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Every morning Tilly woke and let the fawn out into the yard, allowing air into the house. Then, quickly before heading out to water and feed Marigold and collect the eggs, she would reread the deed Landon had brought her and tuck it into her fairy tales. She’d cut a fine line into the lining of the book, knowing that soon she’d have to seal the perforation so that it would be hidden away until the day she would pass off the book to... her children. Every morning those words came to her, but why? She didn’t know. She wouldn’t have children, not unless Iggy suddenly decided he was interested in women, specifically her. It might not be a bad idea, really. Why not the two of them share a home, share their unrealized dreams, use each other to mellow the pain that came with aloneness?
She could take on more commissions and pay back the investors sooner. And then she and Iggy could add onto the cottage.
Children.
Windows. Heck, she hadn’t even found the time to go into town to order a new window. She thought of Iggy saying how dark and rustic the cottage was, not his taste at all.
Children. How silly. She would be the last child to claim the Rabel property. But she intended to live a very long time.
She put the fairy-tale book back on the shelf and remembered the way Landon’s face had lit up as emotion charged him from the inside out when they’d read the stories during the storm. She sighed and scolded herself. Such simple moments that she’d raised to the level of profound. That night, disclosing family secrets amid electrified air and rumbling thunder, it had all seemed so important, his small realizations had seemed genuine. Laying close, fingers entwined, holding, exploring, she’d felt a monumental shift in her world... it had been all that, hadn’t it? Suddenly those sensations, that time, its meaning, had shrunk. Had she been wrong then or now?
After her chores she washed her face and tied her hair back, ready to take to the cove to harvest for new orders. She approached the door, the top half-open, to see Landon standing there, a ribbon-wrapped box in his arms.
Tilly stopped, her breath caught in her throat.
He smiled. “It’s been a while since... well, that day, but I’m not a ghost. It’s me. You missed me, right? That’s what that face is all about, right?” He winked and bent down, out of her sight.
Tilly’s heart raced at the sight of him and she sauntered to the door, leaning through the opening. Now she smiled. Landon was petting Rose behind the ears and her eyes were closed, reminding Tilly how Landon’s touch was comforting and exciting at the same time.
His green eyes shone when he stood up and held the package out to her.
She shook her head. “You’ve done enough. I haven’t repaid one cent of your investment yet.”
“I don’t want a penny from you.”
“Then what? People don’t run around the country doing good deeds for others. Your father will put a bounty on you with all this generosity nonsense you’re speaking.”
“I guess I told you too much about him the night of the storm.”
“I guess you didn’t have to. I saw plenty the day he came swaggering onto my... everyone’s property.”
He shook his head. “Yours. And this is too.” He held out the box.
“No, thank you. Please. You’ve done enough, but I heard what your father said about the steel mill. You must have work to do.”
“Open it.”
“Well come inside.” He did and she took the box and set it on the table. She drew the ribbon off. With the lid removed and muslin wrapping pulled aside, she gasped. “Oh, Landon.”
“It’s pashmina. From Kasmir. India.”
“You went to India and back in one short week?”
He drew the shawl around her shoulders and she wrapped it tight, his hands firm and warm through the fabric, finer than anything she’d ever seen.
“Turns out Muriel’s in town carries the best of things from the world over. My mother’s here with my father and she pointed me in that direction.”
Tilly was lost in the pattern on the shawl tracing with her finger. “The swirls and colors. Chocolate brown and Oak-tree bark brown and the blues.”
“Like your eyes.”
She met his gaze and her stomach fluttered. She wanted all of this goodness to be true. “I’m sorry. I can’t.” She slipped it off and held it out to him, looking away, unable to watch him take it back.
She hadn’t seen him walk away. When she turned back toward him, he was gone.
She rushed to the door to see his back as she headed to the tree line. “Don’t leave this here,” she yelled. “I’m not accepting a gift, Landon. I don’t want gifts. Or things or...”
He turned and spread his arms wide. “Everyone wants gifts and things and... I’m not taking it back,” he shouted and disappeared into the forest, swallowed into her beloved trees, leaving her to wonder just when he’d get bored with stopping by a mussel cove to drop off gifts to a mussel girl to whom he owed nothing, absolutely nothing.
