Cart couldn’t let the coffee cake burn now, could he?
And yeah, it helped not to look her in the eye while he was acting like a girl sharing his feelings.
“I was . . . um . . . seeing a woman who came to Heywood to teach school.” Cart had helped in the kitchen a lot over the years. He didn’t mind being told what to do and he’d learned a few things. He tapped the browned top of the cake with his index finger, thoroughly scrubbed, and decided it was done to perfection.
He might demand a chef’s hat and a raise.
“That’s who Dad meant when he said you were involved with someone?”
Great, she had follow-up questions. “No, because I didn’t start seeing her until about a year and a half after you took the job in LA.”
He set the cake out on the butcher-block table with a loud clatter and turned to glare at her. “I thought all through those eighteen months that you would come back. You’d try city life and realize you missed the inn, and me. At least you’d come home for a visit and I could see you, talk to you about your new life and how it was going.”
“I wasn’t likely to come back for you when I thought you were married.” Mandy sliced the cake and jerked her fingers back and stuck her little finger in her mouth.
“Be careful. You know these are hot.” Cart kept busy unloading the oven. When he’d pulled the third pan out, he got a hold of himself enough to say calmly, “I started dating Tara just after Christmastime the second year you didn’t come home.”
Because he had given up on Mandy. He could see that now, but at the time he just thought he was lonely, and he’d met a nice woman. So he’d been wrong all the way around. He’d treated Mandy wrong by not going after her. He’d treated Tara wrong by using her as a substitute for the woman he really wanted.
But then Tara had treated him wrong, too. Or rather, her feelings had gone no deeper than his.
“I thought Tara cared about me, but she cared about getting out of Heywood more. We’d been seeing each other about five months and she just wanted someone to date until she finished the school year—her first year teaching. She came in all excited one day, here while I was working, and told me she’d gotten a job in a big school in Seattle. She was practically buzzing. She’d never even mentioned applying for other jobs.”
Maybe Tara had been able to tell that he didn’t really have a whole heart to give.
“A woman who wanted the city life?” Mandy asked. She didn’t add “like me,” but Cart heard it.
She focused on the cake just like he’d been doing. She ran her knife around to loosen the edges, then picked up a decorator tube of Angel’s delicious cream cheese frosting and drizzled it over each piece in the shape of a star.
Cart wasn’t the only one in this kitchen who was lousy at talking about feelings. Which might be why they were in this mess. If he’d just kept in touch with her at school, she’d’ve known he wasn’t seeing anyone. But he waited to see her when she came home. He thought social media was a waste of time. He didn’t like phoning and his fingers were just plain too fat to text.
She had skinny fingers, though. What was her excuse?
“She knew I couldn’t just abandon my ranch.” Cart leaned against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed, watching Mandy as she worked. “Tara’d been out to my place plenty of times in those five months. We’d talked about what I was trying to build out there. She knew I worked here at the inn because I loved the building and because your dad and Angel were like family to me, not because I needed the money. I realized after we broke up that I’d talked about myself a lot, and so had she, but she didn’t talk about what she wanted in the future. Maybe that’s because I’m a self-centered jerk. I can’t remember ever asking about her dreams and goals, probably because I wasn’t anywhere near ready to talk about a future between the two of us and I didn’t want to start that. But she never offered, either, and I gave her plenty of turns talking. I knew all about her students and the joys and struggles of teaching. I’d heard all about her little sisters and the teacher she was sharing an apartment with. I knew all the quirks of her old car and I’d listened to a lot of stories from her college years. But I’d never heard a word from her that said she didn’t have any interest in staying in Heywood. She never mentioned it because she’d never been serious about me.”
“And you think I’m just like her?”
A question that struck him as strange. “Are you? Do you still plan on closing down this inn?”
Mandy was quiet for too long. “That was the plan. Close the inn, sell the inn, return to LA.”
“And you’re not questioning it now?”
“I am questioning it. “
“But you said you were closing December thirty-first.”
“I did say that. But I was upset with everything. I was upset with you. Then I realized I was making a lot of decisions based on my hurt feelings. When I should be rationally thinking what I want out of life.”
Mandy turned finally and looked him square in the eye. “I want this life, Cart. I want to make a cozy nest for visitors.” He saw her swallow so hard he could hear a gulp. “I want a home again. And I want you.”
It was then he did some serious waking up. He’d forced her to say it first. He’d snapped at her and acted like a wounded grizzly bear—well, he’d been mighty nice a couple of times—and then, tough guy that he was, when it came time to admit what they really wanted . . . he’d chickened out and left the part that took all the guts to the pretty woman.
The part where a person put their heart right on the line and risked it being smashed.
Well, he might be going second, but he could be a close second. “I want you, too, Mandy. I’ve growled around about you not staying, and I’ve tossed around reasons why you should stay. But I haven’t admitted the one that really matters. I want you to stay. I want us to be together. Mandy, I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
He lowered his head until their lips touched. Only their lips. He held himself in check, wanting to make sure she was willing.
She hesitated. He heard her breath catch. Yes, he’d kissed her already, but those had been stolen kisses, of the moment, without either of them giving thought to what it all meant.
Not this time. This time they knew it was a kiss that started something. And her hesitation scared him right down to the steel toes of his Red Wings.
When she hadn’t come home before it’d almost killed him, but he’d survived. This time, he didn’t think he could recover.
Then slowly, an inch at a time, her arms slipped up and around Cart’s neck. It was all the encouragement he needed. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, turning his head to deepen the kiss, holding on tight. And not just for now, forever.