CHAPTER
Nineteen
You could have cut the tension between Nora and John with the proverbial knife.
Nora counted out a slow one, two, three, four, five inside her head. Keeping her attention trained on the spot where Allie’s car had vanished, she calmly asked, “What was that about?”
“Allie came by to return some scuba gear of mine.”
John gestured up the path, inviting her without words to precede him to his house. She started in that direction, and he fell into step behind her. Was it literally out the door with one woman and in with the next?
Did she dare believe that Allie had only come by to return something? The sag in Allie’s shoulders assured Nora that her visit to John had been about more than scuba gear on Allie’s end. “Really?” Nora asked gently. “She only came by to return gear? That’s all it was?”
“That’s all it was.”
“Do you regret your breakup?”
“No.”
Their footsteps made almost no sound as they followed the sleek strips of concrete that formed his walkway.
“Allie and I are better as friends,” he said.
“I think Allie might still want to date you, though.”
Nora stopped walking and turned to face him. Energy jolted through her at the power of their eye contact.
“I don’t know whether or not Allie still wants to date me. If she does, she didn’t tell me so, and I’m glad she didn’t. I think God has other plans for her. And me.”
In the serious contours of his face, Nora could see the wear his prognosis and his future and maybe his search for his birth mother had chiseled there. She could also see that he was telling the truth. Allie had come by to return something, and that was all her visit had been. For him, anyway.
This time, this time, could it be that the man she wanted was actually going to choose her? With a depth of yearning she hadn’t allowed herself to truly feel until this moment, Nora longed for him to choose her.
They stood a few yards from his open front door, glorious sunshine pouring over them. She could see the kaleidoscope of muted greens, browns, and tans that made up the colors of his eyes. His cheeks were slightly scruffy with five-o’clock shadow.
“There is someone I want to date.” He looked directly at her with both raw need and vulnerability. “I don’t know, though, if she wants to date me.”
“She does,” Nora said.
A fissure of amazement showed in his expression. “She does?”
“She does.” She stepped forward, narrowing the distance between them to inches.
He lifted his hands slowly, reading every nuance of her expression as he did so. Reverently, he edged aside the fall of her hair so that his fingers skimmed both sides of her neck. Then his palms rested there, cradling her head and jaw with exquisite gentleness, as if she was precious to him.
The feel of his rough, masculine fingers against her skin sent a thrill of goose bumps racing down her arms. He could probably detect the thrumming of her pulse in her veins. Where had her breath gone?
He dipped his head toward hers, stayed himself, then asked her a question with a slight lift of one eyebrow. Do you want this? He was an experienced man. Confident. Direct. In no hurry. And unwilling to come on too strong too fast and rattle her.
She answered with a wobbly smile. Yes! Yes, John.
Her hands rose of their own accord to wrap around his forearms. The scent of bergamot enfolded her, then their lips met with wonder, exploration, devotion.
Desire drew at her middle. Tenderness for him outran her ability to call it back. This was a lot for a bluestocking to take in. She leaned back only when she desperately needed air to her brain.
John’s hands remained on her neck. One of his thumbs rubbed down an inch, up an inch.
She might pass out—
She would not pass out! She continued to coax air to and from her lungs. She should say something, but what? What should she, could she, say in the face of that epic kiss?
John appeared wholly calm.
She spoke the first thought that sailed by. “Is the someone we were talking about just now, the someone you want to date . . . is she me, Nora?” She grinned unsteadily. “Just thought I’d double check.”
John tilted back his head and laughed. He glanced down at her and laughed more. Never before had she heard him laugh in this deep, rumbling, irrepressible way. “Did you say your name was Nora?”
“Yes.”
“Well, shoot. My vision’s a lot worse than I’d realized.” He hadn’t moved back at all. There was still only a sliver of space between their bodies. “How’s your vision?”
“Outstanding.”
“Because I’m not Duncan. I’m John.”
“Well, shoot,” she said with feeling, imitating him. “Are you sure?”
“Completely sure. I’m insulted, by the way, that you’d get me confused with a short guy who wears a girly scarf.”
“My mistake.”
Humor tugging at his mouth, he kissed her again. “I’m glad we got this straightened out.” He spoke in a sexy whisper against her lips.
