy of helicopters whipped the skies overhead as the waiter returned a moment later with the pie.

“Ambrosia!” said Thomasina, when it grew quiet enough for conversation. “I’m fortified. You were saying?”

He dropped his bombshell. “I’m selling the house so that I can make a serious bid on the farm. My rental properties, too. Hopefully it won’t change anything where you’re concerned. But I can’t promise you that.”

“So I might have to move?”

“If the buyer wants it as a single unit dwelling, yes, I’m afraid so.”

Thomasina grappled with mingled emotions, not the least of which was an increasing apprehension over Trace’s willingness
to sacrifice everything in pursuit of the farm. His pearl of great price. But if God was leading her to the ground, how could she
not
bid? “It’s a lovely house. The first to feel like a home since I left home,” she said as internal storm clouds gathered. “But I appreciate the warning. If I have to move, then I have to move.”

“You’re taking this better than I’d hoped.”

The flicker of relief in his eyes only heightened Thomasina’s wariness. “While we’re on the subject of dreams, I have one, too,” she said, and lifted her eyes. “Would you like to hear it?”

He pushed his plate aside and rested his forearms on the table, hands linked.
The hands that stripped shingles and toppled porches and wielded tools with strength and proficiency and secured a rose in her hair.
But how could she waver, measuring what she was and wasn’t willing to pay for her dream?

“I want to run a Christian camp for at-risk children.”

“You mentioned something of the sort this morning.”

Had she? She’d been so distracted at Antoinette leaving in a huff, anything could have flown out of her mouth. “I’ve saved for years, waiting for God to lead me to the place where I could best serve. I feel He has, and that it was by His guidance that Milt and Mary came into my life. Though at first, when Milt was giving me such a hard time, I wasn’t all that sure!” she said, and smiled.

“He’s a good guy,” said Trace, uncertain what to make of her leap from dreams to Milt. He’d lost some words to the helicopters, but waited, certain she’d explain the link.

“I thought at first he was grieving the loss of his health and youth and feared he was giving up,” she continued. “Then when he told me that he’d made up his mind to sell the farm,. I saw more clearly what the grieving was about.
I think there was closure for him in having made the decision himself.”

Trace flung a glance heavenward. “I don’t believe in chance,” he heard Thomasina say. Words continued to flow from her mouth. It was no hardship watching her lips form them, even as the helicopters played havoc, drowning her out.

Thomasina was more aware of quickening nerves and her tightening stomach than the air traffic overhead. Intent on being finished with it, she gripped her hands in her lap and pushed the rest out. “When Milt told me he’d decided to sell the farm, I knew the wait was over. It was only later that I learned of your interest.”

Trace cupped his ear and pointed skyward in wordless indication, but she had averted her eyes to the napkin in her lap.

“My conscience tells me that I should have spoken up sooner,” she finished in a rush. “I hope I haven’t misled you. But the bottom line is, if I don’t do the work God has in mind for me, then I’m letting Him down.”

Now it was more than the air traffic. It was a thunderclap of realization. All along he had wondered why no one had snapped her up. Someone had. Way up. It was her faith! She’d go wherever God called her—the next county, the inner city, a distant continent.

No wonder she was so unperturbed over the possibility of moving out when she’d just moved in! She hadn’t planned on staying. She wanted the temporary nature of their relationship out in the open. Her mouth was vulnerable now that her words had stopped. Oh, so kissable. Trace drew his eyes away, and resisted the temptation to reason with her. All the signs were there, just as with Deidre.
How could he have been so slow to realize?

“Trace?”

“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” he said, reasoning that not every man was meant to be God’s man, or a family man, either.

She stopped toying with the pie and put the fork down. The uncertainty in her eyes cut him. He didn’t understand why, or what it was she expected of him. He struggled against an inclination to rebuff the plea for understanding, and reached across the table for her hands the way friends do when they’ve retreated from the untried, deciding friendship is all it will be.

Thomasina met his hands and grasped them tightly. The weight lifted from her shoulders. She’d been so afraid honesty would drive a wedge. “I should have told you the other day in the woods when you shared
your
dream. I tried, but…”

“It’s all right,” said Trace, heat rising at her reference to him asking her if she was spoken for.

“Still friends?”

“Sure.”

“I’m sorry it’s working out this way,” she said wistfully.

“Me, too,” said Trace, for her regret was as bittersweet as her chocolate eyes.

“I guess we don’t need to talk it to death, then do we?”

“Nothing to be gained by that,” he agreed, and even managed a smile. It seemed so familiar. Just like before.

No. It was different this time, Trace reasoned a moment later as Thomasina excused herself to the powder room while he waited for the waiter to bring the check. He was older. He valued his independence. And he knew life went on. Love’s first bite was the toughest. He’d get through it this time, no sweat.

They left the restaurant under a purple sky. Thomasina’s evening bag was in her right hand, her left hand free. Twenty minutes ago, Trace would have reached for it. But
not now. His thoughts shifted to work, his antidote for disappointments large and small. “Ricky’s free to help me tomorrow. But it’s his friend’s day for the truck, so he has no transportation unless I drop my truck by his place.”