“Me too.”
“Nora?” Another kiss.
“Mmm?”
Two more kisses.
He pulled back. His eyes had darkened to a hazy, unfocused hue. “I know exactly who you are.”
She fought the urge to break into piteous happy tears. Nodding, she said, “So . . . I am the someone you were speaking of earlier?”
“Yes. You’re my someone.”
Her mouth tingled from his kisses. “You’re my someone, too.”
He gave her a kiss as light as the brush of satin on satin. Then he hugged her against his chest, his arms locking around her. In response, she laid her cheek against his heart and interlaced her hands behind the small of his back. She wanted to stay right here, like this, with him forever.
One minute swept into two. Birds trilled. In the distance, a boat motor rumbled.
He’d. Kissed. Her. She was in John’s arms. She was his someone.
She peered up at him. “Thank you for coming over the other night and telling me all that you did.”
“My diagnosis didn’t scare you off?”
“No.”
“It’s not a pretty diagnosis, Nora.”
“There are things about my life that aren’t pretty, either.”
“I don’t want . . . my eyesight to end up having a negative effect on you.”
“And I don’t want either of us to worry about that at this point. What I’ve learned,” she thought back to the loss of her mother and her broken engagement, “is that the past might be challenging and the future might be unsure. And that’s okay. The present is all we’re given, anyway. When we get to the future, God will be there. He’ll supply whatever we need for each day.”
Time elongated as he watched her. She didn’t have words equal to the task of explaining to him what a blessing he was to her.
“Since the present is all we have . . .” he said.
“Yes?”
“Are you ready for our first date?”
“What? Now?”
“Now.”
“Most definitely. Now would be perfect.”
Their transportation for their first date? John’s boat.
Nora sat in the passenger seat wearing one of his ball caps in order to keep her hair from whipping around her head. An expanse of glinting water fringed with timbered hills surrounded her, though she found it difficult to admire the surroundings when she could, instead, watch John.
He drove a boat like he’d been doing so since birth. All easy, relaxed know-how. The wind pushed his shirt flush against him, flapping it a little so that she could see a wedge of bare, smooth skin at his lower back. His sunglasses reflected her image dimly back at her in shades of dark gray.
They docked at Shore Pine’s marina and ate dinner at a restaurant on the wharf that served crab and potatoes and corn on sheets of white butcher paper. They laughed and talked and Nora tried, really tried, to wrap her mind around the miraculous fact that the two of them were out together on a date.
In the restroom she looked at her reflection while washing her hands and saw that she was smiling a huge, dopey smile. It wouldn’t leave. It kept returning like a stray cat that had been served milk.
At the chapel earlier today, she’d determined that she’d be smart about John. Careful! For goodness’ sake, she needed to rein in her rampant imagination. This was only their first date.
After the return boat ride to his house, he lit his outdoor fireplace, and the two of them sat in a settee facing it. Beyond her view of his feet and her feet resting side by side on the coffee table, both sets crossed at the ankles, the sky eased from sunset colors, to deepening dusk, to inky blackness pinpricked by stars. The sounds of nature and the crackle of the fire provided a background soundtrack for their conversation. They held hands and, occasionally, they kissed. She couldn’t believe it when she realized it was two in the morning.
He walked her to her car.
Despite the late hour, she left him regretfully. Very, very regretfully.
All the way home, she wore the huge, dopey smile.
This deluge of happiness was not to be trusted, she knew. Her past love life and her sisters’ love lives had taught her that any relationship’s initial bout of infatuation could not be counted upon.
But the part of her that was doing the emotional equivalent of a salsa dance and singing John likes me, John likes me, John likes me did not want to hear caution.
Not tonight.
Tonight, he’d told her that she was his someone.
John stood in front of his outdoor fireplace, hands in his pockets, head full of Nora, attention trained on the last of the glowing logs.
Hours ago, when he’d first seen Nora sitting in her car outside his house, her face had looked so serious that he’d been sure she’d come to tell him no. But, incredibly, she’d come to tell him yes.
This—she—was the first good thing that had happened to him since the day he’d met with his ophthalmologist months ago. The whole time she’d been here this evening, he’d been astonished by the fact that she’d come.
He hadn’t frightened her off. He wasn’t alone. The two of them had finally come to a place where they were free to date each other without guilt.
The librarian with the house full of books who liked boring TV was independent, sweet, and an unbelievable kisser. For all his experience, he’d never been as rattled by the power of a kiss as he’d been tonight.
He didn’t believe in fate, unless fate was another name for God’s plans. If it was, then every part of being with Nora this evening had felt like fate. Like a yes and a thank God and a finally, deep within.
Nora was the silver lining to his worst cloud, a silver lining so strong that it lessened the threat of the darkness.
The next morning, Nora’s office door rushed open. Willow and Britt filled the opening.
Nora swiveled her desk chair in their direction. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” she asked, though she could guess.
After her very late night with John, she’d slept in more than she usually did on weekday mornings. She’d arrived at the Library on the Green two hours ago, around ten.
“You’re dating John?” Britt asked.
“I’m guessing that you already know that I am,” Nora answered. “Because you’re both here just twenty minutes after I sent you a text about him. What sort of transportation moves that fast? Monorail?”
Her sisters made themselves comfortable on the patterned chairs opposite Nora’s desk just as Nikki made an appearance. “You’re dating the Navy SEAL?” Her question dripped with disbelief.
“Well, we’ve only been on one date so far, but I guess you could say that John and I are dating.”
Nikki released a garbled death scream, then pantomimed pulling a knife out of her chest.
“We’re happy for Nora,” Britt informed Nikki. “We’re here to be supportive and encouraging.”
“Oh.” Nikki straightened. “Except it’s hard to be supportive about your boss dating the man that you’ve been having a meaningful relationship with during every REM cycle of sleep.”
“He’s gorgeous,” Nikki said to Nora. “I didn’t think you had it in you, to date a man like that.”
“But you suggested to me once that I move heaven and earth to make him mine.”
“Yes, but in my heart of hearts I thought you’d fail, hon.”
More laughter from Britt and Willow.
“I’m touched by your confidence,” Nora said.
Nikki drummed her fingers on the flare of her hip. “I’d like to take a look at the Navy SEAL’s abs sometime. You know, as a job benefit.”
“I can’t guarantee that specific job benefit.”
“Then I can’t guarantee that I’ll stay on here at Merryweather Historical Village.”
“I’d hate to lose your accounting skills,” Nora said. “But I’ll get by.”
“That face of his!” Nikki said dreamily. “It’s just so—”
“Would you mind going downstairs and checking on Mr. Cummings?” Nora asked. “He’s looking through church records.”
“Fine. Is the Navy SEAL—”
“How about we all call him John from now on?”
“Will John be coming by here any time soon?”
“Tonight. At five thirty.”
Waggling her eyebrows, Nikki turned and made her way downstairs.
“Tell us all,” Willow said.
Nora filled them in on the details of her magnificent evening. “It was just a date,” she felt compelled to say in conclusion. She didn’t want them to get their hopes up.
“It sounds like a great first date,” Willow pronounced.
“I agree,” Britt said.
“Is it wrong of me to want to call attention to my excellent makeover skills?” Willow asked Britt.
“Very wrong,” Britt answered.
Willow flourished her hands in Nora’s direction. “The evidence speaks for itself. As soon as I completed the Enhancing of Nora, two very eligible bachelors beat a path to her door.”
“Is it wrong of me to want to call attention to the fact that Nora never would have met John if I hadn’t talked her into coming with me to a staged emergency?” Britt asked.
“Very wrong,” Willow answered.
“Is it wrong of me to want to remind you that it was me, just me and my charming personality, who won John over in the end?”
“Not wrong at all,” Willow answered kindly. “This is a very exciting development.”
Both her sisters beamed at her. Nora hadn’t realized how happy they’d be about this. Had they secretly been feeling sorry for her these past three years? The suspicion jabbed her like a needle. She’d thought she’d been projecting contentment to them.
“What’s going to happen next?” Britt asked.
“He texted to ask if I was free after work, and I said that I was and he said he’d come here to meet me.”
Willow gave a low whistle. “It sounds like he’s eager to see you again.”
“I’m not sure. I—I can’t speak for him.” She struggled to keep the huge, dopey smile at bay.
“Oooh-ooo!” Willow and Britt responded as if they were both thirteen.
“Nora,” Mrs. Williams said later that day, near closing time. “I believe I may have contracted scurvy.” The elderly woman, a hypochondriac and museum regular, gave Nora a look of great sorrow. “Don’t get too close, dear. I wouldn’t want you to catch it.”
“I don’t think scurvy’s contagious,” Nora assured her.
“I’ve already come down with the symptom of fatigue. I’m expecting the joint pain to set in at any moment.”
Mrs. Williams was a living example of exactly why typing your symptoms into an Internet search engine was a ghastly idea. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Before I’m bedridden, I’d like to go back through Merryweather’s early burial documents to see if I can discover what became of little Bucky, Arthur Thacker’s youngest.” She wrapped a hand around Nora’s wrist. “Bucky’s descendants might be living right next door to me, and I wouldn’t know.” Her wrinkled lips pursed. “Come to think of it, I hope they don’t live right next door. My next-door neighbors sometimes leave beer bottles in their grass and don’t prune their azaleas the way they should. Bucky’s descendants are welcome to live two doors down. The couple that lives there knows how to prune their azaleas.”
Nora settled Mrs. Williams at one of the library’s tables and brought out the requested records. Just as she was heading back to her office, she caught sight of something beyond the windows on the side facing the green. She waited. There it was again. A football sailing by. Then again, sailing by going the other way.
She moved to the window. Randall and John were throwing a football back and forth.
John had on jeans and a lightweight dark-gray sweater. The sight of him throwing a football with Randall caused fondness to sink into her like honey into hot tea, every molecule of it absorbing until it changed her substance.
In between throws, Randall gestured with his hands as he spoke to John. John smiled in response.
She let herself out the library’s front door and approached John and Randall, her hands stuck into the back pockets of her white pants. The toes of her silver flats sparkled against the grass. “Hi, guys.”
Immediately, John turned. He held the football clasped against his thigh and gazed at her as if it had been a year since he’d seen her instead of hours. Was he having difficulty focusing on her precisely?
She drew nearer. “How are you?”
“I’m doing well.” His mouth curved, and she knew that he could see her clearly now. The things they’d shared last night, a secret knowledge, passed between them.
“You’ve met Randall.”
“Yeah. He was throwing the ball in the air and catching it when I walked up, so I asked if I could join him.”
She hooked a thumb toward John. “How is he, Randall? Can he hang with your skills? Or does he need to be demoted to toddler ball?”
John snorted.
“He can hang,” Randall said. “Um, Ms. Bradford? Can you move out of the way so we can keep going?”
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you hot chocolate with mini marshmallows, my young friend,” Nora said.
“Clearly, Randall already likes me best,” John said just loud enough for her to hear. The sound of his voice pitched low like that brought to mind the things he’d said to her last night in the very same tone. I know exactly who you are.
“Any right-minded boy would like you best,” she said.
“You’re my favorite, though,” he said, meeting her eyes.
Cue huge, dopey smile. Her cheeks heated with a blush.
“She can join us,” John called to Randall.
“Aww,” Randall protested.
“Hot chocolate,” Nora warned the kid. “And mini marshmallows.”
They formed a triangle. John sent the ball arcing through the air in a perfect spiral. Randall caught it and threw it to her, then she threw to John.
The three of them talked and lazily passed the ball while townspeople and tourists milled into and out of the village shops. It was all pretty perfect, as far as Nora was concerned.
Finally, Randall looked at his watch, caught the football, and approached them.
“My grandmother’s expecting me home soon. So I better go.”
“Do you need a ride?” John asked. “To your grandmother’s?”
“No, I always walk.”
“Okay.”
Randall stuck out his skinny arm. “It was nice to meet you,” he said to John solemnly.
“You too.” They shook hands, and Randall even managed to hold John’s eye contact for the better part of a second.
“See you later, Ms. Bradford.” He gave her an awkward one-armed hug.
“See you.” She hugged him back. Then he loped off, a boy and his football.
“I remember that Randall was at the library the first day I came to the village,” John said.
“He’s here several days a week. The village is his hangout spot.”
“He picked a good hangout spot.”
“He picked a good guy to throw a football with. That was probably the highlight of his week.”
John angled to face her more fully. “Have you finished your work for the day?”
“I have.”
“Are you up for giving me a tour of the buildings?”
“Of course.” Nora adored talking about her village but took care not to prattle on about it because she knew she had the potential to get swept away by fervor and end up boring people. That John had actually requested a tour was as delicious to her as one of Britt’s truffles. “Do you want the free tour of the village or the very expensive, very detailed, history-packed ten-dollar tour?”
“The ten-dollar tour. I want to see your village.”
He’d put slight emphasis on the word see. Ah. So he wanted to take in the details of it now, while he still could. Which explained the concentrated expression on his face earlier, when he’d first seen her. And the way he’d looked at the sunset last night. And his careful study of the view off the lodge’s balcony in Oregon.
“When you’re fighting unconsciousness during my lecture about western migration,” she said, “just remember that you requested the ten-dollar tour.”
“I like to live dangerously.”
“All right, then.” She smiled at him.
“One thing first?”
“Sure.”
“I brought the letter I wrote to Sherry.” He pulled an envelope from his back pocket. “Would you be willing to read it before I mail it?”
“I’d love to.”
He handed her the envelope. He’d already affixed a stamp and addressed it to Sherry in neat handwriting.
They sat on one of the benches facing the green, and she spread the letter carefully across her knees. She read it twice. Her chest tightened more and more with every word because she so desperately wanted his search to end well for him.
What he’d written and how he’d written it made it clear that he’d implemented the suggestions in the reference material she’d sent him. He’d succeeded at condensing his life onto a single plainspoken sheet of paper. He’d put no guilt, pressure, or accusation on Sherry.
Finding John’s birth mother had not only cost the two of them a lot of hours and effort, but Nora knew that it had taken an emotional toll on John, as well. In the end they’d succeeded at their task, but as soon as Sherry received this letter, the power would shift to her. The decision to respond or not respond to John would be hers. This search could still result in a dead end, a possibility that left Nora longing to scribble a note of her own onto the letter. Something along the lines of, John is a good man. He won’t overstep. He simply wants a meeting and a medical history, and he deserves for something to go right at this particular point in his life so please call him. Please do.
Their best hope was that Sherry had long been interested in reconnecting with her birth son and would thus reply quickly to his letter. Nora hadn’t forgotten, however, that John had told her long ago that he’d checked the registry that connected birth parents who want to locate their adopted children with adopted children who want to locate their birth parents. Sherry had not been listed.
“I think it’s a wonderful letter,” she said truthfully and passed it back. “In my opinion, you worded it exactly right.”
He nodded and sealed the envelope’s flap. “Is there a mailbox nearby?”
“Yes, we have one here at the village. Are you . . . ready to mail it? Right now?” He’d had Sherry’s address in hand for well over a month. For reasons of his own, he’d waited to send his letter, and she didn’t want to rush him at this point. This was a no-going-back kind of letter to mail.
“I’m ready.”
“How about I say a prayer over it? To give it a good send-off?”
“I’d like that.”
She intertwined her fingers with his. “Lord, prepare Sherry’s heart to receive this letter. Go with it in power. We know that in all things you work for the good of those who love you, so I’m stepping out in faith, believing that John’s search will ultimately be for his good and Sherry’s good, too. Amen.”
“Amen,” he whispered. He met her eyes. “Thank you.”
She wrapped a hand around his elbow as they walked to the mailbox situated between The Pie Emporium and the General Store.
John opened the slot and without hesitation slid the letter in.
Whoosh. Gone.
He’d set the ball rolling, and it couldn’t be stopped.
Text message from Britt to Nora:
Britt
I’m racked with curiosity about Willow and Corbin Stewart. There were a lot of sparks in the air between them at Grandma’s party. Do you think we should talk to her about him? Or would that be too painful?
Nora
I think we should wait and let her discuss him with us when she’s ready.
Text message from Willow to Nora:
Willow
Are we supposed to go on forever pretending that Zander and Britt are nothing more than friends, simply because the two of them are so bent on pretending? Zander’s unhappy, and it’s starting to make me irritable. Do you think we should talk to Britt? Or would that ruin everything?
Nora
I think we should wait and let her discuss him with us when she’s ready.